HomePHP Page 4 - Building a Site Engine with PHP, Part 2
Module Madness - PHP
If you read the first article in this series, you’d know that we’re about to start talking about the plug-in and module system for our site engine. Along with the plug-ins and modules, we’re also going to be discussing some of the general functions that are needed to make site engine work correctly.
The modules are loaded in almost the exact same way as the plug-ins. The only difference is that we need to check to see if the plug-in that the module depends on is loaded. There's not much more to it than that. So let's take a look at the module class.
<?PHP class modules{
public $lcount; //this will hold the number of modules that we actually load into the module list public $mcount; //this will hold the number of modules that we actually load into the engine public $module_list; //this will hold our array of module information public $module_error; //this will hold any errors that are produced by loading a module public $module_load; //this will hold the names of all the modules we've loaded
function modules($site_id=""){ //we name the main function the same as the class so that it initializes when the class is called global $sql, $site, $plugins; //this requests the $sql, $site, and $plugins classes as a global variables $this->lcount=0; //set the default of $mcount to 0 because we don't yet have any modules in the modules list yet $this->mcount=0; //set the default of $mcount to 0 because we don't yet have any modules loaded if($site_id==""){ //check to see if the administrator overrides the $site_id to list modules for other sites $site_id = $site->site['ID']; //if the site_id isn't overridden set it to the current site's id } $modules_list=$sql->_query("SELECT DISTINCT modules.mod_ID, modules.mod_name, modules.mod_dir, modules.mod_file, modules.plugin_ID FROM module_status, plugin_status, modules WHERE modules.mod_ID = module_status.mod_ID AND modules.plugin_ID = plugin_status.plugin_ID AND module_status.mod_status = 'initialized' AND plugin_status.plugin_status = 'initialized' AND module_status.site_ID = '$site_id'"); //select all the initialized module information from the database while($module=$sql->_fetch_object($modules_list)){ //start a loop to get the information from the select query using the _fetch_object function $this->module_list['mod_ID'][]=$module->mod_ID; //add the current modules ID to the plugin list $this->module_list['mod_name'][]=$module->mod_name; //add the current modules name to the plugin list $this->module_list['mod_dir'][]=$module->mod_dir; //add the current modules directory to the plugin list $this->module_list['mod_file'][]=$module->mod_file; //add the current modules filename to the plugin list $plug_key=array_keys($plugins->plugin_list['plug_ID'],$module->plugin_ID); //select the plug-in ID from the plug-in list using the array_keys() function with the modules "plugin_id" as a search parameter $this->module_list['plug_dir'][]=$plugins->plugin_list['plug_dir'][$plug_key[0]]; //add the current modules dependency's directory to the plugin list $this->module_list['plug_file'][]=$plugins->plugin_list['plug_file'][$plug_key[0]]; //add the current modules dependency's file to the plugin list $this->lcount++; // update mcount for each module we add to the module list } if($this->mcount==0){ //check to see if any modules have been loaded into the engine $this->load(); //if no modules are loaded, call the load() function to load the modules } }
function load(){ //this function loads the modules from the modules list if(is_array($this->module_list)){ //make sure that the modules list as an array, to prevent errors for($i=0;$i<$this->mcount;$i++){ //start a loop to identify each module in the plug-ins list if(file_exists("/{$this->module_list['plug_dir'][$i]}/{$this->module_list['plug_file'][$i]}/{$this->module_list['mod_dir'][$i]}/{$this->module_list['mod_file'][$i]}.mod.php")){ //make sure the modules file exists, to prevent errors include("/{$this->module_list['plug_dir'][$i]}/{$this->module_list['plug_file'][$i]}/{$this->module_list['mod_dir'][$i]}/{$this->module_list['mod_file'][$i]}.mod.php"); //include the module into the engine $this->module_load[]=$this->module_list['mod_name'][$i]; //add the modules name to list of loaded modules $this->mcount++; //update mcount for each module that's loaded }else{ $this->module_error[]="The module file: <b>/{$this->module_list['plug_dir'][$i]}/{$this->module_list['plug_file'][$i]}/{$this->module_list['mod_dir'][$i]}/{$this->module_list['mod_file'][$i]}.mod.php</b> Does not exist"; //if the module can't load add an error to the error list } } } }
} ?>
As you can see, it's not much different from the plug-ins class. In fact it's frighteningly the same. Nevertheless it all works great and very fast. Save this as "your_site_dir/inc/modules.inc.php". There is one thing I'd like to point out though; the line that looks like this:
array_keys() is a great function. It's very useful. It allows you to return an array of the keys from another array. But, that's not the best part of array_keys(). The best part is that you can specify a search parameter to match. That's what I've done here. I've taken the value of $module->plugin_id and used it as the search parameters to search the plug-ins list array and then return the key to the specific plug-in that the particular module depends on. Now that we've gotten the plug-ins and module systems set up, all we have left is to put it all together.