today i was planning to start the documentation of orchid framework for the rest of us(?). so this one is the first installment of this series. you will find small tutorials everyday. just stick with the series and you will see how far we can fly you. time to get high [please note that the text in this series will be all-small cap]

getting started with orchid

orchid is a small framework with bare necessities to kick start developing killer php web applications. this framework is not flooded with unnecessary features and libraries. it only contains the essential helpers and libraries to boost up your development, not slowing it down. orchid features a very short learning curve, which will keep you trouble free. small footprint and excellent profile will be your first choice, which you will definitely realize once you start realizing the power that orchid brings in your hand. long story short, orchid is the next framework going to rock.

you can checkout orchid from it’s subversion repository
svn checkout http://orchidframework.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ orchidframework

orchid comes pre equipped with excellent configuration directives in a config file, which we will focus in details in the upcoming tutorials. for now lets just start as is.

to create your first application, we need to create a folder named “app” inside the orchidframework directory. after you create that, there will be three directories named app, core and tests.

in orchid, controllers reside in app/controllers directory. views (templates) reside in app/views/controller_name/ directory, which means if the name of your controller is “blog”, all your views remains in app/views/blog/ directory. lets create our first controller named “talk”. the controller file will be app/controllers/talk.php.

a controller in orchid is a normal php class file which extends the base controller class. all the public methods in a controller class are considered as action. a method named “base” is the primary action for all the controller in orchid. and for now, this is all the information you need to create your first controller in orchid.

lets write a sample action in our controller, named “base”

<?php
/**
 * the source file is app/controllers/talk.php
 */
class talk extends controller
{
	public function base()
	{
		echo "hello";
	}
}
?>

now you can run this controller by pointing your browser to the following location. i considered that you have hosted orchid in your document root (i.e /var/www/orchid)

http://localhost/orchid/talk

whoops, what have we done wrong? why do we get an error?

we are seeing this error because we didnt write our view (or template, whatever you call it) yet. and this is not a good coding practice to output anthing directly from your controller. whatever the size of the output, you should display it by passing the data to a view first. this will ensure the consistency of your project through out the application. orchid is flexible, but keeping the word “flexibility with responsibility”

lets write the view file, named “<i>base.php</i>” which will reside in app/views/talk/ directory.

<?//the source file is app/views/talk/base.php?>
<?=$talkings;?>

so where from do we get the variable named $talkings? dont worry, you will have to pass it to the view from your controller. in fact through out your application you have to pass all the data to a view from the controller in almost every mvc framework and orchid is not the exception in this case. lets re write the controller

<?php
/**
 * the source file is app/controllers/talk.php
 */
class talk extends controller
{
	public function base()
	{
		$this->setViewParam("talkings","hello world");
	}
}
?>

now you will see the output “hello world” as output when you point your browser to http://localhost/orchid/talk

orchid is very flexible and if you need to raw output (for example after a ajax request) some content from your controller, you can even do that. orchid wont restrict you from not doing so, but what we really said is that for good coding you should follow this guideline.

so that’s it. getting started in orchid wont take more than 5 minutes and that is where the blessings of using a framework is in. in next tutorial we will learn how to use a model in orchid.