PHP CMS Framework

I am working on creating a PHP CMS framework for myself and others. I know that there are many CMS frameworks already, but the ones I found are very complex and/or difficult to use. In addition, I am a fan of very clean code, that’s why I like to give it a try myself.

The goal is to create something that is extremely easy to use from a programmer, designer, system administrator or end-user perspective.
It should also be as flexbile as possible and synchronize easily with other frameworks.

What I have so far is an idea about the general structure of the project. Feel free to comment criticism.

• application
• kernel
  • App.php
  • Module.php
  • Router.php
  • __autoload.php
  • functions.php
• modules
  • start.php
• install
  • start.php
• boot
  • start.php
• www
• config.php
• start.php
• public_html
  • .htaccess
  • start.php

The ‘application’ folder is where the php application is located.

The ‘public_html’ folder is where the documentroot is pointing to.

The .htaccess file rewrites every non-existent call to the ‘public_html/start.php’.

The ‘public_html/start.php’ then calls the ‘application/start.php’.

This mechanism makes sure that you can keep any other frameworks in place, while you can have the application folder wherever you want, using relative paths.

The file ‘application/start.php’ loads the php files in ‘kernel’.

An instance of the App class can now be instantiated:

$app = new App(‘path/to/application’);

The app can now be started with the following command:

App->Start();

The file ‘modules/start.php’ will be loaded to load the modules.

Each module contains a script that will add the classnames and filenames to the App classes for autoloading.

If the file ‘config.php’ does not exist, the file ‘install/start.php’ will be loaded to start an installation script.

The file ‘boot/start.php’ will be loaded to start custom functions (session, authentication, language).

The class Router will be used to forward execution to a file in the www folder.

So now the user can copy modules to the modules folder and add them to the ‘modules/start.php’.

Installation can be customized by changing the ‘install/start.php’.

Boot proces can be customized by changing the ‘boot/start.php’.

From the www folder php an html can be executed in a regular fashion, but with the framework in place.

Array to object conversion in PHP

I just wrote this simple function to convert arrays to objects in PHP.
For me it is convenient to have such a function at hand for quickly generating objects.


/*
* @param $class the name of the class that should be instantiated
* @param $array the array with key=>value combinations that is used to create the object
* @return an object of type $class with the values from $array
*/
function a2o( $class, $array ) { return array2object( $class, $array ); }
function array2object( $class, $array )
{
$obj = new $class( );
foreach($array as $key => $value)
$obj->$key = $value;
return $obj;
}


The question mark in URLs

When constructing an url via a plugin, you cannot always know at which position the ? will come.
A simple htaccess rule can be used to strip off the first ?:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule (.*)&(.*) $1?stripquestionmark=true&($2) [L,NS] [L]