Embracing PHP 5.3 MVC with MiMViC

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Embracing PHP 5.3 MVC with MiMViC

Mar 17, 2010 MaXPert 20 Comments

What is MiMViC?

MiMViC is a modular and lightweight PHP 5.3+ Web application framework designed to help build dynamic and robust Web sites. It’s theory is based on minimal and framework emphasizes on only core glue for your complex PHP web sites.

Today I will show you how to create a shout-box using the MiMViC framework. It won’t take you more than 15 mins to get the job done and have friendly URLs as well.

Requirements

So here are couple of things that we need to get started:

You are required to have PHP 5.3 for the framework to work. (Windows users can get a pre-configured package from here)
A Copy of the MiMViC Framewok. (Download)
A PHP language and mySQL knowledge

Now Let’s Build our Shoutbox!

In the root directory of your host create directory named shoutbox. Download and extract the uvic.php in the shoutbox directory. Now your shoutbox directory contains uvic.php file only. Next create a file named it index.php in the shoutbox directory, this file will initialize and include core components of mimvic. Paste the following code in the file:

<?php
error_reporting(E_STRICT);
require_once 'uvic.php';

use MiMViC as mvc;
define('BASE_URL', '/shoutbox');

mvc\start();
?>

<?php

error_reporting(E_STRICT);

require_once 'uvic.php';

use MiMViC as mvc;

define('BASE_URL', '/shoutbox');

mvc\start();

First line enables strict error reporting for php, next we include the uvic.php and after that in next line we import the mimvic namespace as mvc alias (just for making our code short and quick). Finally we define the BASE_URL constant so that we can later on use it to generate our URLs.

I will be using .htaccess file with mod_rewrite to have more sexy URLs so let’s create that as well in the shoutbox directory. Here are the contents of .htaccess, just copy paste them:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php)
RewriteRule^(.*)$ ./index.php/$1 [L]

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php)

RewriteRule^(.*)$ ./index.php/$1 [L]

This will help me make my urls look like http://localhost/shoutbox/view/from/2/upto/100 making them look cleaner and still re-directs my actions to index.php. So the BASE_URL contains the /shoutbox part of URI in case when I am not using mod_rewrite it will be /shoutbox/index.php (and http://localhost/shoutbox/view/from/2/upto/100 will become http://localhost/shoutbox/index.php/view/from/2/upto/100 ).

So let us install a hello world action and see if that works:

Add following lines of code before the mvc\start() call in index.php.

mvc\post('/add',
	function ($params){
		echo ‘you called add’;
	}
);

mvc\get('/', 
	function (){
		echo ‘Yay its on fire!’;
	}
);

mvc\post('/add',

function ($params){

echo ‘you called add’;

}

);

mvc\get('/',

function (){

echo ‘Yay its on fire!’;

}

);

We are utilizing the full potential of PHP 5.3 here and registering two callback functions on these relative URIs (relative to http://localhost/shoutbox since our source lies there). Now hit the http://localhost/shoutbox/ and http://localhost/shoutbox/add to see the resulting echo from the registered functions.

Pretty simple and minimal, right? Now let’s connect to DB and get down some serious business. Lets remove the above two callback actions and make sure our index file has only these contents:

<?php
error_reporting(E_STRICT);
require_once 'uvic.php';

use MiMViC as mvc;
define('BASE_URL', '/shoutbox');

mvc\start();
?>

<?php

error_reporting(E_STRICT);

require_once 'uvic.php';

use MiMViC as mvc;

define('BASE_URL', '/shoutbox');

mvc\start();

For shout box create a database named shoutbox you can use following SQL to create the table:

CREATE TABLE "shouts" (
  "id" int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  "name" varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  "shout" varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY ("id")
);

CREATE TABLE "shouts" (

"id" int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,

"name" varchar(100) NOT NULL,

"shout" varchar(255) NOT NULL,

PRIMARY KEY ("id")

);

Once we have created table, we can come back to shoutbox folder and create a conf.php containing following code:

<?php
require_once 'uvic.php';
use MiMViC as mvc;

$dbh = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=shoutbox","[username]","[password]");
mvc\store('db', $dbh);
?>

<?php

require_once 'uvic.php';

use MiMViC as mvc;

$dbh = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=shoutbox","[username]","[password]");

mvc\store('db', $dbh);

Again we just import the uvic.php and rename the namespace as done before. Next we create a PDO connection to database using the [username] and [password] credentials. The interesting part is we store this connection in mimvic storage facility so that later we can retrieve its value by mvc\retrieve(‘db’) anywhere globally in code, so rather than using global variable we will be asking MiMViC to store and retrieve values.

