Creating A Single Page Application Using Mustache and PHP
Ever wanted to master Mustache single-page application development? Did you know you can use PHP with it? In this tutorial, we go over how you can create a single-page application using Mustache and PHP. In today’s fast-paced world, users expect websites and applications to load quickly and provide a seamless experience. Single-page applications (SPAs) have emerged as a popular solution to meet these expectations. With Mustache and PHP, developers can build dynamic, responsive, and scalable SPAs that deliver content and functionality without requiring page reloads. However, mastering these technologies can be challenging, especially for those new to web development. In this tutorial, we will dive deep into the world of Mustache and PHP to help you master single-page application development. We will cover the basics of SPAs, discuss the benefits of using Mustache and PHP, and provide step-by-step guidance on how to build a SPA from scratch. Whether you’re a beginner looking to learn more about web development or an experienced developer seeking to expand your skills, this tutorial will provide you with valuable insights and practical tips to take your SPA development to the next level.
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File Structure
index.php autoload.php .htaccess /controllers Nav.php Templates.php /sass style.scss /css (generated by Sass) style.css style.min.css /views 404.html about.html contact.html home.html partials/ /contact forms.mustache footer.mustache header.mustache styles.mustache htaccess File
We are using the .htaccess file to redirect all page calls to the index.php file. So if you go to / it will show the index.php and if you go to /about it will show the same index.php. We will use this as the basis of our routing.
Options +FloowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond % !-f RewriteCond % !-d RewriteRule (.*) index.php [L] Install Mustache
You can either download Mustache from their website or use Composer to install it. For this tutorial, we will be using Composer.
composer require mustache/mustache Setup our index.php
Since this file will be used for all requests on this website, we need to configure it in a way it acts as a router.
require_once 'vendor/autoload.php'; require_once 'autoload.php'; Mustache_Autoloader::register(); Create Our Autoloader (for our application classes)
In a previous video I created, I went over how to create your own Autoloader for your custom classes. You can see that video here:
This code comes in handy when you are creating your own custom classes and don’t want to have to require or include them. In this case, we will use it to pull our custom classes from the controllers folder. function autoload($class) include 'controllers/'.$class.'.php'; > spl_autoload_register('autoload'); Create Our Templates Class
The template class will have some key methods in it that use Mustache and render the content/data. In our __contruct method, we will initialize the Mustache Engine and add our partials to the object. This will help when we go to use our partials below. Next, we create the render method. This method will get the content from the view HTML and parse it using Mustache. For the purposes of the next block of code, we have coded a $data array that will be used for the home page. In a few steps below, we will create a method data that uses a switch statement to get the content for multiple pages. Finally, we have getPageURL . This method grabs the current page from the URL and allows us to use the render function to pull the appropriate template from the views folder.
class Templates private $m; public function __construct() $this->m = (new \Mustache_Engine( [ 'partials_loader' => new \Mustache_Loader_FilesystemLoader('views/partials'), ] )); > public function render($template) $data['content'] = [ 'title' => 'Home', 'heading' => 'Welcome to the home page!', 'content' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.' ]; $template = @file_get_contents('views'. $template.'.html'); if($template === false) $template = file_get_contents('views/404.html'); > return $this->m->render($template, $data); > public function getPageURL() $url = explode('?', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); return ($url[0] == '/' ? '/home' : $url[0]); > > Notice the @ symbol on the file_get_contents method. This will prevent warnings from showing if the file is not found. We will handle that with our 404 template call.
Setup Our First Template
We are now going to use the <<>> Mustache variables in our simple HTML. When you see the << variable >> , this will print out a variable that matches the data being sent over. In our code, we use << content.title >> for the title. This tells the template to look for an array content and add the value from the title object. If you need the template to produce a rendered object, you would need to use >> , otherwise, it just displays as text. You will also notice <<>styles >> in the below code. This adds partials that match that name. We will get into that a bit more below.
lang="en"> charset="UTF-8"> http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"> name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> > styles >> header >> > > footer >> For the most part, you can duplicate this for each additional page unless you are adding different content or data to the template. There are certain tags you use in Mustache. I will list the most common ones out here: << variable >>
this allows you to add text from a variable. >>
this allows you to add rendered text (it is different from the <<>> ). > whatever you want here <>
if a variable is true > whatever you want here <>
if a variable is false
get items from an array as a loop or use << array.item >> to get a single item <<>folder/template >>
get a mustache partial from a folder, remember the templates in this folder must have the extension .mustache since it is rendered via the Mustache code.
Setup Partials
In this part of the tutorial, we are going to create a header , footer , and style partial. Think of a partial as a include or require file you would normally use in PHP. In the views/partials folder, create the following files: header.mustache