Php 4 Quick and Dirty Model and View Separation Example

I was coding a site in Php and needed to display announcements and needed a quick and simple way to do this. Moreover, I wanted to keep the design in the good ole MVC pattern. I know that there are examples out there utilizing PEAR and smarty templates. In fact, I am looking at one now by Joe Stump. However, Joe's example MVC framework is on Php 5 and the server from my shared hosting provider has 4.3 on it. Any way, I wanted at least to separate the model and the view in some small way for easier modifications down the road.

Below is code that I wrote to act as an data access layer. Here I am using a text file as the persistence store for data.

Any feedback to mark@msquaredweb.com is appreciated.


<?php

class AnnouncementsData{

	var $announcements = array();
	var $dataFile = "";
	
	function AnnouncementsData(){
		$this->dataFile = realpath("./") . '/pathToFileHere';
	}

	function getAnnouncements(){
		//read the file into an array and add to the
		//announcements collection
		$data = file($this->dataFile) or die('...Check back soon.');
		// loop through array and print each line
		foreach ($data as $line) {
			$announcements[] = $line;
		}
		//do not return duplicate announcements
		return array_unique($announcements);
	}
}
?>

Next, is the Announcement class. As you can see below, I have three attributes. In this example, I am using only the text attribute.

<?php
//announcement object

class Announcement{

	var $text;
	var $dateCreated;
	var $dateExpires;

	function Announcement(){
		$this->text = "Here is the announcement text!!";
	}
}

?>

The Announcements class, that will hold an array of Announcement objects is next. This class also involves the data access layer via the AnnouncementsData class.

<?php
require "announcementsData.php";
require "announcement.php";

class Announcements{

	var $announcements = array();
	
	function Announcements(){
	}

	function getAnnouncements(){
		$theAnnouncementsData = new AnnouncementsData();

		foreach ($theAnnouncementsData->getAnnouncements() as $anAnnouncement){
			$announcement = new Announcement();
			$announcement->text = $anAnnouncement;
			$announcements[] = $announcement;
		}

		return $announcements ;
	}

}

?>

Finally, we have an include file that is utilized by the view layer.

<?php
//get the announcements class
require 'classes/announcements.php';

//declare and instantiate an announcements object
$announcements = new Announcements();

//get the array of announcement objects
$announcementsArray = $announcements->getAnnouncements();

// loop through the announcement array and print each line
foreach ($announcementsArray as $annoucement) {
	echo $annoucement->text . "<hr>";
}
?>

Even though we do not have a true controller, we have a separation of the model (data in a text file) from the view (in the include file above) by the business logic of the Announcement and Announcements classes.