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Hi everyone, I have been working through various tutorials over the past couple of months and am currently trying understand PHP frameworks. One of the ways I am doing this is by trying to design my own very simple MVC framework from scratch. I am trying to re-factor an application (which I have already built using spaghetti procedural PHP). This application has a front end for teachers and a back-end for the administrators. I would like to separate concerns and have URL's like this http://example.com/{module}/{controller}/{method}/{param-1}/{param-2} Now the MVC framework I have cobbled together up to this point does not handle routing for 'modules' (I apologise if this is not the correct terminology), only the controller/method/params. So I have separated the public_html from the app logic and inside of the /app/ folder I have specified two folders, my default "learn module" and the "admin module" so that the directory tree looks like this: Apparently this design pattern is a "H"MVC? My Solution I am basically making use if the is_dir(); function to check if there is a "module" directory (such as "admin") and then unsetting the first URL array element $url[0] and reindexing the array to 0... then I am changing the controller path according to the URL... the code should be clearer... <?php class App { protected $_module = 'learn'; // default module --> learn protected $_controller = 'home'; // default controller --> home protected $_method = 'index'; // default method --> index protected $_params = []; // default paramatars --> empty array public function __construct() { $url = $this->parseUrl(); // returns the url array // Checks if $url[0] is a module else it is a controller if (!empty($url) && is_dir('../app/' . $url[0])) { $this->_module = $url[0]; // if it is a model then assign it unset($url[0]); if (!empty($url[1]) && file_exists('../app/' . $this->_module . '/controllers/' . $url[1] . '.php')) { $this->_controller = $url[1]; // if $url[1] is also set, it must be a controller unset($url[1]); $url = array_values($url); // reset the array to zero, we are left with {method}{param}{etc..} } // if $url[0] is not a module then it might be a controller... } else if (!empty($url[0]) && file_exists('../app/' . $this->_module . '/controllers/' . $url[0] . '.php')) { $this->controller = $url[0]; // if it is a controller then assign it unset($url[0]); $url = array_values($url); // reset the array to zero } // else if url is empty default {module}{controller}{method} is loaded // default is ../app/learn/home/index.php require_once '../app/' . $this->_module . '/controllers/' . $this->_controller . '.php'; $this->_controller = new $this->_controller; // if there are methods left in the array if (isset($url[0])) { // and the methods are legit if (method_exists($this->_controller, $url[0])) { // sets the method that we will be using $this->_method = $url[0]; unset($url[0]); } // else nothing is set } // if there is anything else left in $url then it is a parameter $this->_params = $url ? array_values($url) : []; // calling everything call_user_func_array([$this->_controller, $this->_method], $this->_params); } public function parseUrl() { // checks if there is a url to work with if (isset($_GET['url'])) { // explodes the url by the '/' and returns an array of url 'elements' return $url = EXPLODE('/', filter_var(rtrim($_GET['url'], '/'), FILTER_SANITIZE_URL)); } } } this so far appears to be working for me, but..... Question I am not sure if this is the preferred solution to this issue. Is calling the is_dir() check for every page request going slow down my app? How would you engineer a solution or have I completely misunderstood the issue? Many thanks in advance for your time and consideration!! Hazel,