MVC

Pop PHP Framework is an MVC framework. It is assumed that you have some familiarity with the MVC design pattern. An overly simple description of it is that the “controller” (C) serves as the bridge between the “model” (M) and the “view” (V). It calls the models required to handle the business logic of the request, returning the results of what was requested back to the user in a view. The basic idea is separation of concerns in that each component of the MVC pattern is only concerned with the one area it is assigned to handle, and that there is very little, if any, cross-cutting concerns among them.

Controllers

There is a controller interface Pop\Controller\ControllerInterface and an abstract controller class Pop\Controller\AbstractController that are provided with the core components of the Pop PHP Framework. The main application object and router object are wired to interact with controller objects that extend the abstract controller class, or at least implement the controller interface. The functionality is basic, as the API manages a default action and the dispatch method:

• $controller->setDefaultAction($default)

  • The “setDefaultAction” method sets the default action to handle a request that hasn’t been assigned an action. Typically, this would be an “error” method or something along those lines. This method may not be used at all, as you can set the protected $defaultAction property within your child controller class directly.

• $controller->getDefaultAction()

  • This method retrieves the name of the current default action.

• $controller->dispatch($action = null, $params = null)

  • This is the main dispatch method, which will look for the “$action” method within the controller class and attempt to execute it, passing the “$params” into it if they are present. If the “$action” method is not found, the controller will fall back on the defined default action.

Views

The popphp/pop-view component provides the functionality for creating and rendering views. The topic of views will be covered more in-depth in the next section of the user guide, Views. But for now, know that the view component supports both file-based templates and string or stream-based templates. Data can be pushed into and retrieved from a view object and a template can be set in which the data will be rendered. A basic example would be:

$data = [
    'title'   => 'Home Page',
    'content' => '<p>Some page content.</p>'
];

$view = new Pop\View\View('index.phtml', $data);

echo $view;

Assuming the index.phtml template file is written containing the variables $title and $content, that data will be parsed and displayed within that template.

Again, the main ideas and concepts of the view component will be explored more the Views section of the user guide.

Models

There is a base abstract model class provided that can be extended to create the model classes needed for your application. The abstract model class is a simple and bare-bones data object that can be extended with whatever methods or properties you need to work with your model. Data from the abstract model object is accessible via array access and magic methods, and the model object is countable and iterable. You can reference the Models section in Getting Started to see a simple example.

More in-depth examples connecting all of these concepts will be covered later in the user guide.