PHP 5 e-commerce Development- P16 docx

Planning our Framework[ 58 ] .htaccess file We have our index.php file set up to process the incoming request and send it to the relevant controller.. We specifically covered: Various so

Planning our Framework

[ 58 ]

.htaccess file

We have our index.php file set up to process the incoming request and send

it to the relevant controller However, URLs which have the format of index

php?page=some/page/on/our/site or

index.php?page=products/view/some-product are not as attractive or memorable as those with just some/page/on/our/

site or products/view/some-product With the Apache module mod_rewrite we

can get our site to rewrite the more friendly URLs into the less friendly ones for our

framework to understand

ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

DirectoryIndex index.php

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?page=$1 [L,QSA]

</IfModule>

This htaccess file instructs the web server (Apache) to use index.php as the index

file within a directory It also instructs Apache that if the mod_rewrite module is

enabled, the requests that are not for valid files or directories should be rewritten

to the main index.php file However, anything that occurs after the directory

containing the htaccess file, should be appended to the page $_GET variable

For example, oursite.com/pagea would be rewritten to oursite.com/index

php?page=pagea

Configuration file

We also need a configuration file, to store our database connection settings Most

other settings will be stored in the database However, the actual connection details

cannot be stored within it, as we need to know the details before we connect to the

database; otherwise, we cannot connect

<?php

$configs = array();

$configs['db_host_ecomframe'] = 'localhost';

$configs['db_user_ecomframe'] = 'root';

$configs['db_pass_ecomframe'] = '';

$configs['db_name_ecomframe'] = 'phpecommerce';

?>

Chapter 2

[ 59 ]

The simplest way to store the settings is within an array in a configuration file, with

the keys of the array relating to what the value is used for The suffix of ecomframe is

used to allow us to store multiple database connection details within the same array

What about e-commerce?

Looking at frameworks is important; however, we haven't really covered anything

specific to e-commerce yet So where does e-commerce fit into this? Most of our

e-commerce functionality fits into this by adding models and controllers that

perform the relevant e-commerce tasks we require, such as managing products,

handling the order processing and checkout process, and so on

An e-commerce registry?

One thing that we could consider is an e-commerce registry We could perhaps have

our shopping basket as a registry, containing a collection of products This would

make it simple for each page to access the shopping basket and return the number

of items contained within For the framework we are going to create in this book, we

are not going to use this method However, it may be something you wish to think

about with your own framework After saying that, you may be wondering how we

are going to provide access to the basket to all areas of the framework The answer

is with some call backs At certain key points of execution within the framework,

certain functions will be called Inside this, we provide code to interact with the

shopping basket Exactly where these callback functions are, and when they are

called, is a discussion for another chapter

This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010

953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724

Planning our Framework

[ 60 ]

Summary

In this chapter, we created a sound start to our framework which will be extended

with e-commerce functionality during the rest of this book We specifically covered:

Various software architectural and design patterns, looking into best

practices for implementing certain aspects of our framework

Developing a directory structure for our framework

Creating a registry to store core objects

How we will use the MVC pattern to structure and operate our framework

Routing page requests around our framework and an overview of routers

Creating our single point of contact for accessing the framework, as well as

an htaccess and configuration file

Next we move onto storing, displaying, and managing products and their categories,

some true e-commerce functionality!

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Products and Categories

With a basic structure to our framework in place, we can now start to think about the

e-commerce aspects to it In this chapter you will learn:

How to structure content within the framework, including:

Page structure Product structure Categories structure How to access and display products and categories with models

and controllers

How to design views to interact with our framework

As we discussed in Chapter 1, PHP e-commerce, Juniper Theatricals requires a

framework to power their website as well as the e-commerce features, so page

management is a must

What we need

Before we start building products and categories into our framework, let's think

about what information we need, both to display to our customers and for the

use of the store administrator

To provide our customers with sufficient product information, we need to inform

them of the name of the product, a detailed description of the product, and the price

of the product We may also wish to show them a photograph of the product and

a number of additional images related to the product Additionally, we may wish

to make them aware of the weight and the cost of shipping, number of items we

have in stock, as well as any categories the product is contained within From an

administration perspective, we need a reference number, or ID number, and we may

need a Stock Keeping Unit reference We may also require a search engine friendly

name, which is used within the URL to view the product

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This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010

953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724

Products and Categories

[ 62 ]

Product information

Taking into account what we have just discussed, at a minimum we need to store the

following information:

ID A reference number for the framework to reference the product

Name The name of the product

Search Engine

Friendly Name A search engine friendly name for the product to be displayed in URLs

Description A detailed description of the product

SKU A stock keeping reference (usually supplier's reference, or for

integration with stock keeping systems) Price The cost of the product

Stock The number of these products which are currently in stock

Primary image An image of the product

Additional images A number of additional images which are displayed as thumbnails

and then toggled into the place of the main page

Shipping costs and information will be discussed in Chapter 8, Shipping and Taxes,

so we don't need to take those aspects into consideration just yet

Category information

We need to be able to contain our products within categories, so what information

would we need to collect for our categories?

ID A reference number for the framework to reference

the category Name The name of the category

Description A detailed description of the category

Search Engine Friendly

Name A search engine friendly name for the category, to be used for display within URLs