sview : tiny PHP web framework

It is inspired by a similar framework written by Arnór Heiðar Sigurðsson. In the same spirit but more advanced and more complete, see also nanoc - in Ruby.

sview is designed to organize essentially static websites. It does not offer the features you would expect from a complete MVC framework - actually, it has only the “V” part. If you want a more demanding dynamic website, consider using an appropriate tool, Symfony for example.

How to use it ?

The file sample-website.tar.xz provides a basic but full website example. Alternatively, here are some details about sview usage.

0. Installation

In the following, I assume your website is located under http[s]://domain/topic/ and is named “website” (adapt to your case). For example, in https://github.com/blog/ domain = github.com and topic = blog.

Get the source code either with git clone command or using a zip archive. Copy all folder contents in the website/ folder :

website/
  a/
  f/
  site/
.htaccess
  common.php
defaults.php
index.php
s.php</pre>

• a/ (for “assets”) is the folder for CSS files, images and javascript codes. I like to put them respectively in css/, img/ and js/ folders, but the choice is yours.
• f/ (for “files”) is the folder for any downloadable (or browsable) file you may upload.
• site/ is the main folder containing all your website pages. Three are already there :
  • 404.php : the 404 error page;
  • dl.php : a script to download binary files;
  • home.php : the specifications for the welcome page.
• .htaccess : its main job consists in routing everything that is not a resource to the index.php file.
• common.php contains shared variables and functions to be used by at least two different pages.
• defaults.php defines default variables for any web page, like the title or javascripts block.
• index.php contains your website template, which is rendered for any web page (and filled with specific values defined in pages under site/ folder; anything can be customized).
• s.php consists in the framework code, loaded at the beginning of index.php.

Now (online), in the .htaccess file, change the line RewriteBase / to RewriteBase /topic.

1. Set default contents

Edit the file defaults.php with

• A global title to your website; this title can later be mixed with a more specific page-based title, or be replaced.
• A list of references to CSS stylesheets and pre-rendering javascripts, like <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://cran.r-project.org/R.css"/>. We will see later how to refer to local stylesheets (under a/css).
• Some javascript code which will be loaded by default after every page loads (e.g. jQuery.

Each variable name is prepended with “b_” to avoid potential conflicts with your own variables.

2. Complete main pages

index.php

Complete

• The menu (at commented location)
• The banner (near the menu, if you want one)
• The footer (if you don’t want one, just drop it).

You can also change the <meta> tags if needed.

site/home.php

The welcome page. You can choose a title ($s_title) or use the default one (by not specifying anything). Stylesheets and javascripts can be customized, …etc. Any default variable can be used to define a specific variable (prepended with “s_”).

site/404.php

Customize it; it is probably viewed more often than you think ;-)

3. Write all other pages

All pages are under site/ folder, and you can nest them in any directory tree.

Hint : if you don’t want to load the main template, just end any site file with a PHP exit directive.

Now we will see how to access pages and resources (images, CSS, files, javascript).

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How to view a web page ?

The page at physical location site/some_folder/mypage.php is viewed in the web browser at the URL http[s]://domain/topic/website/some_folder/mypage (thanks to URL rewriting defined in the .htaccess file).

Any page can be linked internally using the r() PHP function (‘r’ for “resource”), like in the following : <a href="<?php echo r('some_folder/mypage'); >>. This function determines the nesting level and output the appropriate path.

How to access…

A CSS style sheet : its path is given by the following PHP function call r('a/css/name_of_the_file.css') from within any site file (assuming you place all CSS files under a/css/. They may be inside a nested folder structure).

An image : same as above, with r('a/img/name_of_the_image.xxx').

A javascript file : same as above, with r('a/js/name_of_the_file.js').

How to give a download link ?

Just use a regular link pointing to r('dl/?f=name_of_the_file.xxx'), anywhere you want.

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Usual workflow

Just add pages under site/ folder, and potential resources and files under a/ and f/. All other files will not change a lot.