Controllers and Views

Controllers
Passing URL parameters
PHP views
Template folders
Twig support
Extending controllers

Controllers

Controllers are the entry point for your application logic. A controller receives the request from the router, prepares any data needed by the page, and returns a view.

use Lima\Core\Controller;

class Home extends Controller
{
    public function index(): void
    {
        $this->view('home', [
            'pageTitle' => 'Welcome to Lima',
        ]);
    }
}

The first argument passed to view() is the template name. The second argument is an array of data that should be available inside the view.

Passing URL parameters

Any remaining URL parts are passed into the controller method as parameters.

/posts/show/12

class Posts extends \Lima\Core\Controller
{
    public function show($id): void
    {
        $this->view('posts/show', [
            'postId' => $id,
        ]);
    }
}

This keeps simple pages simple, while still giving advanced developers enough room to build their own request and service layers around Lima's controller flow.

PHP views

By default, Lima looks for templates in the views directory at the root of your project. You can change this with LIMA_TEMPLATE_DIR in your .env file.

<h1><?php echo $pageTitle; ?></h1>

When rendering a PHP view, Lima extracts the data array into local variables. It also provides a $view object, which can be used to render shared templates.

<?php $view->get_header(); ?>

<main>
    <h1><?php echo $pageTitle; ?></h1>
</main>

<?php $view->get_footer(); ?>

Template folders

Nested templates can be rendered using a path style name.

$this->view('posts/show', [
    'post' => $post,
]);

This will load:

views/posts/show.php

The helper methods get_header() and get_footer() load _templates/header.php and _templates/footer.php.

Twig support

Lima can render Twig templates when Twig is installed in the project.

composer require twig/twig

If the Twig classes are available, Lima will use Twig's filesystem loader and render the requested template from your template directory.

class Home extends \Lima\Core\Controller
{
    public function index(): void
    {
        $this->view('home', [
            'name' => 'Lima',
        ]);
    }
}

<h1>Hello {{ name }}</h1>

Lima keeps the same controller API whether you're using PHP templates or Twig, so teams can choose the template layer that fits the project.

Extending controllers

For larger projects, it is common to create your own base controller.

use Lima\Core\Controller;

class AppController extends Controller
{
    protected function requireLogin(): void
    {
        if (empty($_SESSION['user_id'])) {
            header('Location: /login');
            exit;
        }
    }
}

Your application controllers can then extend AppController instead of the Lima controller directly.

class Account extends AppController
{
    public function index(): void
    {
        $this->requireLogin();
        $this->view('account/index');
    }
}

This is a good place for authentication checks, shared layout data, or helpers that should be available across a group of controllers.

What to read next

Read Routing for more on how controllers are found, or Models and Database when you're ready to load data for your views.

The Docs