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Cubo

Cubo is a lightweight PHP framework designed for building web applications with simplicity and flexibility.

It provides a minimalist but solid foundation for the development process, with zero hidden magic features, and avoiding overengineered techniques, while ensuring a clean and modular architecture.

NOTE: While Cubo can certainly be used in real-world production projects, there are more established frameworks with strong community support like Symfony and Laravel. We recommend considering these alternatives for enterprise-level applications requiring extensive ecosystem support.

Features

• Lightweight and Fast: Minimal overhead for optimal performance.
• Modular Design: Easily extendable and customizable.
• Queue of Actions: Queue-based workflow where requests are processed through sequential actions (controller-like components).
• PSR-4 Autoloading: Follows modern PHP standards for autoloading.
• View Rendering: Built-in support for rendering views and layouts.
• HTTP Response Handling: Simplifies response management.

Requirements

• PHP 8.1 or higher
• Composer

Installation

Install using Composer:

Usage

Think of Cubo as a tool designed to manage request routing and the tasks and services linked to those routes.

As we'll explore later, Cubo operates through executing sequences of tasks, encapsulated as Action objects.

A Cubo-based project can be organized in countless ways. The framework is intentionally project-structure agnostic. You’re free to adopt whatever project layout best suits your needs, and you can use external components, packages, or services as required.

However, it’s important to note that Cubo’s core philosophy centers on building ultra-lightweight applications.

Project structure

A typical project using Cubo looks like this:

Entry point

The app entry point is /root/index.php

This file is located in the public directory (root folder) of the HTTP server.

Public resources and assets like images and CSS files should be placed in the /root directory.

All other folders reside outside the root directory and cannot be accessed directly from external sources.

Sections

Each section can maintain its own:

• Layout templates
• Actions
• Data layers
• ...and other components

These sections can be converted into independent services (eg. micro services) with minimal refactoring.

Action queues

An Action is a class that performs specific tasks.

Developers can:

• Define action sequences (e.g., using a routing file) to handle requests
• Implement controller-like actions that manage request-specific operations
• Create middleware actions that execute before primary actions
• Utilize actions for dependency injection

There are three action queues:

• pre: Handles setup tasks, dependency injections, and middleware
• main: Controller-like actions tied to specific routes
• pos: Manages cleanup operations

Action queues are dynamic ones.

• Add new actions mid-execution, we can insert new Actions in the queue from the actual Action.
• Remove existing actions dynamically
• Implement error recovery flows

Example: If a request fails, abort the current action and insert a fallback action to handle the failure.

Action

Example of one Action class.

Main controller

The Controller object acts as Cubo's orchestration center. It is like the kernel component of other frameworks.

It handles:

• Request routing management
• Action queues
• Dependency injection (e.g., services)
• Access to core Cubo components (Request, View, Render, Response)

Once configured, your application primarily operates through the Controller::run() method call.

Routing

The routing file contains an array defining:

• All possible entry points for each section
• Associated actions for pre and post queues

Example:

Rendering Views

The Render class is responsible for rendering views and layouts.

We can render directly to the client or render to a Response object depending on our needs.

Here's an example of how to use it:

Render can use PHP templates:

In the View object, you can configure a single layout (e.g., an HTML skeleton) and include multiple templates and variables as needed.

Templates can be invoked from the layout or other templates using the Render::block() method.

Data injected into the View by Actions can be accessed using the View::get() method.

Additionally, you can create a custom Render subclass to integrate third-party template engines seamlessly.

In this demo project, we use the Latte template engine and PHP templates working together.

HTTP Responses

The Response class allows you to manage HTTP headers, status codes, and redirections.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome!

Please fork the repository, create a feature branch, and submit a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.