khosb/includes/kohana/modules/userguide/guide/about.filesystem.md

Cascading Filesystem

The Kohana filesystem is a heirarchy of directory structure. When a file is loaded by [Kohana::find_file], it is searched in the following order:

Application Path

Defined as APPPATH in index.php. The default value is application.

Module Paths

This is set as an associative array using [Kohana::modules] in APPPATH/bootstrap.php. Each of the values of the array will be searched in the order that the modules are added.

System Path

Defined as SYSPATH in index.php. The default value is system. All of the main or "core" files and classes are defined here.

Files that are in directories higher up the include path order take precedence over files of the same name lower down the order, which makes it is possible to overload any file by placing a file with the same name in a "higher" directory:

If you have a view file called welcome.php in the APPPATH/views and SYSPATH/views directories, the one in application will be returned when welcome.php is loaded because it is at the top of the filesystem.

Types of Files

The top level directories of the application, module, and system paths has the following default directories:

classes/

All classes that you want to autoload should be stored here. This includes controllers, models, and all other classes. All classes must follow the class naming conventions.

config/

Configuration files return an associative array of options that can be loaded using [Kohana::config]. See config usage for more information.

i18n/

Translation files return an associative array of strings. Translation is done using the __() method. To translate "Hello, world!" into Spanish, you would call __('Hello, world!') with [I18n::$lang] set to "es-es". See translation usage for more information.

messages/

Message files return an associative array of strings that can be loaded using [Kohana::message]. Messages and i18n files differ in that messages are not translated, but always written in the default language and referred to by a single key. See message usage for more information.

views/

Views are plain PHP files which are used to generate HTML or other output. The view file is loaded into a [View] object and assigned variables, which it then converts into an HTML fragment. Multiple views can be used within each other. See view usage for more information.

Finding Files

The path to any file within the filesystem can be found by calling [Kohana::find_file]:

// Find the full path to "classes/cookie.php"
$path = Kohana::find_file('classes', 'cookie');

// Find the full path to "views/user/login.php"
$path = Kohana::find_file('views', 'user/login');

Vendor Extensions

We call extensions that are not specific to Kohana "vendor" extensions. For example, if you wanted to use DOMPDF, you would copy it to application/vendor/dompdf and include the DOMPDF autoloading class:

require Kohana::find_file('vendor', 'dompdf/dompdf/dompdf_config.inc');

Now you can use DOMPDF without loading any more files:

$pdf = new DOMPDF;

[!!] If you want to convert views into PDFs using DOMPDF, try the PDFView module.