Code example: Events

These pages will show different code samples to illustrate different aspects of Elefant.

The model

Let's define a model called Events mapped to the database table events with fields id, title, and date. We'll add some validation rules to ensure the date is formatted correctly and the title is present. We'll also define a custom method for pulling events by most recent.

This would live in the file apps/events/models/Event.php.

<?php

class Events extends Model {
    public $verify = array (
        'title' => array ('not empty' => 1),
        'date' => array ('date' => 1)
    );

    public static function latest ($limit = 10) {
        return self::query ()
            ->order ('date desc')
            ->fetch ($limit);
    }
}

?>

The $verify rules for each field are arrays so that you can specify more than one per field.

The handler

Here we'll make a basic query on the Events model above, and output it using a view template we'll define later. This example illustrates grabbing parameters by name, the URL routing, and how to call templates.

This would live in the file apps/events/handlers/index.php and be called via the URL /events or /events/20 to fetch the 20 latest events.

<?php

// get the limit parameter for this request
list ($limit) = count ($this->params) ? $this->params : 10;

// get the results from our model
$events = Events::latest ($limit);

// output the results
echo $tpl->render (
    'events/index',
    array (
        'events' => $events
    )
);

?>

A few things to note:

The autoloading recognized our new Events model
$this references the Controller object itself
$tpl is a Template object available to us

View template

The events/index template would live in the file apps/events/views/index.html. $tpl maps it for us to save typing.

<ul>
{% foreach events %}
    <li>{{ loop_value->date|I18n::short_date }} - {{ loop_value->title }}</li>
{% end %}
</ul>

A few things to note:

{% end %} is short for {% endforeach %}
I18n::short_date is one of the date filters provided by the I18n class
By default, values are filtered using Template::sanitize() to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks

Running the example

You'll need a database table to run the example. You can paste the following into the DB Manager Elefant app's SQL shell to create one and use it to add some events to it.

create table `events` (
    `id` int not null auto_increment primary key,
    `title` char(48) not null,
    `date` date not null,
    index (`date`)
);

Next steps

As a next step, you could try creating an individual event page handler and linking to it from the main handler's template.

There's also a complete Events app for Elefant you can refer to for ideas, and to see how a full app is built.

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This documentation was generated by the Elefant Documentation Project. We're always open to new contributions *wink* *wink*

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