Configuration

Most things in LightVC are customizable. For example:

Customizing LightVC is easy, and is done through the Lvc_Config static methods.

Customizing Paths

Many paths can be added for each part of the application by calling addControllerPath(), addControllerViewPath(), addLayoutViewPath(), and addElementViewPath().

For example, the following could be placed in an application's app/config/application.php file to setup a single directory for each piece:

<?php
define('APP_PATH', dirname(dirname(__FILE__)));
Lvc_Config::addControllerPath(APP_PATH . 'controllers/');
Lvc_Config::addControllerViewPath(APP_PATH . 'views/');
Lvc_Config::addLayoutViewPath(APP_PATH . 'views/layouts/');
Lvc_Config::addElementViewPath(APP_PATH . 'views/elements/');
?>

Customizing File Suffixes/Extensions

The default suffix for all items is .php. This can be changed as shown in the following example:

<?php
Lvc_Config::setControllerSuffix('_controller.php');
Lvc_Config::setControllerViewSuffix('.thml');
Lvc_Config::setLayoutViewSuffix('_layout.thml');
Lvc_Config::setElementViewSuffix('_element.thml');
?>

Customizing Action Parameter Passing

This option is controlled through setSendActionParamsAsArray(), and defaults to false. To change it, use:

<?php
Lvc_Config::setSendActionParamsAsArray(true);
?>

When set to true, controller actions need to accept only one parameter, like so:

<?php
class ExampleController extends AppController {
    public function actionTest($params) {
    }
}
?>

The $params will contain an array of the arguments passed to the controller.

If left off (recommended if mod_rewrite is available), controller actions should be coded like so:

<?php
class ExampleController extends AppController {
    public function actionTest($paramOne = null, $paramTwo = null /*, and so on... */) {
    }
}
?>

Customizing Default Controller/Action

If all routes fail while processing a request, LightVC will try one last time using the defaults specified in Lvc_Config. These can be customized like so:

<?php
// The controller name to use if no controller name can be gathered from the
// request.
Lvc_Config::setDefaultControllerName('page');

// The action name to call on the defaultControllerName if no controller name can
// be gathered from the request.
Lvc_Config::setDefaultControllerActionName('view');

// The action params to use when calling defaultControllerActionName if no
// controller name can be gathered from the request.
Lvc_Config::setDefaultControllerActionParams(array('page_name' => 'home'));
?>

It's possible that the route was able to map a controller to use but not the action. The default action to invoke can be specified like so:

<?php
// The default action name to call on a controller if the controller name was
// gathered from the request, but the action name couldn't be.
Lvc_Config::setDefaultActionName('index');
?>

Use an AppController

This requires no config calls to LightVC. Just write an AppController class that extends Lvc_PageController:

<?php
class AppController extends Lvc_PageController {
    protected $layout = 'default';
}
?>

Then make all controllers extend AppController rather than Lvc_PageController.

Use an AppView

To add custom functionality to the View layer, write an AppView class that extends Lvc_View:

<?php
class AppView extends Lvc_View {
    public function requireCss($cssFile) {
        $this->controller->requireCss($cssFile);
    }
}
?>

Then tell LightVC about it:

<?php
Lvc_Config::setViewClassName('AppView');
?>

Customizing Layout Variable Names

The only layout variable hard-coded into LightVC is layoutContent, which contains the output from the controller's view. Even this can be changed, as in the following example:

<?php
Lvc_Config::setLayoutContentVarName('content_for_layout');
?>