Modular application

This section explains how a modular application works.

With Piko, it’s possible to organize your code following the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern and the MVC logic is packaged into modules that compose the application.

This design encourages code re-usability and modularity.

Example of application structure :

modules
  - moduleA
    - controllers
    - models
    - views
  - moduleB
    - controllers
    - models
    - views
public
  - css
  - js
  index.php
config.php

Piko uses PSR-4 autoloading.

Workflow overview

1 - Routing request

When a modular Piko application start, the first step is to translate the request uri into internal route, which is explained in the routing section of this guide.

2 - Dispatching request

The next step is to dispatch the route to the appropriate controller action. An action is a method in a controller suffixed with Action. For the action id hello, the controller method should be named helloAction. See Controllers.

3 - Sending responce

Finally, the controller action returns to the application the response to display.

Entry script

Entry script is the first step to bootstrap application. It generally named index.php and stored in the web public directory.

This is an example of basic bootstrapping :

use Piko\ModularApplication;
require '../vendor/autoload.php';

$config = require '../config.php';
(new ModularApplication($config))->run();

Configuration

In the step above, we load a configuration array from a file and apply it to the application. Here is the description of the parameters used:

// config.php
return [
    'basePath' => __DIR__,
    'defaultLayoutPath' => '@app/layouts',
    'defaultLayout' => 'main',
    'errorRoute' => 'site/default/error',
    'language' => 'fr',
    'components' => [
      //...
    ],
    'modules' => [
      //...
    ],
    'bootstrap' => [
      //...
    ]
]

basePath : Base path of the application. It corresponds to the @app alias generated during the application instanciation. Default value: '' (The entry script’s directory).

defaultLayoutPath : Absolute path where view layouts are stored. An alias can be used. Default value: @app/layouts.

defaultLayout : The default layout name without file extension php. Default value: main.

errorRoute : The Error route to display exceptions in a friendly way. If empty, Exceptions catched will be thrown and stop the script execution. Default value: ''.

language : The language used in the application. Default value: 'en'.

components: Array of components used in the application. (see Component)

modules: Array of modules used in the application. (see Modules)

bootstrap: Array of modules ids which participate to the application bootstrap process. (see Modules)