Swiftlet is quite possibly the smallest MVC framework you'll ever use. And it's swift.

Licensed under the MIT license.

✔ Micro-Framework
✔ Namespaced
✔ Unit tested
✔ Pluggable
✔ PSR-0
✔ PHP5
✔ MVC
✔ OOP

✘ ORM

• Step 1: Clone (or download and extract) Swiftlet into a directory on your PHP supported web server.
• Step 2: Congratulations, Swiftlet is now up and running.
• Step 3: There is no step 3.

Let's create a page. Each page consists of a controller and at least one view.

Controllers house the business logic of the page while views should be limited to simple UI logic (loops and switches).

Controller lib/Swiftlet/Controllers/Foo.php

<?php
namespace Swiftlet\Controllers;

use 
	Swiftlet\App,
	Swiftlet\View
	;

class Foo extends \Swiftlet\Controller
{
	protected $title = 'Foo'; // Optional but usually desired 

	public function index()
	{
		// Pass a variable to the view
		View::set('hello world', 'Hello world!');
	}
}

Important: class names are written in CamelCase and match their filename.

View views/foo.html.php

<?php namespace Swiftlet ?>

<h1><?php echo View::getTitle() ?></h1>

<p>
	<?php echo View::get('hello world') ?>
</p>

Variables can be passed from controller to view using View::set() and View::get(). Values are automatically made safe for use in HTML, use View::htmlDecode() on values that should be treated as code.

You can now view the page by navigating to http:https://<swiftlet>/foo in your web browser!

Notice how we can access the page at /foo by simply creating a controller named Foo. The application (Swiftlet) maps URLs to controllers, actions and arguments.

Consider this URL: /foo/bar/baz/qux

In this case foo is the name of the controller and view, bar the name of the action and baz and qux are arguments. If the controller or action is missing from the URL they will default to index (/ will call index() on Swiftlet\Controller\Index).

Underscores in the controller name are translated to directory separators, so /foo_bar will point to lib/Swiftlet/Controllers/Foo/Bar.php.

Actions are methods of the controller. A common example might be edit or delete:

/blog/edit/1

This will call the function edit() on Blog with 1 as the argument (the id of the blog post to edit).

If the action doesn't exist notImplemented() will be called instead. This will throw an exception by default but can be overridden.

The action name and arguments can be accessed through App::getAction() and App::getArgs() respectively.

Note: if you want to use different HTML files for each action you can change the view with App::setView($viewName).

Let's throw a model into the mix and update the controller.

Model lib/Swiftlet/Models/Foo.php

<?php
namespace Swiftlet\Models;

class Foo extends \Swiftlet\Model
{
	public function getHelloWorld()
	{
		return 'Hello world!';
	}
}

Controller lib/Swiftlet/Controllers/Foo.php

<?php
namespace Swiftlet\Controllers;

use 
	Swiftlet\App, 
	Swiftlet\View
	;

class Foo extends \Swiftlet\Controller
{
	protected $_title = 'Foo';

	public function index()
	{
		// Get an instance of the Example class (lib/Swiftlet/Models/Example.php)
		$exampleModel = App::getModel('example');

		$helloWorld = $exampleModel->getHelloWorld();

		View::set('hello world', $helloWorld);
	}
}

Controllers get their data from models. Code for querying a database, reading/writing files and parsing data all belongs in a model. You can create as many models as you like; they aren't tied to specific controllers.

A model can instantiated using App::getModel($modelName). To allow re-use, use App::getSingleton($modelName) instead as this will only create a single instance when called multiple times (useful for database connections and session management).

Plugins implement hooks. Hooks are entry points for code that extends the application. Swiftlet has a few core hooks but they can be registered pretty much anywhere using App::registerHook($hookName).

Plugin lib/Swiftlet/Plugins/Foo.php

<?php
namespace Swiftlet\Plugins;

use 
	Swiftlet\App,
	Swiftlet\View
	;

class Foo extends \Swiftlet\Plugin
{
	public function actionAfter()
	{
		// Overwrite our previously set "hello world" variable
		if ( get_class(App::getController()) === 'Swiftlet\Controllers\Foo' ) {
			View::set('hello world', 'Hi world!');
		}
	}
}

This plugin implements the core actionAfter hook and changes the view variable hello world from our previous example to Hi world!.

Plugins don't need to be installed or activated, all files in the /lib/Swiftlet/Plugins/ directory are automatically included and their classes instantiated. They are hooked in alphabetical order.

The core hooks are:

• actionBefore
  Called before each action

• actionAfter Called after each action

No configuration is needed to run Swiftlet. If you're writing a model that does require configuration, e.g. credentials to establish a database connection, you may use the Config class:

<?php
Config::set('variable', 'value');

$value = Config::get('variable');

Values can be set in config.php or a custom file.

All application and view methods can be called statically, e.g. App::getAction() and View::getTitle().

Application Swiftlet\App

• string getAction()
  Name of the action

• array getArgs()
  List of arguments passed in the URL

• object getModel(string $modelName)
  Create a new model instance

• object getSingleton(string $modelName)
  Create or return an existing model instance

• string getView()
  Name of the view

• setView(string $view)
  Change the view (use a different HTML file)

• object getController()
  Reference to the controller object

• array getPlugins()
  All plugin instances

• array getHooks()
  All registered hooks

• string getRootPath()
  Absolute client-side path to website root

• registerHook(string $hookName, array $params)
  Register a hook

View Swiftlet\View

• string getTitle()
  Title of the page

• mixed get(string $variable [, bool $htmlEncode = true ])
  Get a view variable, encoded for safe use in HTML by default

• set(string $variable [, mixed $value ])
  Set a view variable

• htmlEncode(mixed $value) Recursively make a value safe for HTML

• htmlDecode(mixed $value) Recursively decode a previously encoded value to be rendered as HTML

Controller Swiftlet\Controller

• string getTitle()
  Title of the page

• index()
  Default action

• notImplemented()
  Fallback action if action doesn't exist

Config Swiftlet\Config

• mixed get(string $variable)
  Get a config variable, encoded for safe use in HTML by default

• set(string $variable [, mixed $value ])
  Set a config variable