The Concept Behind the Code

Conceptually, the app consists of the following elements:

• section: A section is a piece of content that will be rendered to a page. A page can consist of a single section or can be composed of multiple sections. A section is always associated with a style.
• style: A style defines the apperance of a section and specifies the type of content that can be assigned to a section. The content is specified through fields.
• field: A field defines a specific bit of content that will be rendered within a section. Each style has a set of fields and the style template defines where these fields will be rendered. However, given that multiple sections can have the same styles, while the type of a field remains always the same, the content is specific for each section.
• component: To seperate concerns the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern is used. In order to simplify the handling of this pattern components are introduced: A component combines a model, a view, and a controller into one class which allows to encapsulate the MVC pattern without losing the aspect of seperation. Every style is a component but a component must not necessarily be a style.
• page: A page is the root element that is requested by the browser when connecting to a specific url. This means that a page is always associated to a unique url and has a unique name (called keyword). Several types of pages exist:
  • Section Page: A section page is the most common type page. It is a collection of sections that are rendered one below the other. The content of section pages can be modified in the CMS.
  • Navigation Page: A navigation page is a special type of section page where only one section is rendered at a time. A set of root sections, or navigation sections, is assigned to a navigation page. An id that is postfixed to the url indicates which section is rendered.
  • Component Page: A component page renders one single custom component. The name of the component to render is matched by the keyword of the page.
  • Custom Page: A custom page renders whatever is defined by a function with the name create_'page_keyword'_page() where 'page_keyword' is the keyword of the page. This function must be defined in index.php.
• service: A service is a collection of functionality that allows to manipulate certain aspects of the application. This includes a handler for database access, user permissions, link generation, user input, content parsing, etc.