Creating a Simple Extendable Module System
Many web pages these days contain a sidebar filled with all sorts of goodies:?? Calendars, Searches, Links, RSS News feeds, etc. For those DIYers this can get sort of ugly if you are sticking all of these into a single php document.?? What we are going to show you in this article is how to create a simple way to import these types of features as self contained modules. First we’ll start real simple, then cover a few ways to expand this.
What you’ll need
Essentially you need a basic PHP enabled website (doh!), additionally for this lesson you’ll need the File_Find class available from PEAR. File_Find is going to help us read in our modules. There are other ways to do this that aren’t too difficult, but there is no reason to reinvent the wheel either.
Getting File_Find with PEAR
Provided you have pear properly installed, getting File_Find is rather trivial. To give it a check try typing pear at the command line. Just typing pear should result in the a print out some help options for using PEAR. For example:
stitch:~ scott$ pear Usage: pear [options] command [command-options]Type "pear help options" to list all options. Type "pear help " to get the help for the specified command. Commands: build????????????????Build an Extension From C Source bundle??????????????Unpacks a Pecl Package clear-cache?? Clear XML-RPC Cache config-get??????Show One Setting config-help????Show Information About Setting config-set??????Change Setting config-show????Show All Settings cvsdiff????????????Run a "cvs diff" for all files in a package cvstag??????????????Set CVS Release Tag download??????????Download Package download-all??Downloads each available package from master_server info??????????????????Display information about a package install????????????Install Package list??????????????????List Installed Packages list-all??????????List All Packages list-upgrades??List Available Upgrades login????????????????Connects and authenticates to remote server logout??????????????Logs out from the remote server makerpm????????????Builds an RPM spec file from a PEAR package package?????????? Build Package package-dependencies??Show package dependencies package-validate??Validate Package Consistency remote-info????Information About Remote Packages remote-list????List Remote Packages run-tests????????Run Regression Tests search??????????????Search remote package database shell-test??????Shell Script Test sign??????????????????Sign a package distribution file uninstall????????Un-install Package upgrade????????????Upgrade Package upgrade-all????Upgrade All Packages
If you get that, or something similar, we can assume that PEAR is installed. Now to install File_Find, simply type:
stitch:~ scott$ sudo pear install File_Find???? Password: downloading File_Find-0.2.0.tgz ... Starting to download File_Find-0.2.0.tgz (3,245 bytes) ....done: 3,245 bytes install ok: File_Find 0.2.0
(Note the sudo, you’ll likely need administrative rights to install classes with PEAR. If you don’t, you can still download the PEAR classes individually, and install them in a local php include directory.)
Finally to make sure everything worked like it should we can list our installed PEAR classes and make sure File_Find is there:
stitch:~ scott$ pear list Installed packages: =================== Package?????????????? Version State Archive_Tar?????? 1.2???????? stable Console_Getopt 1.2???????? stable DB???????????????????????? 1.6.8???? stable File_Find?????????? 0.2.0???? stable HTTP???????????????????? 1.3.3???? stable Mail???????????????????? 1.1.4???? stable Net_SMTP???????????? 1.2.6???? stable Net_Socket???????? 1.0.2???? stable PEAR???????????????????? 1.3.3.1 stable SQLite???????????????? 1.0?? ??????stable XML_Parser???????? 1.2.1???? stable XML_RPC?????????????? 1.1.0???? stable
Alas, everything looks right.
