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Overview

The configuration can be found in /app/configuration/configuration.php which contains a simple array.

Certain defaults are already set, but feel free to change them.

The main 'areas' in a basic setup are

domain
db
defaults
view
errors

QuickStart

To get up and running straight away, just fill in the db and domain sections

domain:
- host = host name.
- root = empty if root, directory name if not.
db: Settings that you would use for PDO connection

Access Settings

Custom Settings

There may be times you need to access the settings, either pre-configured or custom.
They can be accessed via static methods in the Config class

To add settings, we recommend you add a new nested array

Custom settings example


"customsettings" => [
  "custom_one"  =>  "foo", 
  "custom_two"  =>  [
    "deepdown" => "yeah"
  ]
]

Referencing the Config class

We use the Config class to easily read settings.

If we are the the element\core namespace, we can simply call the static methods of the class.
If we are in a controller, we can use $this->config.
If none of the above, we must use the full namespace \element\core\Config

At the risk of labouring the point, here's a quick table to illustrate

Situation	Syntax
element\core namespace	Config::get(key, key)
controller	$this->config::get(key, key)
none of the above	\element\core\Config::get(key, key)

In the following examples, we will use the plain 'Config' syntax

Get single value

Config::get(key,key);

To get our 'custom_one' setting


  $setting = Config::get("customsettings","custom_one");
  // $setting has value of 'foo'

Get whole section

Config::getSection(key);

To get our 'customsettings' section


  $settings = Config::getSection('customsettings');
  var_dump($settings);

  /* --- Output --- 
    array (size=2)
    'custom_one' => string 'foo' (length=3)
    'custom_two' => 
      array (size=1)
        'deepdown' => string 'yeah' (length=4)
  */

Deeply nested setting

Config::Instance()->_config[key][key][…]

Access our 'deepdown' setting


  $setting = Config::Instance()->_config['customsettings']['custom_two']['deepdown'];
  // $setting has value of 'yeah'

Domain

Provides information about the location of your site.

Example


  "domain" =>[
    "host" => "localhost/",
    "root" => "element"
  ],

host

Describes your ... host name!
[subdomains].[second-level-domain].[top-level-domain]
ie: www.coooffffeee.com

root

The folder your files are in.
If this actually is the root folder, this should be an empty string.

DB

The db section contains the information you would use to create a PDO connection.


  "db" => [
    "dsn"   =>  "[database]",
    "host"  =>  "[host]",
    "user"  =>  "[database-user]",
    "pw"    =>  "[password]"
  ]

Let's convert this to a single array for an example


  $db = [
    "dsn"   =>  "bigdavesdatabase",
    "host"  =>  "localhost",
    "user"  =>  "bigdave",
    "pw"    =>  "bigdave-password"
  ];

Now we can form the connection and get results using PDO


  $CONN = new PDO(
      "mysql:host=" .   $db['host'] . 
      ";dbname="    .   $db['dsn'], 
                        $db['user'], 
                        $db['pw']
  );

  $STH = $CONN->query('SELECT * FROM users');

  $STH->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

  while($row = $STH->fetch()) {
    var_dump($row);
  }

NOTE: In element, database access is hidden under layers of abstraction, with methods and models to assist, so there should be no need to directly instantiate PDO: this is simply for example

Defaults

This section contains the standard settings for the framework itself


  "defaults" => [
    "controller_suffix"   =>  "Controller",
    "action_suffix"       =>  "Action",
    "default_controller"  =>  "Index",
    "default_action"      =>  "index"
  ]

controller_suffix

When you create a controller class:

Class must extend Controller class
File must be in /app/controllers/
The file name and class 'suffix' must match what you define as your 'controller_suffix'

Standard example


  // File name 'IndexController.php'
  class IndexController extends Controller {
    // methods
  }

Custom controller_suffix of 'Class'


  // File name 'IndexClass.php'
  class IndexClass extends Controller {
    // methods
  }

More information on controllers and their methods can be found here

action_suffix

Within each controller, there must be methods in order to trigger an action.
The default suffix is 'Action'

Standard example


  public function IndexAction(){
    // make wonderful things happen here
  }

Custom action_suffix of 'Method'


  public function IndexMethod(){
    // be truly splendid here
  }

More information on controllers and their methods can be found here

default_controller

If no controller is supplied in the URL, this is the default controller the framework will serve up

URL structure http:// [yoursite.com] / [controller] / [method] / [parameter1] / [parameter2] ...

Example URL with controller:
http://yoursite.com/index

Example URL without controller:
http://yoursite.com

default_action

If no method is supplied in the URL, this is the default method the framework will serve up

URL structure http:// [yoursite.com] / [controller] / [method] / [parameter1] / [parameter2] ...

Example URL with method:
http://yoursite.com/index/index

Example URL without method:
http://yoursite.com/index

View

element uses Smarty for views and this section refers to settings for that.
Documentation on Smarty can be found here

For the methods available in element for setting view variables and overriding views, see Controllers > Views.

We recommend that in production you set caching to a valid number of seconds

Default view settings


  "view" => [
    "templateDir" =>  '../app/views/',
    "compileDir"  =>  '../app/templates_c/',
    "cacheDir"    =>  '../app/cache/',
    "caching"     =>  0 // change this value in production
  ]

Errors

The errors section currently has only two options, redirect and redirect_location

This is primarily for handling 404 errors at the moment.

The redirect_location will automatically prepend protocal, 'host' and 'root', so 404.html becomes https://localhost/element/404.html, and because of the way .htaccess works in public, the file is found.

At the time of writing, only 404 errors on controllers redirect, actions throw 'no action with that name' error.

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Reference

Configuration