Elemental is a PHP micro framework. It is an experimental, minimalistic and lightweight MVC-based application framework suitable for creating simple web applications. Elemental should appeal to those who seek a bare-bones framework, prefering to apply complexity on their own terms. Elemental provides no database abstraction layer, no validation or session handling, and no view templating system (other than PHP itself). Elemental is a good way to learn how MVC works at its most Elemental level.
Zed Robinson [email protected]. Zed developed this framework for fun.
For a quick setup, follow the instructions in "/Elemental/sample/INSTALL.txt". The instructions there provide guidance on how to setup the sample application.
To install Elemental, copy the directory containing the framework source code to your web server so that it can be referenced from your scripts. Ensure that permissions are correctly setup as any other web script. Also, ensure that the Elemental framework source code is not accessable from the public web root. Elemental can be bootstrapped from any php file found in the public web host document root.
As Elemental is a PHP 5 based application framework, it requires PHP 5 to be installed on the host environment.
To use Elemental, you must create new classes that inherit from the base framework classes. The sample application found in the "sample" directory provides an example of how this may be done. However, this is meant as an easy starting point. There is no right way to use Elemental. It is designed so that you may easily tweak it to your liking.
Generally, you will want to create a bootstrap file which will instantiate a bootstrap class and load any configuration options (e.g. to setup global variable and database settings).
A typical setup will look like the following in your file system:
Elemental/
bootstrap.php
controller.php
model.php
view.php
MyApp/
controllers/
myapp_controller_a.php [extends Elemental/controller.php]
myapp_controller_b.php
...
models/
myapp_model_a.php [extends Elemental/model.php]
myapp_model_b.php
...
views/
operation_a.php [extends Elemental/view.php]
operation_b.php
...
bootstrap.php [extends Elemental/bootstrap.php]
config.php
public_html/
index.php [loads bootstrap and config]
Elemental is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Elemental is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Elemental. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.