immortalnights

phpNights Framework

The phpNights Framework is a custom PHP website framework. It's intended goal is to provide a templated MVC framework for websites.

The framework does not provide the vast array of usability and convenience functions other 3rd party frameworks might. Due to the smaller development team and current requirements of the framework.

Usability Requirements

• Provide an extendable MVC framework
• Allow core Models, Views and Controllers to be over-ridden on a site by site basis
• Provide models for common storage methods
• Use database configuration files to ensure protection of credentials
• Provide a robust MySQL database model
• Provide a template system for site pages

A number of sites that have utilized the phpNights framework have required enhancements or additional features to be incorporated into the framework.

These include:

• Advanced image management with auto-generated thumbnails
• Session variable management for authentication
• XML API integration
• File and download handling
• Wiki Engine with Media wiki parsing of templates

Technology

• PHP
• HTML and CSS
• MySQL
• XML

Implementation

Extendable Framework

Almost every class within the Framework allows it's self to be reimplemented or extended where needed. Therefore allowing each site to customise it's implementations as required.

The framework automatically handles inclusion of files for each specified class so new page controllers, models or views can be used seamlessly.

The MVC Architecture

The MVC architecture is a common website framework architecture, used in CakePHP and CodeIgniter. It provides a high level of abstraction between the core components of a website.

The Models interact with data sources like the MySQL database or XML application program interfaces (API).

The Views parse and process the HTML templates.

The Controllers handle the request control the collection of data from the respective model and pass on the data to the view.

MySQL Implementation

A comprehensive MySQL wrapper class implementation has been included in the framework. This not only ensures consistency in use, but also provides security in SQL statements.

The whole implementation consists of a number of layers for more information see the phpnights mysql implementation page.

Templated Content

To provide the maximum level of abstraction the framework requires all content to be templated. The template code reads though the HTML page replacing keys with values or combined parts of the template to provide the final document to serve to the browser.

Wiki Engine

One of the most comprehensive enhancements made to the phpFramework is the inclusion of a Wiki Engine. Utilizing the (basic) syntax of Media wiki.

Original this was done for Dungeons Archive , but as it provides a consistent and powerful way of making website content more dynamic it's been used in other projects.