Online demo (username : p ; password : (leave empty))
Front Controller (FC) is a collection of PHP scripts meant to create portals.
It allows you to create many pages, protected by login and with database access.
It is 521 lines of PHP, HTML and CSS code across 15 files.
It has no JavaScript code.
The application starts with app.php
(the single controller).
app.php
first registers an autoload (so no need for includes anywhere)
app.php
uses a custom session handler to save the session data in the database (table 'session
')
To find a view, app.php
loads the view class by prepending 'Vue' to it.
So URL /app.php/Bonjour/
loads class VueBonjour
from the app/vue/VueBonjour.php
file.
When the user logs out, the URL is unchanged (so when logging back in, the user will be where he was before logging out).
In fact, the login page does not have its own URL.
Resubmission : If the user was filling a form and was logged out when submitting it, the login page allows him to resend the form data.
FC requires a MySQL database to save session data and users.
app/
and style/
folders and the app.php
file to where you want the application to be installed.
app.php
script to something else ('index.php
' for example).
app/
folder by either moving it outside of the document root (and modifying app.php
to point to its new location) or by adding this to an app/.htaccess
file :
Require all denied
app/model/Mdl.php
script.
admin
' with an empty password (do not forget to change it).
Look at the VueUsers.php
view and the MdlUser.php
model for an example.
Creating a new page is simple.
First create a class named VueBonjour
and save it in app/vue/VueBonjour.php
<?php class VueBonjour extends Vue { protected function render() { $this->renderTitle('Bonjour'); ?> <p>Bienvenue. <?php } } ?>
It will then be accessible at the /app.php/Bonjour/
URL.
Every view inherits from the abstract Vue
class.
By default, every class must implement the abstract 'render()
' method.
It is called whenever the vue must be rendered.
Vue.php
also provides a renderTitle($title)
function to render the page title and optionally the navigation menu at the top.
To add the page to the navigation menu, edit the $pages
array in the app/vue/Vue.php
file.
Look inside Vue.php
for method signatures. (all the following functions are protected
)
authorize($post)
Allows or denies access to a page.
Return true to allow and false to deny.
$post
tells you if the request was a POST request.
handleGET()
Allows you to do extra processing on GET requests (before render()
).
handlePOST()
Allows you to do extra processing on POST requests (before render()
).
This is where you can handle form submissions.
When you are done, call HTTP::Reload()
to reload the page.
(If you do not call HTTP::Reload()
, the user will be prompted to resumbit when the reload button is clicked)
When creating a new view, you may want to access the database.
Do so using a model.
In the app/model/
folder, model classes inherit from the abstract Mdl
class.
Example model :
<?php class MdlBonjour extends Mdl { function getAllBonjours($id = 0) { $sth = $this->pdo()->prepare('SELECT name FROM bonjour WHERE id = :id'); $sth->execute(array('id' => $id)); return $sth->fetchAll(); } } ?>
Mdl.php
provides a pdo()
method which gives you access to the PDO
object.
It is recommended to create one model per database table.
FC uses sessions exclusively to handle logins.
If you wish to save user-related data, do so in the database instead of in $_SESSION
.
PAGE
SUBPAGE
SUBSUBPAGE
USER
USERID
USERNAME
Edit the app.php
file :
define('PAGE', $page ?: 'Home');
Edit the app/model/Mdl.php
file :
self::$pdo = new PDO('mysql:dbname=fc;host=localhost;charset=utf8mb4', 'fc', '1qaz2wsx');
Edit the app/vue/Vue.php
file :
private $pages = array( array('PageOne', 'Title of page one'), array('PageTwo', 'Title of page two'), array(array('Bonjour', 'SubPage'), 'Title of SubPage of Bonjour') );
Edit the app/model/MdlSessionHandler.php
file :
const SECONDS = 1200;// 20 mins
URL::FullURL()
Returns a root relative URL.
URL::FullURL('Bonjour', 123, array('s' => 456))
returns /app.php/Bonjour/123/?s=456
URL::FullURLHTML()
Same as URL::FullURL()
but for an HTML context :
<a href="<?= URL::FullURLHTML('Bonjour') ?>">Bonjour</a>
URL::DomainURL()
Returns a full URL (with host name).
URL::DomainURL('Bonjour')
returns http://fc.philippe97.ca/app.php/Bonjour/
URL::DomainURLHTML()
Same as URL::DomainURL()
but for an HTML context.
URL::Relative($base, $url)
Resolves a relative URL to a base URL.
$base
is the full base URL (http://...
).
$url
is the relative URL (http://...
or //...
or /...
or ...
).
URL::RelativeHTML($base, $url)
Same as URL::Relative()
but for an HTML context.
HTTP::Reload()
Reloads the current URL.
Useful in handlePOST()
to change the POST request into a GET.
(if not called, the user will be prompted to resubmit if the reload button is clicked)
HTTP::ReloadURL()
Redirects to another URL.
Accepts the same arguments as URL::FullURL()
Example : HTTP::ReloadURL('Bonjour', 456)
HTTP::Resubmit()
Resubmits the current URL (with 307 code).
Tells the browser to resend the POST request.
HTTP::ResubmitURL()
Resubmits to another URL.
Accepts the same arguments as URL::FullURL()
Example : HTTP::ResubmitURL('Bonjour', 456)
/app.php/Bonjour/SubPage/
)There are many ways to implement sub-pages in FC.
One of them is to create a view for the parent page which includes the child pages.
To simplify things, you may want to give SUBPAGE
a default value of 'Index
' in app.php
:
define('SUBPAGE', $subpage ?: 'Index');
The view (app/vue/VueBonjour.php
) may then load a separate PHP file for every sub page :
<?php class VueBonjour extends Vue { protected function render() { $file = __DIR__ . '/Bonjour/' . SUBPAGE . '.php'; if (file_exists($file)) include $file; else (new Vue404())->handle(); } } ?>
Every PHP file in the Bonjour/
folder may start like this (app/vue/Bonjour/Index.php
in this case) :
<?php $this->renderTitle('Index'); ?> <p>This is the Index page.</p> <ul> <p><li><a href="<?= URL::FullURLHTML(PAGE, 'AAA') ?>">AAA</a></li> </ul>
app/vue/Bonjour/AAA.php
may contain :
<?php $this->renderTitle('AAA'); ?> <p>This is the AAA page.</p>
Sometimes, you may want to make a page accessible to all without having to log in.
To do that, you have to edit the app.php
script.
Replace the if (!USER)
line with this :
if (!USER && !in_array(PAGE, array('PublicPage')))
You may add more pages in the array()
.