Getting Started

Valid for Beta 1

Download

Either use the zipball or tarball links above, or even better, clone the git repo:

Main Repo: http://github.com/stevegeek/moka

Examples: http://github.com/stevegeek/mokaexamples

(Note: The objphp application is also an example of an Objective-PHP application).

Install

Create a OBJPHP enviroment variable and set it to the path of your moka repo.

In Linux and MacOS X this can be done by adding

export OBJPHP = "<path>"

to your .profile file in your home folder. The running source ~/.profile .

You can optionally also set the following for the gen command of objphp:

• OBJPHP_PROJECT_AUTHOR : Author name (your name)
• OBJPHP_PROJECT_COPYRIGHT : The Copyright dates for your project
• OBJPHP_PROJECT_EMAIL : Your email address

Generate Project

In your chosen terminal have a read of the help for the objphp application.

./objphp -h

Then to see the list of target application types run

./objphp gen -l

At the moment there are 3 project types.

• console: a blank console application
• web: a blank web application (starts in index.php)
• mvc: a basic Model-View-Controller web application (starts in index.php and FrontController.op)

Choose your project type. If you just want a quick play with Objective-PHP choose console so you can run your application from the terminal.

./objphp gen -t=console ProjectName

where ProjectName is the name and path of the generated project.

Code!

Now open the main Objective-PHP file. For different applications this is different.

For console applications the file is called main.op , for web it is called AppController.op and for mvc FrontController.op.

Here are some important starting points.

• All Objective-PHP files must start with <?php, it is PHP afterall! You can of course put things before the opening tag (or close the Objective-PHP mode with ?>). Anything before/after these tags will be considered as being sent to stdout.

• Variables in PHP start with a $. So must Objective-PHP variables when defined in code blocks. This also applies to $self! BUT not to super as this is not a real variable but a compiler command. Instance variable definisions do not have to have the $ before … You can do whatever feels more confortable to you (see snippet).

  @implementation class
  {
      MKString $aString;
      MKString anotherString;
  }
  

• To access instance variables you must use the PHP object operator ->. So for an instance of the above class you would do

  [$instance->aString description];
  

  or inside a instance method of the class

  [$self->aString description];
  

• There are still some caveats that are unresolved in this Beta so have a read about this site to find out more.

For a primer on Objective-C in general see: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/LearningObjective-CAPrimer/index.html#//appleref/doc/uid/TP40007594

UnitTest and Compile

You can UnitTest you application by creating classes which are subclasses of UnitTest. Below is an example file example.op

<?php
@implementation example : UnitTest
- testMe
{
    echo "HI\n";
}
@end

Any instance methods with test at the start of the method name will be called by the test framework, unless you specify which function to run. If you do specify a function to run DO NOT inclde the test prefix. See Below:

./objphp test example.op

will run all functions with the test prefix.

./objphp test example.op Me

would run the method testMe above.

When you are done building and testing with your application you will probably want to compile it to remove the parse overhead. This is acheived by doing

./objphp compile file.op -o=outputfile.php

Imported files should automatically be included into the output.

Deploy

Currently deployment and compilation (above) are in early days, so at the moment you must simply copy the compiled file (the output .php file from the compilation stage) to your server/directory and name appropriately.

Troubleshooting

If you have any problems you can find me on the Google Group

Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/objective-php

and on twitter: stevediaconou

Document status: IN-PROGRESS for current version.