Architecture

DEVELOPER DOCUMENTATION > ARCHITECTURE

Architecture

Roles

• Controllers
• sources/controllers and sources/admin (for admin area)
• they contain the action handlers, the functions/methods with naming pattern: action_xxx()
• makes permission checks, data sanitation and validation, processing, initializes contextual data and templates
• should not make queries
• should not send in $context data for use of other functions than templates
• should use helper functions for specialized (sub)tasks
• retrieves data to send for templates.
• Utilities, helpers, database work
• sources/subs, mainly. Also list_xxx() functions, helpers in controller files, classes in /subs.
• should be the only level which contains queries.
• should only use the widely available globals, i.e. $modSettings, $user_info (avoided if possible though), $smcFunc.
• only a few specialized functions should use $context: those which are dedicated to be controller helpers, with the only role to fill $context. (i.e. prepareContextXxx())
• Templates
• use $context, the contextual data, to fill and present the output.
• may further manipulate the data to render it in the desired format. (i.e. standardTime(), relativeTime(), comma_format())
• should not contain or do almost anything else. (i.e. no queries, no superglobals, only a few globals)

Execution flow

Execution flow is mainly this:

index.php

• Dispatcher class
  • forwards to the right action handler: a controller function/method. (action_something())
  • the action handler may be a menu-based handler or directly an action handler
  • the menus will forward to the appropriate controller-function/method according to selection.
    • the controller function/method:
      • makes permissions checks
      • sanitizes/validates data (or sends for sanitization/validation)
      • may use helpers (i.e. list_xxx())
      • .subs model-type functions (i.e. getTopicInfo()) or classes
      • sets the template/sub-template.
• passes control to the template rendering

Naming patterns

(examples)

/controllers/MergeTopics.controller.php

• handles action=mergetopics
• functions correspond to subactions, i.e.: action_done() corresponds to action=mergetopics;sa=done /templates/MergeTopics.template.php
• corresponding sub-template i.e. template_merge_done()

/subs/Topic.subs.php

• database work, low-level functions, utilities, related to Topics.
• (optional) camelCasedFunctionNames()

/subs/XmlArray.class.php

• class Xml_Array

/admin/ManageAttachments.php

• corresponds to the admin area (i.e. manageattachments)
• methods correspond to sub-actions, i.e. action_browse() for ?action=admin;area=manageattachments;sa=browse