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Mini Tutorial

Mini Tutorial ¶

The goal of this tutorial is to quickly show you how you can develop an application. To start, install Jelix as indicated on the installation page. We will consider that you are using the default configuration, so you didn't modify the tree structure of Jelix.

Jelix scripts ¶

A script for command line, jelix.php, is available in the lib/jelix-scripts/ directory. This script allows you to create quickly some differents files for your application. So open a console and go into this directory :

   cd lib/jelix-scripts/        # under linux
   cd lib\jelix-scripts\        # under windows

You have to use jelix.php with the command line version of PHP and give it as parameter a Jelix command with some other parameters and options.

php jelix.php [--application_name] command_name [options] [parameters]

To avoid giving the name of the application for each command, execute this command line :

  export JELIX_APP_NAME=helloapp        # under linux
  set JELIX_APP_NAME=helloapp           # under windows

Then we will create an application named “helloapp”.

Creation of an application ¶

Let's create the tree structure of the application using the createapp command :

php jelix.php createapp

You will then get a helloapp/ directory, at the same level as the lib/ directory. Its content is the following :

helloapp/
   modules/       the modules of your application
   plugins/       the plugins of your application
   var/config/    the configuration files of your application
   var/log/       the log files
   var/themes/    the different possible themes in your application
   var/overloads/  will contain the different files that you will redefine, from other modules. 
   www/           the root of the site

Creation of a module ¶

A module gathers a whole of actions. At least one is necessary in an application. This is why a module is created automatically when you run createapp command.

Here is the directory which has been created:

 helloapp/modules/
            hello/                the directory of the module
              module.xml          file describing the identity of the module
              controllers/       the classes processing the actions
                 default.classic.php   a default controller
              classes/            your business classes and services
              daos/               the object-relational mapping files
              locales/            locales files ("properties files")
                  en_EN/
                  fr_FR/
              templates/          templates of the module
              zones/              objects processing specific zones in a page

If you want to create other modules later, you can use the createmodule command:

php jelix.php createmodule hello2

Action implementation ¶

Let's implement a default action. Open the controllers/default.classic.php file and modify the content this way :

class defaultCtrl extends jController {
 
   function index () {
      $rep = $this->getResponse('html');
 
      return $rep;
   }
}

We state here that we retrieve the jResponseHtml object (because of the HTML type as it is indicated), and we return it to indicate that its content must be returned to the browser.

Response object ¶

The jResponseHtml object generates a HTML response (a HTML page). It generates automatically the <head> part of HTML, from some of its properties. Let's define the title of the page :

   $rep->title = 'Hello World !';

The body of the page is generated by default from a template, via an instance of the Jelix template engine, placed in the body property. The name of the template file is placed in the bodyTpl property. Here, it's the hello.tpl file.

      $rep->bodyTpl = 'hello';

We don't put the “.tpl” part because the content of the string is actually a Jelix selector. A Jelix selector is a shortcut to refer to a resource of a module.

Note that you can create your own response objects (possibly deriving from the class jResponseHtml), and so to put at it all common process to several or all your actions, so this process will not have to be duplicate in each action (like the name of the template, the inclusion of common zones etc.).

The template ¶

Create a hello.tpl file in the template directory of the module. And put in this content :

  <h2>Hello {$name} !</h2>
  <p>Welcome in Jelix !</p>

“{$name}” is a template variable : it will be replaced by the value you will define, like in this example :

      $rep->body->assign('name','Me');

As a summary ¶

The code of the controller must now be like this :

class defaultCtrl extends jController {
 
   function index () {
      $rep = $this->getResponse('html');
      $rep->title = 'Hello World !';
 
      $rep->bodyTpl = 'hello';
      $rep->body->assign('name','Me');
 
      return $rep;
   }
}

First display ¶

We are now ready to display our page. For this, give the following URL :

http://localhost/jelix/helloapp/www/index.php?module=hello&action=default:index

You will then see your html page, with the welcome message.

The url can change regarding the configuration of your installation, especially if you have specified the document root of the site on the directory helloapp/www. You have to know that Jelix can handle significant url to avoid all this disgusting parameters.

Retrieving parameters ¶

It would be interesting to be able to indicate the name to display in the template, as a parameter of the url. We get a parameter value with param() method :

   $name = $this->param('name');
   $rep->body->assign('name', $name);

Now type :

  http://localhost/jelix/helloapp/www/index.php?module=hello&action=default:index&name=Robert

Conclusion ¶

This were the first concepts of Jelix. You can continue to discover him by following the main tutorial.

Go back to the documentation
Continue to discover Jelix with the main tutorial

en/tutorials/minitutorial.1199453800.txt.gz · Last modified: 2008/04/06 11:46 (external edit)

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