Overview

Phlyty is a PHP microframework written using Zend Framework 2 components. It’s goals are:

  • Route based on HTTP method and path, but allow the full spectrum of ZF2 routes.
  • Allow any callable as a “controller”.
  • Provide basic features and helpers surrounding flash messages, URL generation, and request/response handling.
  • Provide view rendering out-of-the-box, but allow the user to plugin whatever view rendering solution they desire.

The features and API are roughly analagous to Slim Framework.

Installation

I recommend using Composer <https://getcomposer.org/>. Once you have composer, create the following composer.json file in your project:

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "composer",
            "url": "http://packages.zendframework.com/"
        }
    ],
    "minimum-stability": "dev",
    "require": {
        "phly/phlyty": "dev-master",
    }
}

Then run php composer.phar install to install the library. This will ensure you retrieve Phlyty and all its dependencies.

Basic Usage

The most basic “Hello World!” example looks something like this:

use Phlyty\App;
include 'vendor/autoload.php';

$app = new App();
$app->get('/', function ($app) {
    echo "Hello, world!";
});

$app->run();

Assuming the above is in index.php, you can fire up the PHP 5.4 development web server to test it out:

php -S 127.0.0.1:8080

If you then visit http://localhost:8080/, you’ll see your “Hello, world!” text.

Routing

The main Phlyty\App class contains methods for each of the main HTTP request methods, and these all have the same API: method($route, $controller). They include:

  • get()
  • post()
  • put()
  • delete()
  • options()
  • patch()

All of them return a Phlyty\Route object, allowing you to further manipulate the instance – for example, to name the route, indicate what additional HTTP methods to respond to, or to access the controller or the composed ZF2 route object. (You can actually instantiate a ZF2 route object and pass that instead of a string for the route, which gives you more power and flexibility!)

$app->map('/', function ($app) {
    echo "Hello, world!";
})->name('home'); // name the route

Alternately, you can use teh map() method. This simply creates the route, but does not assign it to a specific HTTP method. You would then use the via() method of the route object to assign it to one or more HTTP methods:

$app->map('/', function ($app) {
    echo "Hello, world!";
})->via('get', 'post')->name('home'); // name the route, and have it respond
                                      // to both GET and POST requests

By default, if you pass a string as the $route argument, Phlyty\App will create a ZF2 Segment route; you can read up on those in the ZF2 manual. In such routes, a string preceded by a colon will indicate a named variable to capture: /resource/:id would capture an “id” value. You can have many named segments, and even optional segments.

Controllers and Helpers

Your controllers can be any PHP callable. In the examples, I use closures, but any callable is accepted. The callable will receive exactly one argument, the Phlyty\App instance.

From the App instance, you have the following helper methods available:

  • params() returns a Zend\Mvc\Router\RouteMatch instance, from which you can then pull values. In the example in the previous paragraph, you can pull the “id” using $app->params()->getParam('id', false).
  • request() returns a Zend\Http\PhpEnvironment\Request instance. This gives you access to headers, query, post, cookie, files, env, and system parameters. In most cases, you use getType($name, $default); e.g. $app->request()->getQuery('name', 'Matthew') would retrieve the “name” query string value, using “Matthew” as the default.
  • response() returns a Zend\Http\PhpEnvironment\Response instance. This allows you to manipulate response headers, and to set the response body.
  • flash($name, $message) lets you both set and receive flash messages.
  • urlFor($route = null, array $params = [], array $options = []) allows you to generate a URI based on the routes you’ve created. If you pass no arguments, it assumes it should use the current route. Otherwise, you must pass a route name; as such, it’s good practice to name your routes. (Any $params you provide will be used to replace named segments in the route.)
  • pass() tells the application to move on to the next matching route, if any.
  • redirect($uri, $status = 302) will redirect. Hint: use urlFor() to generate the $uri value!
  • halt($status, $message = '') halts execution immediately, and sends the provided message.
  • stop() halts execution, sending the current response.
  • events() accesses the composed event manager, allowing you to register listeners and trigger events.
  • event() returns a Phlyty\AppEvent instance with the current route composed.
  • trigger triggers an event.
  • view() returns the view renderer, which should implement Phlyty\View\ViewInterface. You can call setView() to change the view implementation. Additionally, you can always instantiate and use your own view implementation.
  • viewModel() returns a ZendViewModelModelInterface` implementation; by default, it’s of type Phlyty\View\MustacheViewModel. This allows you to inject variables, set the template, etc. If you want to use an alternate view model, either directly instantiate it, or provide a prototype instance to setViewModelPrototype().
  • render($template, $viewModel = []) will render a template and/or a view model, and place the rendered content into the Response body.

Project Versions

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