Project description
I have been assigned the task of building a data collection tool which will be used on a website which has been built to target certain keyword terms- you can view the website and the finished product at Debt Solutions Ireland
Website description
Debt problems can lead to many sleepless nights and a very stressful living. There are many services out there that can help consolidate debts and reduce payments.
The problem
We need a tool that we can use to collect leads (user information)
What you need
- PHP 5.3/mysql/apache- I use xampplite which comes with php 5.3.5 at time of writing and can be downloaded here- http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
- An editor- I edit on windows and therefore use notepad++, it rocks, its highly configurable and does the job- get it here http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
- Something to unzip your download winrar I use- get it here http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
Let’s get started
1 . First step is to visit http://fuelphp.com/
2. Download and unzip – I used winrar to unzip into a new folder in my xampplite htdocs folder- lets call it debt3
3. Time to configure some of the files. All the files for your application will be contained in the fuel/app/ folder. We need to set ourselves up a database to start with, if oyur using xampplite like I am just start xampp up (theres a shortcut in the start menu) and load up http://localhost/phpmyadmin into your browser. From here there will be an option to create a new database, I called my fuel_dev to match up 
You can now go to the database config file which is locate din the fuel/app/config folder add in your details
4.Next job is to do some configuration in the main config file, on line 22 we’ll remove the index.php so we get nice clean looking URL’s. Then we will add in the two packages we are going to use into our packages array- this is located on line 135 ‘orm’,'auth’
5. Thats the configuration done now, next job is to move the assets and configure the paths. Since I will be uploading only the application files to my webserver when I’m deploying I’m going to move the contents of the /public folder into the root directory- This will allow me to open my browser and pump in http://localhost/debt3 and see my application. (when we upload i’ll remove oil.php so it can’t be run on the server). The folder should now look like this
6. Any images, javascript files or css files will now go in the /assets folder, were we can reference them in our code using one of the classes. Next job is to edit the paths in the index.php so it matches up with our new directory structure. On line 14 I have removed ../ from the directory structure and the following two lines as well.
$app_path = '../fuel/app/';
becomes
$app_path = 'fuel/app/';
7.You can see what all three of my paths now look like-
8. Once you have swapped the paths out- open your browser and load your install (mine is located at http://localhost/debt3/ )- this is what mine looks like
9. Locate your fuelphp folder and open a command prompt folder into the root directory of the unzipped files now located in your htdocs folder- mine is – C:\xampplite\htdocs\debt3- to get to the directory open a dos prompt by typing command into the run tab on the start menu then typing cd c:\folder
10. From here, we are going to start to code! We are going to start by scaffolding our lead administration interface, we are going to have 3 controllers and 3 tables in our database. The 3 controllers are leads, users and the default welcome controller. The three tables are going to be- leads, migrations and users.
11. The process to create our application will be to create all the appropriate data capture mechanisms then lock down the correct controllers with the authentication library
12. To scaffold our leads controllers we want to store the following information
| Total_debt | We want to be able to sort the leads that we generate |
| Creditors | We want to know if a lead is suitable by the amount of creditors they have |
| Employment | We would like to know their employment status |
| first_name | Obviously we need to know their name |
| last_name | As above |
| We need details in case we can’t get in contact with them over the phone | |
| Suitable | A suitable time to contact the lead |
| Dated | A date of when they submitted the request for information form |
| Phone | A phone number to contact them with |
13. Once we have this done we can now run the migration- you can open your migrations folder located in /fuel/app/migrations and it should be called 001_create_leads.php 001 represents it being our first migration
This is what my file looks like. Now lets run the migration by typing in php oil refine migrate
into our dos window. If you get an error you probably do not have your database configured correctly.
We now should have a working application, fire up your web browser again and navigate over to the url of your app- mine is http://localhost/debt3/ (if you get an class not found error you probably never loaded the orm library in step 4, go back and revise). If everything worked correctly then you should have a nice screen like this one below- which lets you add/delete and update current leads
Go ahead and add a new lead to test it out, you deserve this little reward.
