esensi / core

Esensi Core Components Package

An Esensi package, coded by Emerson Media.

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The Esensi/Core package is just one package that makes up Esensi, a platform built on Laravel. Esensi/Core is the foundational package for the other components packages. This package provides core patterns and commonly extended base classes to all other packages of the Esensi platform. These components include an Laravel 5 compatible HMVC pattern involving UI and API controller classes, an Eloquent model backed repository pattern, confirmed single and bulk actions and so much more. For more details on the inner workings and composition of the classes please consult the generously documented source code.

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Quick Start

Notice: This code is specifically designed to be compatible with the Laravel Framework and may not be compatible as a stand-alone dependency or as part of another framework. The current release of Esensi/Core also has some reliance on closed source code. Contact [email protected] if you would like to get access to these other repositories.

Add the esensi/core package as a dependency to the Laravel application. Using Composer, this can be done from the command line:

composer require esensi/core 0.5.*

It can alternatively be added manually. Be sure to run composer update to update the dependencies after adding the following to composer.json:

{
    "require": {
        "esensi/core": "0.5.*"
    }
}

Then add the following classes to the application's config/app.php config file:

'providers' => [
    Esensi\Core\Providers\CoreServiceProvider::class,
    Esensi\Core\Providers\HtmlServiceProvider::class,
    Esensi\Core\Providers\RouteServiceProvider::class,
    Esensi\Core\Providers\ValidationServiceProvide::class',
]

Next, publish the vendor resources, configs, and other publishable files for further customization:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Esensi\Core\Providers\CoreServiceProvider"

This will publish this package's configs from the config/ directory to the Laravel application's config/esensi/core/ directory where they can be loaded under the esensi/core:: namespace (e.g.: config('esensi/core::core.aliases')).

Lastly, begin composing the various layers of the application by creating classes that implement the interface contracts of the Esensi\Core\Contracts namespace or extend or compose the Esensi\Core namespaced classes and traits.

How Esensi Works

Esensi implements a derivative of the MVC pattern called Hierarchical MVC (HMVC) or what some would call "orthogonal" architecture. Essentially all domain logic is organized into a domain layer which consists primarily of commands, events, service classes, and of course the familiar repository pattern. This domain layer separates the controller and view layers from the actual model layer. The model layer is largely powered by Laravel's excellent Eloquent ORM (an active-record pattern) and Esensi's own self-validating, traits-based model extension package esensi/model. The controller layer is comprised of UIs which include web UI controllers, RESTful API controllers, and CLI Artisan commands. The UI controllers extend the behavior of the API controllers to provide response presentation via the view layer. This provides a great deal of extension and re-usability while also providing bolt on functionality with the use of traits. Everything else is either convention or syntax sugar to help make development easier and faster.

Hierarchy Examples

One way to picture Esensi's architecture is to see how common uses cases would be processed. Because so much code is reused between UI contexts, patterns of convention (hence the orthogonal architecture) begin to emerge. For instance a typical CRUD operation could be performed from multiple access points based on UI contexts and yet there is only one definition of business logic.

Repository

The developer might have the need to store a new blog post. Esensi makes use of the repository pattern so the calling code should load and call the appropriate App\Repositories\PostRepository@store method. This repository method would likely then use business logic to create the post described by the passed method arguments. Often this is a simple matter of mapping the request to an Esensi model such as App\Models\Post which uses Laravel to hit the database and return the stored model with the new post ID. The active record model is then returned to the calling service class which is free to further manipulate it or pass it off to other service classes. The repository pattern is crucial to defining a barrier between the data layer and the calling classes – often a UI context class.

Artisan Command

A CLI client executed php artisan make:post. This command is dispatched by Laravel to the App\Console\Commands\MakePost Artisan command handler. The Artisan command maps the CLI arguments and options to a repository method such as App\Repositories\PostRepository@store. At this point all of the business logic is reused down the call chain as the CLI request has been mapped to the repository as defined previously. Once the App\Models\Post model is returned from App\Repositories\PostRepository the MakePost can respond with a status message or appropriate CLI representation of the newly created post. CLI commands can therefore be treated much like any other controller and by extension the CLI is just another UI context that can be adapted to the business logic organized in the domain layer.

