sitegear/sitegear

Sitegear Website Framework

Sitegear

Sitegear is an extensible, configurable and modular website management application., _(*1)

Sitegear consists of a website framework and a set of integrated content management tools. It is aimed primarily at websites based on owner-driven driven content. One of the primary driving goals is to reduce development time for these types of websites specifically. For more dynamic, user-driven websites, please consider an MVC framework., _(*2)

Modules

Sitegear is modular, allowing unlimited possibilities for extensibility. There are several core modules, which are always available. Higher level functionality is found in extension modules., _(*3)

Each module may serve one or more specific purposes:, _(*4)

• Container for entities
• Provider of controller methods and related view scripts
• Provider of client-side resources (JavaScript, CSS, etc)
• Provider of user management tools

Customisation

Sitegear is highly configurable, directly via a config file mechanism. This means that much of the application's behaviour can be modified by changing some (well-documented!) settings. Configuration can also be applied on a per-environment basis. This is useful, for example, to test and demonstrate a mail form without spamming the "real" target email address, while knowing that in production, the correct email address will be used., _(*5)

View scripts provided by modules can also be very easily overridden, by providing a site-specific view script with the relevant filename (and path). This allows for further customisation as the entire markup can be modified., _(*6)

DSL

Sitegear features a simple yet powerful Domain Specific Language for view scripts. This provides access to a range of functionality using a structured call pattern:, _(*7)

<?php echo $view->foo()->bar(); ?>

Where foo is either the name of a module, or one of several special "pseudo-module" specifiers, and bar is the name of a target within the specified module., _(*8)

Arguments can also be passed as described below., _(*9)

Decorators

The first (module) call's arguments are decorators. These can take many forms but at their simplest they are a string containing only the name of the decorator. There are several built-in decorators, and you can add your own. The following example adds a wrapper element which marks the block as editable by the content management tools:, _(*10)

<?php echo $view->foo('editable')->bar(); ?>

Decorators can also be applied using the decorate() method. The following call is equivalent to the one above:, _(*11)

<?php echo $view->foo()->bar()->decorate('editable'); ?>

Decorators can also take arguments. These can be passed in string form or array form. The following to calls are equivalent, they both wrap the block in a li element:, _(*12)

<?php echo $view->foo('element("li")')->bar(); ?>
<?php echo $view->foo(array( 'name' => 'element', 'arguments' => array( 'li' ) )); ?>

Target Controllers

The second (method) call's arguments are passed to a component controller. This acts similarly to the main (page) controller action method, but with a restricted scope. For example the following would pass a string and an integer to the component controller method., _(*13)

<?php echo $view->foo()->bar('a label', 100); ?>

The arguments passed must match the target controller's expectations. Note that the View object and the Request object can be passed automatically using type hinting detection., _(*14)

Foundation Technologies

The Sitegear application is based on:, _(*15)

• PHP 5.3
• Composer
• Symfony Components
• Doctrine
• PSR-3 compatible logging interfaces
• Unit testing with PhpUnit

The available modules provide integrations with a range of services, including:, _(*16)

• Google Analytics
• Google Maps
• SwiftMailer
• MailChimp

The content management tools operate in the web browser, and are based on:, _(*17)

• jQuery and jQueryUI
• (some wysiwyg editor, unsure which one yet)
• (some file browser, unsure which one yet)

Unit Tests

Unit test coverage is in progress, but all tests should pass. To run the tests:, _(*18)

composer install --dev
phpunit

Further Information

For more information, see the website: http://sitegear.org/, _(*19)

Available under MIT open source license. See the LICENSE for details., _(*20)