I. Introduction

Dinkly is a modest little MVC (model, view, controller) PHP framework inspired by Ruby on Rails and earlier (simpler) incarnations of Symfony. It was designed from the ground-up to be fast, easy to understand, highly customizable, and have a small footprint. The Dinkly framework comes with everything you need to build a basic web application, and excels when used for rapid prototyping, though it is perfectly capable of handling much larger, more sophisticated, use-cases.

II. Features

• Easy-to-use and flexible MVC architecture
• Consistent naming conventions and architectural organization
• YAML configuration and customization
• Support for Github Flavored Markdown templating
• Composer support
• Extensible ORM
• Data fixtures for easy data loading
• Ready-to-go templating with Twitter Bootstrap
• Internationalization (i18n) Support
• Testing utilities
• Minimal memory footprint

III. Getting Started

1. Server Requirements

• MySQL >= 5.2
• PHP >= 5.5

2. Installation

1. Pull down the latest release from GitHub: https://github.com/lewsid/dinkly

2. Fetch and install needed packages via composer: php composer.phar install --no-dev

This will create a new folder called vendor in the project root and populated with composer-provided packages.

3. Configuration

1. Ensure that Dinkly’s web folder is web-accessible by your server software. This is typically achieved via a symbolic link.

2. Create a new file called config.yml under the config directory and copy the contents of demo-config.yml into it.

3. Note that config/bootstrap.php is where that you will want to toggle between your environments, if needed. The default is dev but change this as needed match other environments as specified in the primary configuration found in config/config.yml.

4. Build Commands

• Generate all Dinkly datamodel files (this does not overwrite existing custom classes). Use the ‘-s’ option to use the appropriate schema. To insert/update model sql, use the ‘-i’ option:

  php tools/gen_models.php -s <schema name> [-i]

• Generate a single Dinkly datamodel file. Use the ‘-s’ option to use the appropriate schema. To insert model sql, use the ‘-i’ option:

  php tools/gen_model.php -s <schema name> -m <model name> [-i]

• Load fixtures (preloads tables with data stored in yml files under config/fixtures):

  php tools/load_fixtures.php -s <schema name>

• Generate a new Dinkly application:

  php tools/gen_app.php -a <app name>

• Generate a new Dinkly module for a given application:

  php tools/gen_module.php -a <app name> -m <module name>

• Test database connection for a given schema (and optionally by environment):

  php tools/test_db.php -s <schema name> [-e <environment>]

• Run unit tests (assuming you’ve installed the additional dev packages with composer). Use the -f option if you want to run unit tests in a specific file. Use the -f and -t option if you want to run a specific test in a specific file:

  php tools/run_unit_tests.php [-f <path to test file>] [-t <name of specific test>]

IV. Understanding the Architecture

Something about MVC.

1. Directory Organization

2. Routing

3. Controllers

a. Modules

b. Components

4. Views

5. Models

a. Schemas

b. Fixtures

c. Collections

d. Model Customization

Contributors

License