14.Next step is to setup our welcome controller to post the leads from the home page, I have designed my home page and have already built the form- the form is basically the following elements
<form action="<?=Uri::create('welcome/submit');?>" name="lead_form" accept-charset="utf-8" method="post" onsubmit="return validateForm()" > <table align="center" width="500" cellpadding="5" s> <tr> <td>Total Unsecured Debt</td> <td> <select name="total_debt" style="width:160px"> <option value="">Please Select</option> <option value="under 2k">under €2000</option> <option value="2k-5k">€2000 -> €5000</option> <option value="5k-15k">€5000-€15000</option> <option value="15k+">€15000+</option> </select> </td> </tr> <tr> <td>Creditors</td> <td><select name="creditors" style="width:160px"> <option value="">Please Select</option> <option value="2">2</option> <option value="3">3</option> <option value="4">4</option> <option value="5+">5</option> </select> </td> </tr> <tr> <td>Employment Status</td> <td><select name="employment" style="width:160px"> <option value="">Please Select</option> <option value="Employed Fulltime">Employed Fulltime</option> <option value="Employed Parttime">Employed Part Time</option> <option value="Self Employed">Self Employed</option> <option value="Unemployed">Unemployed</option> <option value="Retired">Retired</option> <option value="Student">Student</option> </select> </td> </tr> <tr> <td>First Name</td> <td><input type="text" name="first_name"></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Last Name</td> <td><input type="text" name="last_name"></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Email</td> <td><input type="text" name="email"></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Contact Number</td> <td><input type="text" name="phone"></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Suitable time to call</td> <td> <select name="suitable" style="width:160px"> <option value="">Please Select</option> <option value="Now">Call Now</option> <option value="9am-12pm<">9am-12pm</option> <option value="12pm-2pm">12pm-2pm</option> <option value="2pm-6pm">2pm-6pm</option> <option value="6pm-9pm">6pm-9pm</option> </select> </td> </tr> <tr> <td></td> <td><INPUT TYPE="image" SRC="<?= Asset::find_file('button_2.png','img')?>"/></td> </tr> </table>
I have used limited fuelphp classes as I usually design the forms out html first and then move into programming them. I used the Asset::find_file(‘button_2.png’,'img’) to locate the submit button in the assets/img folder I also used the <?=Uri::create(‘welcome/submit’);?> to create the location for where the form will be submitted. Also I used javascript to do the validation of the form on the client side rather than the server side.
This is what the controller looks like- firstly the index function to load the home page
public function action_index() { $this->response->body = View::factory('welcome/index'); }
A very simple function is all thats needed- our index html page is the file named index.php and located in the fuel\app\views\welcome folder- just replace the index.php file thats there- our form is now submitting to welcome/submit which corresponds to action_submit function in our welcome controller, listed below
public function action_submit(){ $val = Validation::factory(); $val->add('first_name', 'First Name')->add_rule('required'); if (Input::method() == 'POST' && $val->run()) { $lead = Model_Lead::factory(array( 'total_debt' => Input::post('total_debt'), 'creditors' => Input::post('creditors'), 'employment' => Input::post('employment'), 'first_name' => Input::post('first_name'), 'last_name' => Input::post('last_name'), 'phone' => Input::post('phone'), 'email' => Input::post('email'), 'suitable' => Input::post('suitable'), 'dated' => date('y-m-d'), )); if ($lead and $lead->save()) { //Session::set_flash('notice', 'Added lead #' . $lead->id . '.'); $this->response->body = View::factory('welcome/success'); } else { Session::set_flash('notice', 'Could not save lead.'); Response::redirect('welcome'); } } $this->template->title = "Leads"; $this->template->body = View::factory('leads/create'); }
Just to explain some of the code, firstly we are testing to make sure the information was posted and it was someone just “getting the page- this could fill our database with dodgy 0 value inputs since we are doing the validation on the client side. I have included one validation rule just to make sure nothing empty is being post on the first_name.
Once we have our array of input items- made out, its easy enough just to create a new lead object with the model and then lead->save() saves it- without even the need to go and write a function in our model to this.
If you now submit the form you should see a record appear in the database- check out the leads scaffold. You may need to add in the success view.
Once we have this tested and working, we are now going to lock down the leads controller so that only authorised users can view it
15. Create the user controller- Next thing to do is to go back to our command prompt and use oil to generate our controllers- type in the following command “php oil g controller users login logout” and this will generate our users controller with login and logout functions and views, although we will only be using the login view
16. Load up your controller and we are going to add to our controller functions- this what it currently looks like
class Controller_Users extends Controller_Template { public function action_login() { $this->template->title = 'Users » Login'; $this->template->content = View::factory('users/login'); } public function action_logout() { $this->template->title = 'Users » Logout'; $this->template->content = View::factory('users/logout'); } }
and now we are going to replace the action_login and action_logout with our own code
public function action_login() { if(Auth::check()) { Response::redirect('leads'); // user already logged in } $val = Validation::factory('users'); $val->add_field('username', 'Your username', 'required|min_length[3]|max_length[20]'); $val->add_field('password', 'Your password', 'required|min_length[3]|max_length[20]'); if($val->run()) { $auth = Auth::instance(); if($auth->login($val->validated('username'), $val->validated('password'))) { Session::set_flash('notice', 'FLASH: logged in'); Response::redirect('leads'); } else { $data['username'] = $val->validated('username'); $data['errors'] = 'Wrong username/password. Try again'; } } else { if($_POST) { $data['username'] = $val->validated('username'); $data['errors'] = 'Wrong username/password combo. Try again'; } else { $data['errors'] = false; } } $this->template->title = 'Login'; $this->template->errors = @$data['errors']; $this->template->content = View::factory('users/login', $data); } public function action_logout() { Auth::instance()->logout(); Response::redirect('/users/login'); }
In the login function you can see that we are checking against whether the user is already holding a session- if they are just redirect them to the leads controller, remember we have already auto loaded the auth library.