Now let’s create another file shout_actions that contains all the shout actions. Here lets register an action handler to view first 10 shouts, so paste following code in shouts_action.php:

<?php
namespace ShoutActions;

require_once 'uvic.php';
use MiMViC as mvc;

mvc\get('/',
	function (){
		$query = 'select * from shouts order by id desc limit 0,10’;
		$stmt = mvc\retrieve('db')->prepare($query);
		$data = array();
		
		if(!$stmt->execute())
			$data['error'] = true;
		else
			$data['shouts'] = $stmt->fetchAll();
mvc\render('views/view-shouts.php', $data);
	}
);
?>

<?php

namespace ShoutActions;

require_once 'uvic.php';

use MiMViC as mvc;

mvc\get('/',

function (){

$query = 'select * from shouts order by id desc limit 0,10’;

$stmt = mvc\retrieve('db')->prepare($query);

$data = array();

if(!$stmt->execute())

$data['error'] = true;

else

$data['shouts'] = $stmt->fetchAll();

mvc\render('views/view-shouts.php', $data);

}

);

In viewShouts function I have retrieved the latest 10 shouts, And made an array $data that will be passed to our view as data. So the view file must lie in views directory named view-shouts.php as passed to render function, here are the contents of view-shouts.php:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
  <title>Untitled Document</title>
  </head>
<body>
  <div id="shouts">
  <?php if( !isset($error) ): ?>
  <?php foreach($shouts as $shout): ?>
  <div class="shout">
  <b><?php echo $shout['name'] ?></b>
  <p>
  <?php echo $shout['shout'] ?>
  </p>
  </div>
  <?php endforeach ?>
  <?php else: ?>
  <div class="error">
  An Error occured try refreshing
  </div>
  <?php endif ?>
  </div>
</body>
  </html>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<head>

<title>Untitled Document</title>

</head>

<body>

<?php if( !isset($error) ): ?>

<?php foreach($shouts as $shout): ?>

<p>

<?php echo $shout['shout'] ?>

</p>

</div>

<?php endforeach ?>

<?php else: ?>

An Error occured try refreshing

</div>

<?php endif ?>

</div>

</body>

</html>

As you can see the variable stored at the ‘shouts’ index is available as variable here and similar is the matter with ‘error’; I have used the values inside them, iterated over them and displayed the entries. Let’s add the delete and add shout functionality for this I am going to add following piece of code to my shout_actions.php.

mvc\post('/save',
	function (){
		$stmt = mvc\retrieve('db')->prepare("insert into shouts(name, shout) values (:name, :shout)");
		$status = $stmt->execute( array('name' => $_POST['name'], 'shout' => $_POST['shout']) );
		if(!$status)
			die("System die : (");
		header("Location: ".BASE_URL.'/');
	}
);

mvc\post('/save',

function (){

$stmt = mvc\retrieve('db')->prepare("insert into shouts(name, shout) values (:name, :shout)");

$status = $stmt->execute( array('name' => $_POST['name'], 'shout' => $_POST['shout']) );

if(!$status)

die("System die : (");

header("Location: ".BASE_URL.'/');

}

);

The above action will save the shout posted via POST method, so code is pretty self-explanatory, now let’s add the delete functionality and this time we are going to use URL parameters to pass parameters to it, and since we will invoke it URL in browser I will register it with get method, Here is the code:

mvc\get('/delete/:id',
	function ($params){
		$stmt = mvc\retrieve('db')->prepare("delete from shouts where id = :id");
		$status = $stmt->execute( array('id' => $params['id']) );
		if(!$stmt->execute())
			die("false");
		
		header("Location: ".BASE_URL.'/');
	}
);

mvc\get('/delete/:id',

function ($params){

$stmt = mvc\retrieve('db')->prepare("delete from shouts where id = :id");

$status = $stmt->execute( array('id' => $params['id']) );

if(!$stmt->execute())

die("false");

header("Location: ".BASE_URL.'/');

}

);

The :id in URI tells mimvic to parse out the parameter passed in this segment of URI, and passes it at ‘id’ index of the associative array being passed to the callback function as parameter. Once I receive that parameter I plugged it into the SQL statement and executed it; once executed successfully I redirect back to root page. Now, we can add the following code for showing shout add form in view-shouts.php.

