Cheap Tricks Library Framework

Essentials

• About
• License
• Philosophy

Introduction

• How It Works
• How To Add A Simple Page
• How To Add A Guestbook

Documentation

• Object Loading Mechanism
• File and Directory Structure
• Constants, Variables, Functions
• Standard Module Interfaces

Modules

• Mapper
• Site
• DB
• Session
• Security
• Tpl

Philosophy

CTLF is a framework based on these ideas:

• It is a framework for those developers who use OOP (it uses classes and objects).
• Framework should be as minimal as possible to reduce maintenance costs.
• Framework should be very efficient and lightweight compared to other PHP web application frameworks.
• Framework should be really simple to learn and start using.
• New websites should be easy to fork from existing ones.
• It should be possible to use modules that are not written for this Framework. (That's why _loader() functions and ./system/lib dir exist).
• It should be easy to update the modules used in a website (that's why they should be kept in separate directories).
• It should be possible to add pages to a website running on a framework by simply adding HTML or PHP files. (This is achieved via index.php?script=... and Site.Site->showScript().)
• It should be possible to create hacks and workarounds without breaking framework structure and keeping all its functionality (that's why directory names are defined in constants and modconfig can be predefined).