Deft, a PHP micro-framework

A bare essentials micro-framework. With route, cache, event, plugin, markup, pdo management, and more.

I started building a PHP framework to use on small projects, with the intention of building Helper methods as required through development for the most common routines.

The focus has always been on speed, and the bare essentials to create and manage instances of things like database connections, documents, and caching pools, which could be easily accessed from all areas of the project, using minimal resources and time, oh, and trying to keep the code required, short… Not an easy task, but this is it so far. 🙄

require 'deft.php';
$instance =& Deft::get( 'class' );

New instances of core classes Db and Config have a default configuration which can be overridden as needed, you can create overrides using the inline method
Deft::get( 'class' [, array $args] ), or using the core configuration file (see below).

Let’s start with an example MySQL database script

The defaults for a Db class instance are driver[=mysql], hostname[=localhost], dbname[=mysql], username[=root], password, port[=3306], and table_prefix.

You can also use the main configuration file (/content/app-config.php) to customize the default database details, by adding db_ prefixed overrides. Add them manually to the config file…

'db_dbname' => 'myDatabaseName',
'db_username' => 'user',
...

Or programmatically, with the config instance shortcut Deft::config()

require 'deft.php';

$cfg =& Deft::config();

$dbname = $cfg->get( 'db_dbname' );
if( !$dbname ) {
  $cfg->set( array(
    'db_hostname' => 'example.com',
    'db_dbname' => 'myDefaultDatabase',
    'db_username' => 'user',
    'db_table_prefix' => 'deft_'
  ) );
  $cfg->save();
}

So we can keep future code light and get on with what we need to, keep it simple and easy to read. The instance handler of the Db class also has a shortcut Deft::database( [array $args] )

To give you an idea of how Deft has been put together. Here is a basic script that looks for a customer called John Smith, if not found, is created, then modified.

require 'deft.php';

$db =& Deft::database();

if( $db->isConnected() == false ) {
  echo $db->lastError()->getMessage();
} else {

  // Get some database records, conditions are auto sanitized
  $list = $db->getRows(
    'SELECT id FROM #_customers WHERE first_name = ? AND last_name = ?',
    'John',
    'Smith'
  );

  // Nobody by that name...
  if( !count( $list ) ) {

    // Create record...
    $recordId = $db->insert( '#_customers', array(
      'first_name' => 'John',
      'last_name' => 'Smith'
    ) );

    // Record was created! Lets change it...
    if( $recordId ) {

      // Update the record...
      $affectedRows = $db->update( '#_customers', array(
        'last_name' => 'Bloggs'
      ), array(
        'id' => $recordId
      ) );

      // Changes were successful!
      if( $affectedRows ) {
        echo "{$affectedRows} updated!";

        // Delete the record...
        $affectedRows = $db->delete( '#_customers', array(
          'last_name' => 'Bloggs',
          'id' => $recordId
        ) );

        // Delete was successful!
        if( $affectedRows ) {
          echo "{$affectedRows} deleted!";
        } else {
          echo "Nothing deleted!";
        }
      } else {
        echo "Nothing changed!";
      }
    }
  }
}

Adding #_ before table names on queries will be replaced with the table_prefix when the query is parsed.

Now an example controller plugin

We’re going to capture the script template.page.abc, the abc value is based on the user request through the Route rule, and build a HTML5 document to wrap around it. Here is the app…

require 'deft.php';

class Example {
  function init() {
    Route::add( '[page]', array(
      'page' => '[a-z]+',
      'foo' => 'bar'
    ) );
  }

  function initContent() {
    Deft::response()->setTitleSeparator( ' | ' );
    Deft::response()->setTitle( 'Controller example' );

    // Get requested page from route rule
    $page = Deft::request()->get( 'page' );
    if( empty( $page ) ) {
      $page = 'index';
    } elseif( $page == 'index' )
      Http::location();

    // Capture the requested page
    $content = Deft::capture( 'template.page.' . $page );
    if( is_string( $content ) )
      Deft::response()->setBody( $content );
    else
      Http::status( 404 );

    // Add some more document content
    Deft::response()->prependBody( '<header>header stuff</header>' );
    Deft::response()->appendBody( '<footer>footer stuff</footer>' );
  }
}

Deft::event()->add( 'init', array( 'Example', 'init' ) );
Deft::event()->add( 'initContent', array( 'Example', 'initContent' ) );

Then on our default page template.page.index…

<?php
Deft::response()->prependTitle( __( 'Welcome to index' ) );
Deft::response()->setDescription( __( 'Description of the index page for SEO' ) );

$form = Deft::form()( 'user_post' )->method( 'post' );
$form->add( FormField::Text, 'test' );
$form->add( FormField::InputSubmit );
?>
Welcome to the site!
<?php echo Deft::request()->post( 'test' ) ?>
<?php echo $form ?>

Phrases are wrapped in the __( '...' [, $args, ...] ) function which is influenced by the Language class, this will allow for multi-lingual web apps. The wrapper uses the PHP printf() layout.

You can use Helper methods for input handling and sanitizing against XSS Deft::request()->post( 'postFieldName' ). Be sure to produce output with UTF-8 encoding in mind (default environment) if you plan on adding user input forms. The sanitizing helper methods are designed specifically to work with this encoding, which will support all your language needs anyway.

We’ll want to customize the HTML5 document we are producing, so for the sake of an example lets use the Hook class to do that, adding styles and Viewport preferences…

function addStuff() {
  Deft::response()->setVpWidth( 0 ); // 0 = device-width
  Deft::response()->setVpInitial( 1 );
  Deft::response()->addStyle( DEFT_ASSET_URL . '/master.css' );
  Deft::response()->addStyle( DEFT_ASSET_URL . '/print.css', 'print' );
  Deft::response()->addScript( DEFT_ASSET_URL . '/master.js' );

  // 'google-helper' plugin
  if( class_exists( 'Google' ) )
    Google::addFont( 'Raleway', 400 );
}
Deft::event()->add( 'beforeDocumentGetHead', 'addStuff' );

which would all together output something like…

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta name="charset" content="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-width=1,user-scalable=yes">
  <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
  <meta name="desription" content="Description of the index page for SEO">
  <title>Welcome to index | Controller example</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" media="all" href="//localhost/content/asset/master.css">
  <link rel="stylesheet" media="all" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Raleway:400">
</head>
<body>
  Welcome to the site!
  <form id="user_post" method="post"><div><div><input name="test" type="text"></div></div><div><div><input type="submit"></div></div></form>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="//localhost/content/asset/master.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

By default, Document uses a HTML5 template called template.html5 which you
can modify, or use filters which allow you to add attributes to the head or body elements using the Filter elementHead and elementBody. The template can be completely overridden by supplying a different template you have created Deft::response()->content( 'plugin.something.different-template' ).

Plugins

See the document-optimize (combines all local asset styles, scripts and caches the rendered document output for 5 minutes), and google-helper (provides the Google class, to add Google Fonts to the document) plugins for examples.

Plugins live in the /content/plugin directory. To load plugins at Deft runtime, you will need to add the name of the plugin folder or file to the main config, under the setting name of plugins. This setting is stored as an array…

google-helper translates to /content/plugin/google-helper.php or
/content/plugin/google-helper/google-helper.php

'plugins' => array(
  'google-helper'
),
...

or programmatically..

$cfg =& Deft::config();
$cfg->set( 'plugins', array( 'google-helper' ) );
$cfg->save();

Deft