How to Create a PHP MVC Website

Building a PHP MVC (Model-View-Controller) Website leads you towards an understanding of the MVC architecture, environmental setup, and coding and organization best practices. Step by step, you will go from the basics to ensuring you have a good foundation for building web applications.

Understanding MVC Architecture
Setting Up Your Development Environment
Creating the Directory Structure
Configuring Your Database
Building the Model
Creating the View
Developing the Controller
Routing
Final Steps and Best Practices

Explanation of MVC Architecture

MVC architecture decomposes an application into three major components:

Model: Includes data and business logic. View: Handles the view of data. Controller: It interprets user inputs and delegates the flow of the application.

It helps in separating the code, hence organizing it in conformity with the well-arranged manner; thus, we get much more modular and much more maintainable code. To learn more specifically about the MVC architecture, view our detailed MVC guide.

check out our detailed guide on MVC.

Setting Up Your Development Environment

Before starting development, ensure you have the following installed:

PHP: Ensure you have the latest version.
Web Server: Apache or Nginx.
Database: MySQL or MariaDB.
Composer: PHP dependency manager.

For detailed steps on setting up your environment, refer to our setup guide.

Creating the Directory Structure

A typical MVC directory structure in PHP looks like this:

/your-project
    /app
        /controllers
        /models
        /views
    /public
        index.php
    /config
    /vendor
    .htaccess
    composer.json

app: Contains the application code.
public: Publicly accessible files.
config: Configuration files.
vendor: Composer dependencies.

Configuring Your Database

Now, create your application's database and configure the connection. Mostly, in case of working with any database interaction, you can use PHP Data Objects. Here is how the configuration for the database looks:

// config/database.php
<?php
return [
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'dbname' => 'your_database_name',
    'username' => 'your_username',
    'password' => 'your_password'
];

For more details on database configuration, visit our database setup tutorial.

Building the Model

The model is your data structure model. Create a base model class for common database operations:

// app/models/Model.php
<?php
class Model {
    protected $db;

    public function __construct() {
        $config = require 'config/database.php';
        $this->db = new PDO("mysql:host={$config['host']};dbname={$config['dbname']}", $config['username'], $config['password']);
    }

    // Add common methods here (e.g., find, save, delete)
}

Check out our model development guide for more advanced techniques.

Creating the View

Views handle the presentation layer. Create a simple view file:

<!-- app/views/home.php -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Home</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Welcome to the Home Page</h1>
</body>
</html>

For a deeper dive into view creation, see our views tutorial.

Developing the Controller

Controllers process user input and interact with models and views. Here is a simple example of a controller:

// app/controllers/HomeController.php
<?php
class HomeController {
    public function index() {
        require 'app/views/home.php';
    }
}

Refer to our controller guide for more information.

Routing

Routing determines how URLs map to controllers. A simple routing implementation in PHP:

// public/index.php
<?php
require 'app/controllers/HomeController.php';

$controller = new HomeController();
$controller->index();

You can look to our Routing Guide for more advanced routing mechanisms.

Final Steps and Best Practices

Error Handling: Implement robust error handling.
Security: Sanitize inputs and use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection.
Code Organization: Follow PSR standards for better code organization.

For comprehensive best practices, read our best practices guide.

Only by executing these steps, you will be in a good condition to develop a PHP MVC website. Further studies can be checked by our additional resources and deeper guides on the links mentioned in this paper.