Download the PHP package tbolner/flex-php-router without Composer

FlexPhpRouter

Simple and flexible router library for web and command line applications.

Packagist page: https://packagist.org/packages/tbolner/flex-php-router

Recommended IDE: PhpStorm

Installation

Include the library in the composer.json file of your project:

Then execute:

composer update

This library requires PHP 7.1 or newer.

Usage example for web applications

Create a folder in your project, to contain the controllers. For example:

project1/src/Controller/

Then create the controllers. The file name has to match the first part of the URI:

As you see all special characters are removed from the first part of the URI when looking up the corresponding PHP file. (For security considerations.) To be precise: all characters are removed from the first part, which are not: a-z, A-Z, 0-9, - (dash), _ (underline). (Other parts of the URL are unaffected by this mechanism.)

The controller will match for patters to decide what to execute. These matching parts are called "actions".

project1/src/Controller/items.php

Notes:

• In the path parameters, patterns can have 4 types:
  • string, int, float, bool
  • To have additional types, just use "string" and do the type conversion in the action.
• The slashes (/) at the endings are ignored. The patterns will match regardless of the ending slashes.
• To match for the site root, just match for "/" in the default controller. (See next point on how to specify the default controller.)
• Notice that in the 3rd action, the parameter follows the "/details" text without a slash separating them, which is an accepted solution.
• The supported methods are:
  • get, post, put, delete, any

Finally add the router start-up code to your application:

project1/web/index.php

Notes:

• The first parameter of Router::route() defines the path to the controller directory. Use a way similar to the above, to define the path in a relative way.
• The second parameter of Router::route() command expects the name of the default controller, which is called when no controller was found. You can handle there the site root for example. The name "default" will lead to the controller file "default.php".
• Handle all exceptions which you would throw in the controllers or in code invoked from the controllers.

Path-dependent authentication and more

You can pass an optional callback as the fourth parameter of Router::route():

It will be executed before any controller code, with the knowledge of the selected controller path. The callback receives 2 parameters. The first '$isWeb' is true when a web controller gets executed and false when a CLI. The second tells which path was selected.

This feature allows you to implement authentication for a selection of API entries. The recommendation is that in case of an auth failure, throw an exception created by you, for example: MyAuthException, and handle it at the main entry point, where normally all exceptions are caught.

Features

API path prefix

The 3rd parameter of Router::route(...) specifies an API prefix, which will always get ignored during the routing process, like if it was cut off from the beginning of the URI.

Example:

Router::route(dirname(__FILE__)."/../src/Controller", 'default', 'api');

Notes:

• The previous example works also with the following prefixes: '/api', 'api/', '/api/'.

Default page / 404 page

The default controller (described earlier) is called in two cases:

• If no controller was found, based on the first part of the URI
• If none of the actions had matching pattern inside the loaded controller

As a result we can always put an action at the end of the default, which is called when nothing got executed.

Controller/default.php

Notes:

• Notice the "*" character in the last action. It means 'any'.
• The first action - which handles a site root request - works also with an empty pattern: "".

Usage example for CLI applications

Create a folder in your project, to contain the CLI controllers. For example:

• project1/src/CLI

Then create the controllers. The file name has to match the first part of the path passed as first parameter:

Example controller:

project1/src/CLI/test.php

In this case the router start-up code has to go into a not web related PHP file (so it should be outside of the web folder). For example:

project1/console.php

Notes:

• You don't need to tell the Router::route() method that it has to expect console parameters, because it will automatically detect that the script was run in console mode.

Design considerations

• Usage is similar to the Laravel router.
• No library dependencies.
• No parsing and pre-built cache. See the next point which explains how high performance is achieved without using code pre-generation.
• Code locations for actions are not fully custom. Their controller is decided by the first part of the URL. This forces the developer to keep the code for actions tidy, and also increases the performance of the application, since the PHP file for a controller can be found in an explicit way. (See "Usage example for web applications" for more information.)
• Type safity. All parameters are casted to the specified types.
• It doesn't handle output. In most router libraries the action uses the return command to pass back data to be outputted (For example an array as a JSON). I found that this causes more problems on the long run than it solves. Better put the I/O functionality into a separate library, and call its methods from your controllers. See example: FlexPhpIO.
• It only supports an "any" method specifier, but doesn't support multiple (specific) methods (like POST+GET) per action, because those are so rarely required, that it doesn't worth messing up the API with an extra parameter for each action (Like in Laravel). When it's required, then put your action codes into static methods, and call them from the separate POST, GET, etc. actions.