Usage of BasicMVC and Slim Framework

BasicMVC is a library to create MVC structure with Slim Framework. It uses Slim framework router to reach the controllers.

In this text, I will try to help bootstraping a project with BasicMVC and Slim Framework. First, let’s talk about the file structure. You can use what you want in your structure. Because, in the BasicMCV, all the directories configurable. For example,

app/
    public/
        controllers/
            ...
        models/
            ...
        views/
            ...
.htaccess
index.php

In this structure, application directory will be app/ directory and represented as APP_DIR. Your controllers will be at app/public/controllers/ and your models will be at app/public/models/ etc. When you create your BasicMVC object with index.php, you can set them like:

$basicmvc = new BasicMVC($app, array(
    "controllers_path"   => APP_DIR . "public/controllers/",
    "models_path"        => APP_DIR . "public/models/",
    "library_path"       => APP_DIR . "public/system/library/",
    "template_constants" => array()
));

You must set your path of controllers, models and views.

template_constants is a variable to send data directly to view. I will use it to send some constant of my project. For example, I define a BASE_URL which is base url of my project. I will send it to view and use it there.

I will use Twig Template Engine to render views. View files are at app/public/views/ folder. First, I will create twig object. See example below.

$twigView = new \Slim\Views\Twig();

$app = new \Slim\Slim(
    array(
        'mode'              => 'development', // development, test, and production
        'debug'             => true,
        'view'              => $twigView,
        'templates.path'    => APP_DIR . "public/views/"
        )
    );

You can also use Smarty Template Engine as template engine. See example below.

$view = new \Slim\Views\Smarty();
$view->parserDirectory = APP_DIR . "public/views/";
$view->parserCompileDirectory = APP_DIR . 'public/cache/';
$view->parserCacheDirectory = APP_DIR . 'public/cache/';

That’s all. You can ready to run your project. One more thing, I will explain your controller, model and view file contents following days.