Ardi - a PHP framework for web designers
The following sections try to provide high-level information on how to use the framework. A skeleton project will be created in a separate repository to make it easier to get started.
Inside the config folder the following files can be found:
- app.ini for general configuration: supported and default language
- routes.ini for the mapping of routes (in different languages) to views
You may place more configuration files in this folder and use ConfigReader to access their properties. The default
reader is for app.ini, if you want a reader for my-config.ini then do:
$reader = ConfigReader::getReader('my-config');
Readers are cached and reused for greater performance.
Inside the lang folder you must create an ini file per supported language, with the locale as filename (e.g. en.ini, es.ini, fr.ini, de.ini).
A translation file must contain a section per view and a common section, with values any view may access. Example:
[common]
site_name = Ardi-powered website!
[home]
meta_description = Welcome to this awesome website
meta_keywords = ardi, php, framework
[contact]
meta_description = Get in touch with us
meta_keywords = contact, form, email, phone, fax
In the example, the value for meta_description changes from one view to another, while the site_name is the same. Any view could provide a different value for site_name, hence overriding it.
A web page is the sum of a view and a layout. The view is exclusive to that web page, and is embedded inside a layout.
Layouts define the global skeleton of the web page, with elements such as <html> and <head> and even parts of the
<body>. The view goes inside the body tag, but can be only a part of it. A use case is having the layout include a
header or footer and the view only what the actual (distinct) contents of that particular page are.
Layouts are contained in the layouts folder, whereas views reside inside the views folder. View files are named
after the view name, which is specified in config/routes.ini. The layout used by a particular view can be decided
when this is instantiated but at the moment only default.phtml can be used. This will be improved in future releases.
Let's take the example of a contact page. The path will be /en/contact for English, /es/contacto for Spanish.
In routes.ini these two paths are added, pointing to the same view, contactform:
[en]
contact = contactform
[es]
contacto = contactform
Now, create views/contactform.phtml with the contents of the page (e.g. the contact form).
What about the root of the website, the entry point?
You can give the view for the root whatever name you like, and then define it in routes.ini the same way for all
languages, since it doesn't have a path that needs to be translated. Following the previous example, if you wish to
name it home, the routes would look like this:
[en]
root = home
contact = contactform
[es]
root = home
contacto = contactform
Now create views/home.phtml and it will be used for both /en and /es, the root paths for the site in each
language. You may, of course, choose to have a different view for a specific language.
First of all, thank you for considering to contribute to this project. Here are a few hints that will help you get started.
We use Composer to manage dependencies.
Follow the installation instructions to perform a local or global install.
Once Composer is ready run php composer.phar install and all dependencies will be downloaded. You are good to go!
Please make sure your code is covered by unit tests. A configuration file is provided to help you generate code coverage of the right sources only. Remember that you need Xdebug installed.
Using the PHPunit installation downloaded with Composer and your default PHP interpreter:
vendor/phpunit/phpunit/phpunit --coverage-html tmp/test-report --configuration phpunit.xml tests/
The oldest supported PHP version is 5.3.2, but to run absolutely all unit tests PHP 5.4 and Xdebug are required. If you do not have either of them some tests will be skipped.