Cradle is a PHP MVC microframework built on top of the Slim microframework.
Cradle features a well structured directory and uses composer for dependency management. It requires at least PHP 7.2 to work properly. It follows an MVC architecture.
You should get familiar with the Slim microframework first before trying out cradle as most Cradle components are built on it's components.
Cradle can be used as a framework for regular web apps, APIs and more. It is component agnostic and only defines a router and application structure. The rest is left to you to figure out.
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Developed and maintained by Mohammed I. Adekunle.
- PHP 7.2+
- Apache's mod_rewrite module or similar.
- Composer.
- Download (or clone the repository RECOMMENDED) and place the files in your web server's root directory.
- Configure your web server to direct requests to the public folder if the applicable asset file or directory being requested exists in the folder, else, redirect all other requests to the public/index.php file (A sample configuration for apache server has already been provided by default).
- Run
composer install. - Copy the .env.example file to .env and configure your app's environment settings.
- Build something awesome.
Cradle features a simple directory structure;
- app: This is where an app's controllers, models, and middleware files are stored.
- framework: This directory contains custom app components that are specific to the app but aren't third-party dependencies, e.g. extensions of default cradle components.
- public: This is where all publicly available files are stored, the favicon.ico, robots.txt, javascript files and so on are located here.
- resources: This is where you app's resources (view files, routes e.t.c) are stored. The files in this directory typical don't change throughout the lifetime of your app.
- storage: This directory contains all the files that are not meant to be accessible to the public by default e.g uploads. For Twelve factor apps, you should consider using an external storage service for storing your files.
- vendor: This directory contains the project's third-party dependencies. It is automatically generated by composer.
Cradle uses environmental variables to store configuration files, by default a .env.example file is present in the root directory, you need to copy and rename this to .env, then fill in the necessary details. These variables will be loaded into the app at bootstrap time and can be used any where in your code by calling the getenv() function or as a key in the global $_ENV variable.
Cradle follows the MVC software architecture, it uses controllers for handling requests, models for interacting with the database and views for displaying the result of a controller operation to the client. Base Views and Controllers have been perbuilt in cradle, the model implementaion is up to you, fancy an ORM? Query builder? Simple PDO? Or something else? The choice of implementation is up to you.
Controllers are classes that respond to user requests i.e user requests a web page, submits a form e.t.c. Controllers extend the Cradle\Controller class or one of it's subclasses.
Controllers are stored in the app/Controllers directory. You may use subdirectories to organize your controllers, but you will need to specify their namespace when routing.
The choice of implementation is up to you, but your model files are expected to be located in the app\Models directory.
Views are used to display information. The information is usually supplied by a controller after it has processed a request. Ideally, views should only render information and shouldn't do any interactions with the database. You return views to be rendered from a cradle controller. Twig is the default templating engine used by cradle.
Views files are stored in the resources/views directory. You may extend the default View Compiler instance in order to use a templating engine apart from twig, but you will also need to extend the default View Compiler class to implemention this.
Cradle being built on the Slim microframework also supports middlewares, middlewares are located in app/Middleware directory. A sample before middleware has been provided in the code. A CORS middleware also comes with cradle for the API.
Cradle uses the default router used in the Slim microframework. The route are defined in the resources/routes directory. You can use one or more route files to specify your routes but you must include the files in the HTTPKernel class for them to be acknowledged while routing.
Cradle is licensed under the MIT license.