<form id="formArea" action="<?php echo BASE_URL?>/save" method="post">
Name: <input id="name" name="name" type="text" value="" /><input type="submit" value="Shout" /><br/>
Shout: <input id="shout" name="shout" type="text" value="" style="width: 300px;" />
</form>
<hr />

<form id="formArea" action="<?php echo BASE_URL?>/save" method="post">

Name: <input id="name" name="name" type="text" value="" /><input type="submit" value="Shout" /><br/>

Shout: <input id="shout" name="shout" type="text" value="" style="width: 300px;" />

</form>

<hr />

Similarly we can add the delete shout URL to the loop on $shouts so the block will look like:

<?php foreach($shouts as $shout): ?>
<div class="shout">
<b><?php echo $shout['name'] ?></b>
<p>
<?php echo $shout['shout'] ?>
</p>
<a href="<?php echo BASE_URL?>/delete/<?php echo $shout['id']?>">Delete</a>
</div>
<?php endforeach ?>

<?php foreach($shouts as $shout): ?>

<p>

<?php echo $shout['shout'] ?>

</p>

<a href="<?php echo BASE_URL?>/delete/<?php echo $shout['id']?>">Delete</a>

</div>

<?php endforeach ?>

Now, our basic shoutbox application is now ready. However a demo is not possible in this host because I am running a PHP version lower that 5.3.x. Download the framework and more examples here

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About the author: MaXPert

Expert & Freelancer in PHP, MYSQL, Javascript, including many frameworks like codeigniter, cakephp, mootools, jquery, prototype js and a long list.

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Chris

Well I have to say, this is simply powerful. I will definitely give it a try.
Daniel

another syntax to learn?
http://eisbahn-stellingen.de/ Alex

There is no space between “<?php" and "endforeach", "endif" and so on in view-shouts.php
- http://maxpert.net.tc MaXPert
  
  Oppsss… fixed that
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http://jordanryanmoore.com/ Jordan Ryan Moore

error_reporting(E_STRICT) will enable E_STRICT errors, but it disables reporting every other type of error (E_NOTICE, E_WARNING). I’m guess what you really want is error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT).
http://www.freelancephp.net Victor Villaverde Laan

Looks very good! (still have to test it though)

I also strive for minimalism. I like the idea of a very basic core which is easily extendable. Made a basic MVC myself (not ready for the public yet). And working now on a very basic JavaScript framework, which will be published soon.

MaXPert, keep up the good work!
http://www.alfystudio.it alfy

the server always returns the same error

“Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING or ‘(‘ in C:\Programmi\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs\mimvic\trunk\example\index.php on line 4″
- http://maxpert.net.tc/ MaXPert
  
  You are using older version of PHP; please read the requirements carefully.
Bishop

There is a missing space after RwriteRule, leading to an internal server error.
RewriteRule^(.*)$ ./index.php/$1 [L]

Thanks for that nice tutorial.
mike

Dear MaXPert,

Thanks for your marvelous MiMViC,I test the shoutbox today ,all’s ok.

Best regards,
Yours Mike,
mike

I add this code:

mvc\get(‘/view/:id’,

function ($params){
$stmt = mvc\retrieve(‘db’)->prepare(“select * from shouts where id = :id”);
$stmt->execute( array(‘id’ => $params['id']) );
$rs = $stmt->fetchAll();

foreach($rs as $rss)
{

}
$data = array(
‘a’ => $rss['name'],
‘b’ => $rss['shout']
);

mvc\render(‘view.php’, $data);
}
);

this code works,I’m a beginner, could you show me the better one of this code
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http://webmil.com.ua Vitaly

You should try FatFree framework: http://fatfree.sourceforge.net/
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http://www.ipter.com Leeann Merriam

Hey! I’m at work browsing your blog from my new iphone 4! Just wanted to say I love reading through your blog and look forward to all your posts! Keep up the fantastic work!
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EllisGL

How did anyone that commented get the above to work? It’s kind of hard to run with the 1.0 code when it can’t magically pull in files.

index.php needs to have this added right before the “mvc\start();”:

require_once ‘conf.php’;
require_once ‘shouts_actions.php’;