Help with general application design

[Cobby]

Hi all,

 

I had a look at the stickied post, but there was too many links, and I wasn't exactly sure which one I should read (I looked at a few, but didn't find what I was looking for).

 

I know procedural and OO PHP, and I know how to use smarty. But my question is, how do I design an application? What I have just assumed and am doing for my current project (a simply EMS), is have this sort of layout:

 

-config.php  <-- stores application wide variables, also creates $smarty = new Smarty;

-includes.php <-- class that stores all my functions, i.e login, logout, viewProfile. Also includes config.php

-header.tpl.html <-- self-explainitory, html header file

-footer.tpl.html <-- html footer

-<include>.tpl.html <-- file to be display between header and footer

 

Directory Structure:

{root}/ <--stores logic pages index.php, login.php, logout.php, profile.php, etc.

/config/ <--stores config files (currently only config.php)

/inc/ <--stores include files (currently only includes.php)

/templates/ <--template files for smarty

/templates_c/ <--template cache

/libs/ <--smarty directorty

 

Is that how I should lay my applications out?

I would also appreciate if someone could direct my to a tutorial that will explain my query.

 

Cheers,

Cobby

[448191]

The locations of your files have very little to do with the design of your application.

 

I recommend you start with a simple MVC tutorial. Also, read a little on the theory behind it. You can find links under MVC in the resources sticky.

[Cobby]

Thanks for that

 

I spent half the weekend understand how it works, and spent the other half making my own framework, I want one that didn't have to store page in class and could implement smarty a little easier. I also intergrated the registry class the implements ArrayAccess. It goes like this:

 

Directory Layout:

/classes

/includes

/processors

/templates

/templates_c

 

DB Layout:

`pages` table:

By default has 3 fields:

pid - Page ID

title - the title of the page

filename - has the name of the file wthout extension (because all will .php)

 

Firstly, the include.php (from /includes folder)

<?php

// Set error reporting
error_reporting(E_ALL);

// get url function
function url(){
$sp = $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'];

$sp = explode ('/', $sp);

$protocol = strtolower($sp[0]);

// set server with http
$url = $protocol."://".$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];

// get the script path
$path = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];

// separate path by /
$path = explode('/', $path);

$final = '';
// join parts, start at 1 to remove first blank and end 2 early to skip includes and filename name
for($i=1; $i<count($path)-2; $i++){
	$final .= "/".$path[$i];
}

// add trailing /
$final .= "/";

// join parts
$ret = $url.$final;
return $ret;

}

// Set Constants
if(!defined('DIRSEP')){
define('DIRSEP', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
}

$site_path = realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . DIRSEP . '..' . DIRSEP) . DIRSEP;
if(!defined('site_path')){
define('site_path', $site_path);
}


if(!defined('site_url')){
define('site_url', url());
}
include 'classes/reg.class.php';
$reg = new reg;

$scandir = scandir(site_path."classes\\");
// Load classes
foreach($scandir as $val){

if(preg_match("+.class.php+", $val)){

	$val = substr($val, 0 ,-10);

	if(($val != 'Smarty_Compiler') && ($val != 'Config_File') && ($val != 'reg')){

		include_once site_path."classes\\".$val.".class.php";

		$reg[$val] = new $val($reg);

	}

}

}


?>

 

My real master peice in that was the foreach loop. Instead of using __autoload like in the MVC tutorial, it loads every file that has .class.php extension. (except for Smarty_Compiler, Config_File and reg). That way in index, I don't have to declare each class (becuase there will be a lot!). I manually declared the reg class so I could automatically create a registry variable for each class (i.e. $reg['db'] for the db class). Also, everyclass has a handler function which loads the reg class.

 

Now, the only file in the root directory is index.php which goes like this:

<?php

session_start();

// Include include.php
require_once'includes/include.php';

// Connect to database
$reg['db']->dbConnect('localhost', 'root', '<password>', 'sneaky');

// Run page() function
$reg['handler']->page();

?>

 

Index.php is pretty self explanitory, starts a session, connects to database (everypage needs a database connection). And runs the page() function from the handler class.

 

And of course, the class that make everything happen, handler:

<?php

class handler{

protected $reg;

function handler($reg){
	$this->reg = $reg;
}

function page(){
	// Lazy variable
	$reg = $this->reg;
	// Get and refine page
	$page = (isset($_GET['page']) == true)?$_GET['page']:'index';
	$page = strtolower($page);

	// MySQL query
	$sql = "SELECT * FROM
			`page`
			WHERE filename = '".mysql_escape_string($page)."'";

	// Set fetch array variable
	$row = $reg['db']->dbFetchArray($sql);

	$file = site_path.DIRSEP."processors".DIRSEP.$row['filename'].".php";

	$reg['smarty']->assign('title', $row['title']);

	$reg['smarty']->display('header.tpl');
	if(is_file($file) == true){
		include $file;
	}else{
		echo 'ERROR 404: File not found';
	}
	$reg['smarty']->display('footer.tpl');

	$reg['db']->dbclose();

}
}

?>

The page() function will look for a GET variable called page, and will query the DB for a page with the same filename. It also automatically smarty->display's the header and footer templates. If it doesn't find a file, it echoes 404 (i didn't use die becuase then it doesn't display the footer). Last night, I also setup mod_rewrite so instead of having /index.php?page=example it looks like /example.php.

 

So now the real example page would look like this:

 

<?php

$reg['smarty']->assign('examplevar', 'This is an example');
$reg['samrty']->register_function('multi', 'multi');

function multi($params){
return $params['num1'] * $params['num2'];
}

$sql = "SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE `username` = '".mysql_escape_string($_GET['username'])."'";

$row = $reg['db']->dbFetchArray($sql);

$reg['smarty']->assign('username', $row['username']);

$reg['smarty']->display('example.tpl');

?>

 

I haven't really polished yet, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

 

Cheers,

Cobby

 

EDIT: Sorry the code looks bad, it hasn't remembered the tabs? It can see them when I edit....

[samtay]

I have been looking for a tutorial like that for a while now but I been looking for a while.

 

You should try using 4 spaces instead, I think it is more acceptable to use spaces as the layout will be intact on any editor you wish to use. I could be wrong on that, can anyone confirm?

 

Cheers

Sam