API Controller

A mobile app client requests POST /api/posts. This request is routed by Laravel to the App\Http\Controllers\PostApi@store controller method. The API controller is only concerned with the request and not at all concerned about how the framework will handle converting the return value into a JSON response. The API controller maps the request parameters as arguments to a repository method such as App\Repositories\PostRepository@store. At this point all of the business logic is reused down the call chain as the client request has been mapped to the repository as defined previously. Once the App\Models\Post model is returned from App\Repositories\PostRepository the model is simply returned back to the Laravel framework for default conversion into a JSON response. APIs can have all the domain logic organized in the repositories but as a front-end or mobile app friendly RESTful JSON representation.

UI Controller

A web browser client requests POST /admin/posts. This request is routed by Laravel to the App\Http\Controllers\PostController@store controller method. This controller is only concerned with responses so it immediately makes a call to it's parent App\Http\Controllers\PostApi@store controller method. At this point all of the business logic is reused down the call chain as the client request has been mapped to the API controller as defined previously. Once the App\Models\Post model is returned from the App\Http\Controllers\PostApi the model is then passed off to a Blade view for HTML presentation formatting. The Laravel view is then returned by the PostController to the framework where it is rendered as an HTML response back to the client. Web UIs can have all the same ability as their API counterparts and all business logic can remain DRY as it is organized in the domain layer.

Parametization

Other API endpoints would likely point to filterable resources such as GET /api/posts?page=1&order=id&sort=asc which would return the first page of App\Models\Post results ordered by the id attribute and sorted in ascending direction. Because this logic is defined in the App\Repositories\PostRepository domain layer class the functionality is available to all UI contexts including the administrative web UI. By simply changing the URL prefix the normal API response can be processed into an HTML table representation instead: GET /admin/posts?page=1&order=id&sort=asc.

Furthermore middle-ware classes could be used to handle response formatting further such as converting the JSON representation of a RESTful API response into an XML document or CSV export (e.g.: ?format=xml). Restricting business logic to the domain layer sets up Esensi applications for more flexible composition choices and greater code reuse that leads to better and cheaper maintainability. Esensi/Core is just a toolbox of conventions and base classes that can be extended to continue using this composition example in Laravel applications.

Unit Testing

The Esensi platform includes other great packages just like this Esensi/Core package. This package is currently tagged as 0.5.x because the other platform packages are not ready for public release. While the others may still be under development, this package already includes features that are mature enough for use in real-world applications.

Running the Unit Tests

This package uses PHPUnit to automate the code testing process. It is included as one of the development dependencies in the composer.json file:

{
    "require-dev": {
        "fzaninotto/faker": "~1.4",
        "mockery/mockery": "0.9.*",
        "phpunit/phpunit": "~4.0",
        "phpspec/phpspec": "~2.1"
    }
}

The test suite can be ran from the command line using the phpunit test runner:

phpunit ./tests

Pro Tip: Please help the open-source community by including good code test coverage with your pull requests. The Esensi development team will review pull requests with unit tests and passing tests as a priority. Significant code changes that do not include unit tests will not be merged.

Contributing

Emerson Media is proud to work with some of the most talented developers in the PHP community. The developer team welcomes requests, suggestions, issues, and of course pull requests. When submitting issues please be as detailed as possible and provide code examples where possible. When submitting pull requests please follow the same code formatting and style guides that the Esensi code base uses. Please help the open-source community by including good code test coverage with your pull requests. All pull requests must be submitted to the version branch to which the code changes apply.

Note: The Esensi team does its best to address all issues on Wednesdays. Pull requests are reviewed in priority followed by urgent bug fixes. Each week the package dependencies are re-evaluated and updates are made for new tag releases.

Licensing

Copyright (c) 2015 Emerson Media, LP

This package is released under the MIT license. Please see the LICENSE.txt file distributed with every copy of the code for commercial licensing terms.