PHP micro-framework

php-express is a minimal and flexible PHP web application framework that provides a robust set of features for web and mobile applications. php-express is a heavily inspired by Express.js

• Requirements
• Installation
• Configuration
• API
• Controllers
• Views
• Downloads
• License

Requirements

• PHP >= 7.1
• JSON extension

Installation

If composer is not installed on your system yet, you may go ahead and install it using this command line:

$ curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

Next, add the following require entry to the composer.json file in the root of your project.

"require" : {
    "riverside/php-express" : "*"
}

Finally, use composer to install php-express and its dependencies:

$ php composer.phar install

Configuration

Make sure that all the requests goes through a single php file.

• Apache

  <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
      RewriteEngine On  
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?_path_=$1 [QSA,L]
  </IfModule>
  

• Nginx

  location / {
      try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
  }
  

API

• Application - The $app object conventionally denotes the php-express application.

  $app = new \PhpExpress\Application();
  ...
  $app->run();
  

• Request - The $req object represents the HTTP request and has properties for the request query string, parameters, body, HTTP headers, and so on.

  $app->get('/', function ($req, $res) {
      $res->send('HTTP method is: ' . $req->method);
  });
  

• Response - The $res object represents the HTTP response that a php-express app sends when it gets an HTTP request.

  $app->get('/readme.txt', function ($req, $res) {
      $res->set('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
      $res->send('foo bar');
  });
  

• Router - A $router object is an isolated instance of middleware and routes. You can think of it as a "mini-application", capable only of performing middleware and routing functions. Every php-express application has a built-in app router.

  $router = new \PhpExpress\Router();
  
  $router->get('/', function ($req, $res) {
      $res->send('foo bar');
  });
  
  $router->run();
  

Controllers

php-express support the concepts of Controller and View from the MVC architectural pattern. To employ the Controller concept we need to:

• specify the class name and method name that will handle the request
• define the above class and method

$app->get('about.html', '\controllers\basic@about');

This is an example of class basic.

namespace controllers;

class basic {
    public function about($req, $res) {
        $res->send('foo bar');
    }
}

Views

To employ the View concept in php-express we need to:

• configure the path to templates using the set() method
• specify the name of desired template using the render() method

$app->set("views", __DIR__ . "/views");
$app->get('about.html', function ($req, $res) {
    $res->render('about');
});

Downloads

The project is hosted on GitHub.

License

php-express is licensed under the MIT license.

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