Book Image

Learning Phalcon PHP

Book Image

Learning Phalcon PHP

Overview of this book

Phalcon is a full-stack PHP framework implemented as a C extension. Building applications with Phalcon will offer you lower resource consumption and high performance whether your application runs on a Linux machine or a Windows one. Phalcon is loosely coupled, allowing you to use its objects as glue components based on the needs of your application. Phalcon PHP's mission is to give you an advanced tool to develop faster websites and applications. This book covers the most common and useful parts of PhalconPHP, which will guide you to make the right decisions while developing a Phalcon-driven application. You will begin the journey by installing and setting up Phalcon for your environment followed by the development of each module. You will be introduced to Phalcon's ORM and ODM. Furthermore, you will also be able to create the first models and database architecture for your project. You will then cover command-line applications, API module, volt syntax, and hierarchical views. Installing and working with Node and Bower for assets management will also be covered. Finally, you will gain insights into creating the backoffice and frontend module along with best practices and resources for development with Phalcon PHP. By the end of this book, you will be able to confidently develop any kind of application using the Phalcon PHP framework in a short time.

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Learning Phalcon PHP
Aug, 2015 | 328 pages
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Table of Contents (12 chapters)
Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
1. Getting Started with Phalcon
1. Getting Started with Phalcon
Installing the required software
Installing Phalcon
The Apache and Nginx configuration files
Understanding the framework's internals
Summary
2
2. Setting Up the MVC Structure and the Environment for Our Project
2. Setting Up the MVC Structure and the Environment for Our Project
What is MVC?
The MVC structure
Creating the structure for our project
Creating the configuration file and the Bootstrap
Preparing the initial DI interface and the router
Using the router component in a module
Create the base layout
Summary
3
3. Learning Phalcon's ORM and ODM
3. Learning Phalcon's ORM and ODM
The main differences between SQL and NoSQL databases
Connecting to the database
ORM/ODM operations (create, update, delete, transactions, and validations)
CRUD operations using ORM
Using PHQL
Using raw SQL
Database transactions
ODM/MongoDB
ORM – drawbacks and caching
Summary
4
4. Database Architecture, Models, and CLI Applications
4. Database Architecture, Models, and CLI Applications
The database architecture
Models
Summary
5
5. The API Module
5. The API Module
Using APIs – recommended practices
Enabling SSL on our local machine
Creating the module structure
Writing a fully functional REST module with Phalcon PHP
Securing an API
Documenting the API
Summary
6
6. Assets, Authentication, and ACL
6. Assets, Authentication, and ACL
Assets management
Developing an authentication system
Securing the application using the ACL component
Summary
7
7. The Backoffice Module (Part 1)
7. The Backoffice Module (Part 1)
Editing the main layout
Cleaning the Core module
Hashtag CRUD
Category CRUD
Summary
8
8. The Backoffice Module (Part 2)
8. The Backoffice Module (Part 2)
User CRUD
User templates
Article CRUD
Summary
9
9. The Frontend Module
9. The Frontend Module
The Frontend layout and basic functionality
Modifying BaseController.php
Implementing ElasticSearch
Implementing MongoDB
Summary
10
10. Going Further
10. Going Further
Uploading files with Phalcon
Using the Annotation router
Summary
11
Index
Index

Chapter 1. Getting Started with Phalcon

What is Phalcon? Let's start by quoting from the documentation of the official website (http://phalconphp.com/):

"Phalcon is an open source, full stack framework for PHP written as a C-extension, optimized for high performance."

Version 2.0 of Phalcon was released in April, and it was developed with a new language called Zephir (http://zephir-lang.com/). Zephir was designed especially for developing PHP extensions, and it is quite user friendly for both (PHP and C) developers.

There are many frameworks out there. The main reasons why we choose Phalcon were for its steep learning curve, speed, and because it is decoupled. (We can use any of its components independently.) If you have some knowledge of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) and some experience with any Object-Relational Mapping (ORM), you will find working with it pretty straightforward.

We will start our journey with this first chapter where we will:

  • Configure our web server
  • Install Phalcon
  • Discuss a bit about how Phalcon works

Before starting, we assume that you are using a *nix environment. Personally, I feel comfortable with Debian distributions, especially Ubuntu, which I am using on a daily basis; so, the installations steps that we will talk about are for Ubuntu. The OS is a matter of personal choice, but I highly recommend any *nix distribution for development. (Even Microsoft decided to open source their ASP.NET for Linux early this year)

For other types of OS, you will have to search their official documentation, in terms of "how to". This book is intended to be about Phalcon and tutorials on installing different software on different kinds of OS are out of the scope of this book.

Note

Here is the list of URLs that contain installation instructions for different operating systems:

Senior developers might not agree with me on certain subjects or certain techniques and/or recommendations. In general, as a developer, I think you should analyze what is suitable for you and develop a platform according to your (or client) requirements. In addition, most importantly, there is no such thing as "The Perfect Solution". There is always room for improvement.

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