EZ-MVC

Feedback. Fell free to create an issue or pull request on github alddesign/ez-mvc.

Table of contents

• Installation
• Basics
• Overview
• Trivia

Installation

• Requires
  • Apache2 with mod_rewrite enabled
  • PHP 7.1 or higher
  • PHP Composer
• Install via Composer:
  • Run composer create-project alddesign/ez-mvc=dev-master in the directory where you want ez-mvc to be installed. (Or download from github and extract manually).
  • Run composer update in the newly created directory.
  • This is your ez-mvc root directory from now on.
• Change RewriteBase in the .htaccess with your /path-to-ez-mvc/. This is the path to your ez-mvc root directory (relative to your webserver root directory).
• Change the EZ_BASE_URL in /config/config.php to the url that points to your ez-mvc root directory. For example: http://your-host/path-to-ez-mvc
• Open http://your-host/path-to-ez-mvc/ in your webbrowser

Now you should see the ez-mvc sample application. A little application which should demonstrate how to use ez-mvc.

PLEASE: Do not delete the sample application right away. It has plenty of documentation und examples. This document is just a guidline.

Basics

Ez-mvc is a simple PHP Model View Controller framework. It provides the absolute basic functionalities to build MVC webapps. Its much more simple than Laravel or even CodeIgniter. But if follows the same approach.

• Ez-mvc comes without any third party software, only requires composer for quick installation
• Ez-mvc has no frontend capabilities built-in (CSS/JS).
• When talking about the ez-mvc root directory: its the directory with the index.php file. All paths are realtive to it.
• Create your app (models, views, controllers, config) only in the /app folder.
• Assets like JS, CSS, images, can be placed in the /assets folder
• The only system file you need to edit is /config/config.php. This file is the base configuration for ez-mvc
• Of course you can customize or extend ez-mvc´s core if you really want to. Its located in the /system folder

Overview

Ez-mvc provides the following features:
Model

• The model handles the DB connection
• ez access to DB via PDO
• Database abstraction layer for your project
• Supports various DB types
• See: /app/models/DefaultModel.php
• Sample DB: /app/sample-database.sqlite

View

• A view displays data provided by a controller as HTML
• Supports nested views (child views). So that its ez to crate pages in a modular fashion
• Data can be passed through multiple levels of nested views, which is very powerfull and a little bit unique
• See: /app/views/*.php

Controller

• A controller fetches data from the model/config and prepares it for the views
• A controller has "actions" which provide backend functionality, display a view, or even both.
• See: /app/controllers/*.php

Config

• The App config allow you to build a solid set of settings, preferences, and so on which is accessible throughout the entire app (model, view, controller)
• See: /app/config/app.config.php

Routing

• Ez-mvc has build-in routing, and the best thing: you dont need to care about it (i know sometimes you want to, but this is ez-mvc)
• Routing happens based on the URL.
• The format is always the same: http://your-host/path-to-ez-mvc/Controller/Action/parameter1/parameter2/...
• Example: http://your-host/path-to-ez-mvc/Product/list. Controller is "Product" (/app/controllers/Product.php). Action is "list" (Method list() in /app/controllers/Product.php).

Request
The Request class offers:

• GET/POST data fetching

Helpers
The Helper class offers functionality which makes your life ez-er.

• Session handling
• Generating URLs
• Redirects
• Useful mothods for PHP programming in general. Checkout Helper::xout($someVar);
• See: Example usage in almost all files of the sample app
• See: /system/Helper.php

Trivia

• Checkout ez-mvc on Github: alddesign/ez-mvc
• Some desing patterns used in the framework are considert bad practice (The Helper class, static (abstract) classes, lazy stuff...). And yes, i dont care.