[Enhancement] Move to a MVC architecture

[schams-net]

Problem

At the moment, only parts of the application separate business logic from the "view" for example.

Suggested Solution

A strict and clean separation between model, view and controller (MVC) would make ongoing maintenance and possible extensions easier in the future.

Files belonging to the view should be HTML only and should not include any PHP code (maybe make use of a simple template engine). Files belonging to the business logic (controller and model) should/could be stored separately (e.g. in a folder Classes/) and should not contain any HTML code.

Changes Required

• Restructure of the entire application.
• Possibly develop multiple views (not one for web only).
• Consider to use a template engine (see below).

Additional Notes

Modern template engines in the PHP world today:

• Twig [www], used by the Symfony framework
• Blade, used by the Laravel framework
• Fluid [www], used by the TYPO3 CMS project
• Smarty [www]

[BenjaminHae]

I'd support a complete rewrite of the backend (including #232, #233). But this should focus more on providing the backend as a webservice. So a templating engine is not needed.

That way multiple device types can be easily supported. Currently the "html" files only use php for two things:

• setting of http-headers
• keeping the html-header in one place only

The first part could be done in the webservers configuration (.htaccess or similar) but that increases the effort necessary to install the password manager. The second part can be solved by using angular.

[BenjaminHae]

I currently favor symfony (maybe Silex) and swagger, but as our php code is very easy and reable I'm afraid using a framework might add unnecessary complexity. I'm currently working on a rewrite that is more modular: https://github.com/BenjaminHae/Password-Manager/tree/backendPluginSystem That also implements #239.

[schams-net]

That makes sense. Your note "our php code is very easy and readable [...]" and the fact that most of the logic happens on the client side anyway are convincing arguments against using a sophisticated template engine. This would be overkilled.

Would you accept a PR that implements a very basic, simple solution to separate the view from any PHP files? Given basic.php contains functions that deal with the view (HTTP headers, page header and page footer) only, I reworked this component and moved the logic to a class. At the same time, I separated all HTML code into .html files. Main benefits:

• Simple separation between logic and view.
• Methods in classes can be extended (I left public visibility intentionally).
• Files in src/ directory are small and easy to read now.

See commit da3d41218e0157a5fa3cff26c8f86e6cb0bf5026 (browse files)

If this looks ok for you, I am happy to create a PR. However, it would be great, if you could merge PR 238 first to avoid merge conflicts.

By the way: I see these changes independent from your work on "backendPluginSystem". This sounds like a much bigger piece of work and I don't have a problem, if my update(s) get removed when a new architecture is in place :-)

[BenjaminHae]

Why not completely remove php from the view? Maybe we could just offer plain html files without any templating engine at runtime. Headers could be set using the .htaccess file in apache (similar settings exist for most popular webservers).

That way all files are exactly where a naive user expects them and no abstraction layer that has no real functionality is necessary.

[BenjaminHae]

Do you have experience concerning swagger and symfony? I'm currently trying to get symfony working with the files generated by swagger-codegen but I'm not really successful.

[zeruniverse]

Close due to inactivity. For new features, please submit MR to the new project. #248