The next part is the validation of our login fields, which is pretty straightforward. We then call if($auth->login($val->validated(‘username’), $val->validated(‘password’))) to check the login, if its successful we then redirect the user to the leads controller, calling this function starts a session for the user. The rest of the controller is simply to validate the user information, load the login form and deal with any errors-
Our login form is pretty simple, we replace our login.php view with this code-
<h2>Login</h2> <p>Login to your account using your username and password.</p> <?php echo isset($errors) ? $errors : false; ?> <?php echo Form::open('users/login'); ?> <div class="input text required"> <?php echo Form::label('Username', 'username'); ?> <?php echo Form::input('username', isset($username) ? $username : false, array('size' => 30)); ?> </div> <div class="input password required"> <?php echo Form::label('Password', 'password'); ?> <?php echo Form::password('password', NULL, array('size' => 30)); ?> </div> <div class="input submit"> <?php echo Form::submit('login', 'Login'); ?> </div>
This is using some of the fuelphp form class. This is how it looks in the browser
In order to use this we must create a user account.
Go ahead and generate a migration by typing this into the command prompt again
php oil g migration create_users username:varchar[50] password:varchar[50] email:varchar[70] profile_fields:text group:int[11] last_login:int[20] login_hash:varchar[255]
and dont forget to run the migration once its created-
php oil refine migrate
One bit of configuration is required, we need to change the table name from simpleusers to users in fuel\packages\auth\config\simpleauth.php on line 24 it says
'table_name' => 'simpleusers',
change this to
'table_name' => 'users',
We now need to create our admin account, we are going to do this manually since there will be only one login, I’m going to create a temporary function which I will delete after I run it from the browser.
The function looks like this
public function action_create(){ $create_user = Auth::instance()->create_user('admin','password','chris@justni.com','100'); if( $create_user ) { echo "User created"; } else { echo "not created"; } }
I just ran it there- of course you going to change the email address and password to match your own, but when your run it, it should say “User created” (you may get and error from the template but don’t worry about that) Now go back and remove the function as this application is only going to be used by the on person there is no need for the signup forms.
Next we are going to add some code to the before function in the leads controller. After you declare the class and before the rest of your functions add in the following function
function before(){ parent::before(); if (! Auth::check()) { Response::redirect('/users/login'); } }
This will check if the person is logged in and if not- redirect to the login page. And we’re done- you can see the site I built this for live now at Debt Solutions Ireland
Summary
To finish with, I made some pointers on why to use fuelphp and why not-
Why not to use fuelphp
- API changed in 2 months since I started using it, its not dramatic but its annoying
- There is a few errors I came across while developing and some simple features are just not there
- The documentation is nowhere near complete never mind at the level of codeigniter. There are parts of the documentation with just the headers
- I was looking for a low cost web hosting solution that supported the features of php 5.3 in Ireland, I wasn’t going to pay more than €5 or about $8 and I couldn’t find anyone, everyone kept trying to flog me dearer services or up sell vps which I didnt really want. I just wanted a cheap host with its services in Ireland, I couldn’t find anyone.
- Magic migrations at the time of writing didn’t work completely
Why to use fuelphp
- It has everything that you need out of the box, Auth/ACL and ORM- these items are what I miss the most from codeigniter
- PHP 5.3, it uses namespaces and anonymous functions which will come into great use as more php coders get to grips with them.
- It still has small footprint which is always a winner, some frameworks come out with little features and lots of code that doesnt do much, which makes it hard to learn, fuelphp is lightweight and feature rich- win/win in my books
But, if FuelPHP was developed and commented thoroughly over the next 6-12 months I could be a great piece of kit, its already quite clean.
Thanks to bravosms in the comments for pointing out a typo
