jamesatracy / backbone.php

Backbone.php is a lightweight collection of scripts that provide structure or scaffolding for a php application or php powered website.

Backbone.php

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Backbone.php, much like its javascript namesake, is a small collection of PHP classes that provide structure or scaffolding for a PHP application or PHP powered website. It follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) convention and includes classes for handling routes, database backed models, and HTML views. Applications or websites built using Backbone.php can be up and running very quickly because it removes the necessity of writing much boilerplate code.

NOTE: This project is pre-1.0 and the code may change in significant and backward incompatible ways between releases.

The framework is built with the following goals in mind:

• Lightweight: The core of Backbone.php provides just the right amount of structure and flexibility without being overly complicated.

• Modular: Backbone.php is highly modular and provides a simple mechanism for including other framework and application specific modules.

• Best Practices: Backbone.php is designed with software engineering best practices in mind, including MVC, Object-Oriented programming, and unit testing.

At its most simplest form, a Backbone.php application is nothing more than a series of url routes (such as "/about/") that are mapped to either views ("views/about-page.php") or callback methods ("public function about($request)") or combinations of both.

You can define routes for any HTTP method:

// index is a global function
Router::get("/", "index");
Router::post("/", "index");
Router::put("/", "index");
Router::delete("/", "index");
Router::method("CUSTOM", "/", "index");

You can route requests directly to view files:

// routes to view file located at /views/about.php
Router::get("/about", "View@about");
// routes to view file located at /views/about/jobs.php
Router::get("/about/jobs/", "View@about/jobs");

You can route requests to controller methods:

// routes to AppController->index() located at /controllers/AppController.class.php
Router::get("/", "/controllers/AppController@index");

public function index($request)
{
	...
}

You can create routes with url arguments:

Router::get("/path/:name/:id/", "/controllers/AppController@doSomething");

public function doSomething($request, $name, $id)
{
	...
}

You can also define route aliases so that you can generate links with correct paths:

Router::get("/", "/controllers/MyController@index")->alias("home");
Router::getRouteFromAlias("home");
// returns "/"

You can even use getRouteFromAlias to generate paths with url arguments filled in:

Router::get("/jobs/:department/:id/", "/controllers/MyController@jobDesc")->alias("job-description");
Router::getRouteFromAlias("job-description", array("engineering", 24));
// returns "/jobs/engineering/24/"

That is essentially all that you need to get a Backbone.php application up and running. However, the framework also provides a number of classes for working specifically with data backed by a SQL database in the form of Models and Collections.

$dog = Dog::create({
	"name" => "Spot",
	"breed" => "Collie"
});
$id = $dog->id;

$dog = Dog::fetch(1); // with id = 1
$dog->name = "Spot";
$dog->save();

$dogs = Dog::fetch()->where("breed", "Collie")->limit(10)->exec();
while($dog->valid()) {
	$dog = $dog->next();
	...
}

Classes

The Backbone.php framework consists of the following 14 modules:

Backbone, Collection, DB, Events, Html, Model, Query, Response, Request, Router, Sanitize, Schema, Validate, and View

Dependencies

Requires PHP version 5.3+.

Documentation

For all of the documentation, please go to the documentation table of contents

See api documentation in /docs/api/index.html

Version History

Please see version history.

backbone.php's Issues

Unit tests for View

Write unit tests for View module.

Unit tests for Backbone.class

Write unit tests for Backbone.class.php

Router: Support HTTP Methods

Add support for specifying HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.) as part of a route. For some backwards compat. by default routes will support all methods.

"/path/to/animal/:number/" => array(
"GET" => "getAnimal",
"UPDATE" => "updateAnimal"
);

Alternative syntax:

$this->get("/path/to/animal/:number/", "getAnimal");
$this->update("/path/to/animal/:number/", "updateAnimal");

$this->any("/path/to/whatever/", "doWhatever");

Finish MySQL unit tests.

The unit tests for MySQL currently only cover generating SELECT statements. Tests need to be written for generating INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and DESCRIBE statements.

Unit tests for Sanitize

Write unit tests for Sanitize module.

View: Support caching of views

I would like to support the caching of fully rendered views on the disk. This would be off by default and require some configurations, like cache time.

It would also need to be able to intelligently update the cache when the view's code file changes. This may actually be difficult since views can extend others and call view fragments.

Unit tests for Schema

Write unit tests for Schema module.

Unit tests for Connections

Write unit tests for Connections module.

Schema cache

Schema doesn't properly save the field definitions when loading from its static internal cache.

Unit tests for Collection

Write unit tests for Collection.

Collection iterator

The Collection iterator's current() method assumes a relative path of "/models/" when loading a Model class before creating an instance. It should not assume any path, since there is no MODELPATH global constant. Instead, the user should provide the full relative path to the Model.

Collection get method failing unit test

The get() method of Collection currently fails its unit test.

Unit tests for HTML

Write unit tests for HTML module.