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Fram

Fram (Swedish in front) is a view framework for PHP. Fram's goal is to fit everywhere, new projects, existing projects, side by side with other frameworks, thus Fram is a flexible framework that can fit into many scenarios.

Usage

Installation

composer require paket/fram

Requirements

Requires PHP 7.2 or higher.

Examples

See /examples

Note: examples should be used as examples only and not as library code.

Running examples

php -S localhost:8888 -t examples/www

General

Fram is a view framework only, based on a route a view can be rendered. Other things necessary for a project like database handling, authentication, template rendering or logging, is not within the scope of Fram.

Fram's design is based around a few core interfaces, Fram ships with a few implementations of these interfaces, but it is up to the user of Fram to customize it based on project needs. Each core interface is designed to be as small as possible making the implementation trivial, thus extending Fram for projects needs should be possible within minutes.

Core parts

View

In Fram a View acts as both the controller and the view. To create a view you implement a specific View interface, thus one class is only one View. Grouping similar views should be done using namespaces.

View interfaces included in the framework

• DefaultView
• HtmlView
• JsonView

All view types implements an empty View interface.

By using different view types the framework can adapt its execution per view type. Any number of View interfaces can be created by the project for different scenarios.

How the View is rendered, the method name and it's parameters, is decided per view type, thus different view types can provide different input, e.g. like request and response objects.

EmptyView

EmptyView is a special view that represents the null View, i.e. when the is no matching View for the current request.

ViewHandler

View handlers executes view types. Typical things that happens in a view handler is setting headers, specialized logging, handling buffers or executing a middleware pipe. It is the ViewHandler responsibility to provide the View with the input enforced by the view type. By switching to another ViewHandler you can change the behaviour of a View.

View handlers included in the framework

• DefaultViewHandler
• HtmlViewHandler
• JsonViewHandler

Route

Route is passed thru each part of Fram. Route knows the HTTP method, URI and what is the current View class. A Route is immutable and the only way to change the current View class is by cloning Route, this is done by calling withViewClass(). By changing View class a new Route is returned and can then be passed back upstreams to achieve internal redirects within Fram. Fram will redirect until the Route is not changed. Note that Route keeps track of the current View class name, not the class instance itself.

Router

Router matches HTTP method and HTTP uri with a View class and returns a Route with that View class set.

Routers included in the framework

• SimpleRouter - simple string matching against method and uri
• FastRouter - uses FastRoute for routing

Container

To instantiate a classes Fram uses PSR-11 ContainerInterface.

Suggested implementation and used in all documentation and examples is BeroContainer, BeroContainer is part of Bero project.

Fram

Fram is the engine that basically pumps the Route thru the framework.

By calling run() on Fram the framework initiates a request. run() is called by providing a callback, this callback gives the project the necessary control over each Route change and can either approve or change Route.

The run() callback is powerful mechanism the enables Fram to integrate better with existing code or other frameworks. By having the possibility to inspect each Route change, the callback can redirect or abort if needed. Typical scenarios are debugging, different execution path depending on environment, fallback to legacy code and authorization checks.

It is thru the run() callback how 404 pages are managed. Fram has no knowledge about how to handle the EmptyView case, but the run() callback can instruct Fram how to handle it by doing an internal redirect to the correct View.

Fram also catches exceptions that can happen either in Router or in the ViewHandler and thus the View. Exceptions are passed to the run() callback as an optional Throwable second parameter, callback can then redirect with a new Route if needed. Fram does not catch exceptions happening in the run() callback, those exceptions should be caught outside of run(). LogicExcpeption will always stop Fram.

If the run() callback returns null the execution of Fram stops.

Flow of Fram

1. executes the Router with method and uri
2. Router returns a new Route with a View class set
3. calls run() callback with Route and optional Throwable if an exception happened
4. run() callback returns the same Route, a new Route or null to cancel
5. matches the Route's View class with registered view handlers
6. instantiates View from View class name by using ContainerInterface
7. executes matched ViewHandler with Route and View
8. calls 3 if returning Route from ViewHandler has changed or on exception

Error handling

Fram does not register any exception, error or shutdown handlers. That is something that needs to be configured outside of Fram.

Customization

Most customization should be done by implementing your own ViewHandler. The ViewHandler is a good place for doing user authentication/authorization, buffered output, response header management, custom logging, PSR-7 request & response objects or calling PSR-15 middlewares.

FAQ

• Should my view class directly implement the View interface?
  • No, the top View interface is an abstract interface and should never be implemented, the View interface is used as type to represent all view interfaces. You should implement a view interface that in turn extends the top View interface.
• Can a view interface extend another view interface?
  • Only if the other interface is an abstract interface like the top View interface. Assume we have view interface A that extends the View interface, then B interface extends A interface. Both A and B has their own view handlers so view implementations of A and B can be rendered, however a view class of B can then match both the view handler that is registered for A and B, this can lead to unexpected results and Fram does not handle this case.
• How to implement CSRF token validation?
  • Implement a view handler that inspects all incoming forms and validate the token supplied in the form data. Look in the examples folder for a working example, specifically the FormBackendHandler class.

• How to implement output buffering?

  • Implement a view handler that starts output buffering before rendering view and then either flushes (sends) or cleans (drops) output buffer based on condition, e.g. if we return a new route from our view we clean our output buffer, if not we flush it.
• How to do request header based routing?
  • Based on a request header, like Accept or a custom one like X-Version you could pick different routers by implementing a wrapper Router, e.g.

License

Fram is released under the MIT License. See the bundled file LICENSE.txt.