Create a Page

The latest documentation can be found on the Project Wiki. The information below may be out of date.

User-facing pages can be constructed easily using the FanniePage class (or one of its specialized subclasses). A basic page definition looks like this:

include_once(dirname(__FILE__).'/../../../config.php');
if (!class_exists('FanniePage')) include($FANNIE_ROOT.'classlib2.0/FanniePage.php');

class CalendarMainPage extends FanniePage {
}
if (basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) == basename(__FILE__)){
	$obj = new CalendarMainPage();
	$obj->draw_page();
}

As in the plugin definition, the global configuration file and API class definition are included then a subclass is defined. In compliance with naming conventions this particular file should be named CalendarMainPage.php. The last lines will print the page but only if this file is called directly. Blocking off the draw_page() call with this if statement makes it safe for other developers to include() this file if they want to reuse or extends our class.

FanniePage is designed to let developers easily maintain consistent look and feel without repeating lots of code as well as tie into lots of different sections of the page. A subclass may override any of the following:

Members
- title [string] is displayed in the window's title bar.
- header [string] at the top of Fannie's main, righthand section.
- window_dressing [bool] indicates whether or not to include Fannie's header, footer, and menu. True means these should be included.
Methods
- preprocess() [returns bool] is the very first method called. If it returns True, the rest of the page will be drawn. If it returns False, nothing else runs. This function is typically used to process form input.
- body_content() [returns string] draws the main content of the page.
- javascript_content() [returns string] defines any custom javascript. <script> tags should not be included; they're added automatically.
- css_content() [returns string] defines any custom CSS. <style> tags should not be included; they're added automatically.

FanniePage also includes some helper methods. They are not meant to be overriden but can be useful in the above methods or any additional custom methods.

add_script($file_url [string], $type [string]) include a script file. The $type argument is optional. If omitted, the type is assumed to be "text/javascript".
add_css_file($file_url [string]) include a stylesheet file.
add_onload_command($str [string]) runs the javascript command $str when the page loads. The method can be called multiple times. The commands will all run in the order that they're added.

URL best practices: like filesystem paths, no assumptions should be made about where Fannie is installed. To get a URL to somewhere within your plugin, create an instance of your plugin definition class then call its plugin_url() method. This returns the URL of the directory containing your plugin. To reference a URL somewhere else in Fannie, use the global configuration variable $FANNIE_URL. It points to the directory containing Fannie.