In an effort to get to know as much of the technology out there, I wanted to branch out in my framework knowledge and try something I hadn’t looked much into yet – the Solar framework (PHP5). I’ve worked with both the Zend Framework and CakePHP on previous sites, so I wanted to see how they compared. The Solar framework, worked up by Paul Jones and team, provides much of the same functionality as the other two frameworks and is even based around the same structure – Model/View/Controller – to get the job done.

Since there’s no time like the present and no better way to learn how to use a tool than to just jump right in and get started, I looked up the great Getting Started section of the Solar manual to get on my way. It’s a great little section jam-packed with all the info that you’ll need to get started. I do want to, however, go back over my experience with it all as another example of how I set it up and got it working for my little application.

First of, obviously, you’ll need the latest version of the framework on your machine to get started. Unzip it in a place outside of the document root for where you’ll be building your application. This makes it easier if there’s others developers on the box that want to use it later on. Then, when you update the library, you don’t have to do it in ten different locations.

First off, you’ll need to set up your configuration file – you can put this just about anywhere really, but outside the document root is suggested since it could contain username/password information for your application. My document root is: /home/website_htdocs/sampleApp and my config file, Solar.config.php is located in /home/website_htdocs. Here’s the contents:

[php]
$config=array();

//Base action href
$config[‘Solar_Uri_Action’][‘path’]=’/’;

//Base public directory href
$config[‘Solar_Uri_Public’][‘path’]=’/public’;
$config[‘Solar_Controller_Front’][‘default’]=’index’;
$config[‘Solar_Controller_Front’][‘classes’]=array(
‘Solar_App’,
‘SampleApp_App’
);
$config[‘Solar_Sql’]=array(
‘adapter’ => ‘Solar_Sql_Adapter_Mysql’,
‘host’ => ‘localhost’,
‘user’ => ‘dbuser’,
‘pass’ => ‘dbpass’,
‘name’ => ‘sampleDB’
);

//Done!
return $config;
[/php]

The file is made up of the $config array with various values – among them the Solar_Uri_Action (the base action location) and the Solar_Uri_Public (the base for the public directory). That first option (Uri_Action) can be thought of the more “external” of the two. It tells the framework which URL the site will be using as a base. In my examples, I’m using mod_rewrite to handle the redirect of everything back down to the Front Controller (an index.php file that handles the routing), so I have it set to the root or “/”. Now, the Uri_Public setting is a little different story. This one is more “internal”, a setting that’s used to point the framework at the location of a public directory it can use to store things like CSS or Javascript files (and where anyone using Solar on the site) can use it too. I have it set to “/public” to point to a symlink that’s in my document root. Since Solar is installed to /home/website_htdocs/Solar, I made the link like this:

[php]
ln -s /home/website_htdocs/Solar/Solar/App/Public public
[/php]

This points a symlink of “public” to the Public directory over in the Solar installation. This is handy for working with shared files and provides us a location so we’re not polluting the views and all with unneeded code.

With the config file and symlink in place, the next step is the Front Controller. This is a PHP file that Solar uses to define a few more things and start up the framework to handle the requests coming in. Here’s what mine looks like:

[php]
set_include_path(‘/home/website_htdocs/Solar:/home/website_htdocs/SampleApp’);

require_once(‘Solar.php’);
Solar::start(‘/home/website_htdocs/Solar.config.php’);

$front=Solar::factory(‘Solar_Controller_Front’);
$front->display();

Solar::stop();
[/php]

There’s two main things set here – the include path (to define where our Solar and application directories are) and the start() call with the path to the config file created earlier.

You notice the “sampleApp” in the examples above – that’s the name of the example application I’ve worked up. It’s nothing special, but it does follow with the structure they suggest for using Solar. To contain all of the files, we’ll make a SampleApp directory in the document root of our site with a few files and directories under it:

App
  /Base
  /Base.php
  /Base/Helper
  /Base/Layout
  /Base/Locale
  /Base/Model
  /Base/View
  /Index
  /Index.php
  /Index/Helper
  /Index/Layout
  /Index/Locale
  /Index/Model
  /Index/View

I know that looks like a lot of stuff, but most of those directories won’t even be touched. We’re only really worried about a few things. First off, let’s look what this all means. Each of the controllers have a PHP file in the App directory. In our case, we have a Base.php and Index.php file for those two controllers. Base is a special example that allows for cross-controller file use and communication. So for our example, the only thing in here is:

[php]
class SampleApp_App_Base extends Solar_Controller_Page {
// nothing really needed here, unless you want
// shared methods and properties too
}
[/php]

