3.11. Creating a Home Page Through Composition

Now let's create our home page. CD back to the top of the modules directory and run:

$ phocoa createModule
phing -f /Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/phocoa/phocoa/phing/build.xml -Dusing.phocoa.make=true -Dphocoa.pwd=/Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/blog/blog/modules -Dphocoa.dir=/Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/phocoa/phocoa -Dphocoa.project.name=blog -Dphocoa.project.dir=/Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/blog/blog createModule
Buildfile: /Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/phocoa/phocoa/phing/build.xml

phocoa > prepareGeneral:
     [echo] PHOCOA framework base dir at: /Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/phocoa/phocoa

phocoa > prepareProject:
     [echo] 1
      [php] Evaluating PHP expression: $_ENV['_']
     [echo] PHOCOA project dir at: /Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/blog/blog
[realpathexpandhome] Resolved /Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/blog/blog/.. to /Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/blog
     [echo] PHOCOA project container dir at: /Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/blog
 [property] Loading /Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/blog/blog/conf/build.properties
 [property] Unable to find property file: /Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/blog/blog/conf/build.properties... skipped

phocoa > createModule:
Module name: pages
Default page [blank for none]: home
     [exec] Executing command: /opt/local/bin/php /Users/alanpinstein/dev/sandbox/phocoa/phocoa/framework/createModule.php pages home 2>&1
     [exec] Writing pages/pages.php
     [exec] Done building module pages!
     [exec] Writing home.tpl
     [exec] Writing home.yaml
     [exec] Done!

BUILD FINISHED

Total time: 2.8443 seconds

Now that we have a home page, we want this page to actually load when we click the home link! To do this, we adjust the defaultInvocationPath on our WFWebApplicationDelegate object, in classes/MyWebApplicationDelegate.php:

    function defaultInvocationPath()
    {   
        return 'pages/home';
    }

Now we can click on our Home link and will be taken to our newly created home page.

Of course, our home page is currently empty. We want it to have a little introduction and then list the 10 most recent posts.

First let's add the list of the recent posts. Since we have already created a module to do exactly that, we can use the convenient UI widget WFModuleView to include that information. Edit the home.yaml file as follows:

topPosts:
  class: WFModuleView
  properties:
    invocationPath: 'blogview/list'

Now, let's create the home page template:

<h1>Welcome to the PHOCOA blog!</h1>
{WFView id="topPosts"}

Reload the home page, and you'll see the finished product.

Congratulations! You've now seen all of the steps involved in creating a basic web application in PHOCOA.