Elefant with other frameworks

Since Elefant tries to stay a very minimalist web framework, there are times you'll need to integrate with other libraries and frameworks. Here are some steps to working with some other popular general frameworks within Elefant.

Composer and PSR-0

To install packages through Composer, simply add them to your composer.json file, and set the vendor-dir to lib/vendor like this:

{
    ""require"": {
        ""merk/Dough"": ""*"",
        ""elefant/app-assetic"": ""*"",
        ""elefant/app-form"": ""*"",
        ""elefant/theme-montreal"": ""*""
    },
    ""config"": {
        ""vendor-dir"": ""lib/vendor""
    }
}

Notice that two of the packages listed are Elefant apps, and one is an Elefant theme. Elefant fully supports Composer for installing apps and themes in addition to third party libraries.

For more information, see Using Composer packages.

For libraries and frameworks that are compatible with PSR-0, simply drop them into lib/vendor/ and you can autoload any class by its namespace.

Zend Framework

Install the Zend Framework anywhere in your PHP include_path (dropping the Zend folder into your site root will even do the trick).

You can now use Zend Framework components as you normally would, for example:

<?php

require_once 'Zend/Acl.php';

$acl = new Zend_Acl ();

$acl->addRole (new Zend_Acl_Role ('member'))
    ->addRole (new Zend_Acl_Role ('admin'));

$acl->add (new Zend_Acl_Resource ('myapp'));
$acl->deny ('member', 'myapp');
$acl->allow ('admin', 'myapp');

echo $acl->isAllowed ('member', 'myapp') ? 'allowed' : 'denied';

?>

PEAR

Install your PEAR packages as you normally would, for example:

pear install Log-1.12.6

Now you can use the PEAR Log package like this:

<?php

require_once 'Log.php';

$logger = Log::singleton ('error_log', PEAR_LOG_TYPE_SYSTEM, 'myapp');
$logger->log ('testing');

?>

To see the output of the above, check your Apache or nginx error log for the output myapp: testing.

eZ Components

Install the eZ Components package according to their instructions, for example:

pear channel-discover components.ez.no
pear install -a ezc/eZComponents

Now you can initialize the eZ Components autoloader and use its libraries like this:

<?php

require_once 'ezc/Base/base.php';
spl_autoload_register (array ('ezcBase', 'autoload'));

$mail = new ezcMailComposer ();
$mail->from = new ezcMailAddress ('joe@example.com', 'Joe Smith');
// etc.

?>

Symfony Components

To use one of the Symfony Components in your Elefant app, simply download that component to your app's lib folder, e.g., apps/myapp/lib/ and then use it like any ordinary PHP class. Elefant's autoloader will take care of everything else for you.

Note: Symfony2 users can also put class hierarchies into lib/vendor and Elefant will use PSR-0 autoloading to find them.

For example, using the Yaml component:

<?php

$yaml_data = ""foo:

bar: asdf"";

$yaml = new sfYamlParser ();
info ($yaml->parse ($yaml_data));

?>

If you run the above example, you should see the following output:

Array
(
    [foo] => Array
        (
            [bar] => asdf
        )

)

Regular PHP classes

You can simply drop any regular PHP class into your app's lib folder and go. For example, say you need to connect to an ActiveResource service using PHP ActiveResource. Simply drop the ActiveResource.php file into apps/myapp/lib and use it like this:

<?php

class Song extends ActiveResource {
    var $site = 'http://localhost:3000/';
}

$song = new Song ();
// etc.

?>

Elefant's autoloader will automatically load the library upon first use.

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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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