This just makes the controller and extends the regular Solar controller. We’ll come back to the Base stuff in a second – for now, lets talk about the Index.php file:

[php]
Solar::loadClass(‘Solar_Controller_Page’);
class MySite_App_Index extends SampleApp_App_Base {

protected $_layout = ‘default’;
protected $_action_default = ‘index’;
protected $_view=”;
var $res;

public $output = ”;

function _setup(){
Solar::register(‘sql’, ‘Solar_Sql’);
}

public function actionIndex() {
$select=Solar::factory(‘Solar_Sql_Select’);
$select->from(‘test_tbl’,array(‘*’));
$res=$select->fetch(‘all’);
$this->res=$res;
$this->output = ‘this isdsds my example’;
}

}
[/php]

This is where the action happens in our little application. The best part of it all is that, way back in the configuration file (remember Solar.config.php?) we set up a default controller to run when one’s not specified – “index”. That means that, when people just hit the domain (like http://www.foo.com versus http://www.foo.com/pageName) they’ll get what’s in our Index controller.

So, what is in there? Well, lets look at the different parts. Our class extends the Base class instead of the normal Solar_Controller_Page so that we can use the things in the Base directories without any other special code. Because of this, we can use the layout defined in $_layout. Layouts allow for things like site templates without having to add the header/footer to each of the views for all of the controllers. The value, “default” corresponds to a PHP file, default.php, that’s located in /App/Base/Layout. Here’s what it contains:

[php]

imsothere.net
script(‘scripts/jquery/jquery.js’); ?>

layout_content;
?>

$(‘#mine’).append(‘

test

‘);

[/php]

This is pulled almost directly from their example with a few slight adjustments. One of the things that I wanted to do with my application was to use jQuery to handle some of the advanced Javascript. Because of this, I needed to include it in all of my pages. Naturally, in the layout is the perfect place. So I went to the jQuery site and grabbed the latest copy of their library. Now, remember that symlink we made a little while back – well, we’re going to go into that directory (you should see other directories inside it like scripts, images and styles) and inside of the scripts directory, make a jquery directory and put the file in there. That’ll match up with our example HTML, but you can always move it around to fit your needs. In our layout file above, you can see where it’s calling the script() function to grab that library and output an HTML tag for it.

The other missing piece to this puzzle is the view for the Index controller itself. The framework knows enough to apply the default template because of the value in $_layout, but it sill needs the value for layout_content to put in there. That’s why we need to make a view in /App/Index/View called index.php with the following content:

[php]
echo $this->escape($this->output);
echo “

"; print_r($this->res); echo "

“;
[/php]

You can match up the “output” and “res” properties from our actionIndex in the controller above. This is all packaged up and pushed into the layout and outputted. The script block at the bottom of the layout is just some Javascript using jQuery that adds a row to the table above it (I wanted a simple test to check if it was included and working correctly).

Finally, we get to the last piece of this mini application – the database connection. Now, you’ll remember way back in the config file, we defined some parameters:

[php]
$config[‘Solar_Sql’]=array(
‘adapter’ => ‘Solar_Sql_Adapter_Mysql’,
‘host’ => ‘localhost’,
‘user’ => ‘dbuser’,
‘pass’ => ‘dbpass’,
‘name’ => ‘sampleDB’
);
[/php]

Aren’t you glad that this isn’t in the document root? So, these set the different values your script will need to access your database – in this case, a local MySQL one. Setting all of this up here frees you up to only have to work with the objects in your controller:

[php]
$select=Solar::factory(‘Solar_Sql_Select’);
$select->from(‘test_tbl’,array(‘*’));
$res=$select->fetch(‘all’);
$this->res=$res;
[/php]

This example pulls the data from a test table named, creatively, test_tbl and pulls it into an array. This array is then pulled into the “res” property and added to the output of the view (as located in the View for Index).

So, there it is – that’s my experience so far with the Solar framework. It’s a little different than the other two frameworks, but I think so far, I like it a little more. It has a little lighter feel to it and doesn’t seem so much like someone dumped a toolbox over your head and told you to make sense of it all. Unfortunately, there’s still some of a learning curve to Solar. Once you get outside of the API docs on the site, there’s not a whole lot in the way of documentation. Thankfully, there’s always the guys in #solarphp on the Freenode IRC network to run to with questions.

Oh, and did I mention that the time from downloading the framework and getting all of this up and working was about 4-5 hours? Definitely works for me 🙂