Cinch Framework

A simple, procedural, non-OOP MVC framework for PHP

Usage

Initial setup

Cinch uses a strict directory structure ensuring your project is organized properly:

\webroot
    \cinch
        Config.php
        Load.php
        Request.php
        Router.php
        Uri.php
    \controllers
    \models
    \modules
    \views
    .htaccess
    index.php

Controllers

Controllers are located in the controllers directory and follow a strict naming convention. As an example, if we were to visit the url http://example.com/blog/ then your controller would be named BlogController.php. As for the source:

<?php
/**
 * Example Controller
 */
namespace BlogController;

function index()
{
    echo 'Default action!';
}

function tags()
{
    echo 'The tags action!';
}

function tagged($tags)
{
    echo 'The tagged action with the following parameter:' . $tags;
}

The first thing you should have noticed is we declared a namespace BlogController. This namespace, which helps keep Cinch organized, must be the same name as your controller source file. Next we have declared three actions: index, tags, and tagged. Index is the default action and will only be called if no action is present in the URL. So, following the above example, if we visited http://example.com/blog/ the default action would be called. If we were to visit the url http://example.com/blog/tags/ then the tags function would be called. Finally if we want to pass in parameters to an action, such as the tag php, we simply add it to the URL: http://example.com/blog/tagged/php/.

Views

Cinch uses native PHP files for its views. Views are located in the views directory and must end with View.php. As an example, if we wanted to load the index view our view file would be named IndexView.php. To load a view simply use the Load namespace and the view function:

<?php
function index()
{
    \Load\view('index');
}

To pass data between your controller and view you can use the view functions second argument:

<?php
function index()
{
    \Load\view('index', array('message', 'Hello, world!'));
}

This data can then be accessed from your view:

<?php
echo $message;