Note fileinfo is required to be enabled (edit php.ini and uncomment php_fileinfo.dll or use php selector within cpanel if available.)

What is Nova Framework? (formerly known as Simple MVC Framework)

Nova Framework is a PHP 5.5 MVC system. It's designed to be lightweight and modular, allowing developers to build better and easy to maintain code with PHP.

The base framework comes with a range of helper classes.

Documentation

Full docs & tutorials are available at novaframework.com.

Offline docs are available in PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats on Leanpub

Requirements

The framework requirements are limited.

• Apache Web Server or equivalent with mod rewrite support.
• IIS with URL Rewrite module installed - http://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/url-rewrite
• PHP 5.5 or greater is required
• fileinfo enabled (edit php.ini and uncomment php_fileinfo.dll or use php selector within cpanel if available.)

Although a database is not required, if a database is to be used the system is designed to work with a MySQL database using PDO. The framework can be changed to work with another database type such as Medoo.

Recommended way to install

The framework is on packagist https://packagist.org/packages/nova-framework/framework.

Install from terminal now by using:

composer create-project nova-framework/framework foldername -s dev

The foldername is the desired folder to be created.

Install Manually

Option 1 - files above document root:

• place the contents of public into your public folder (.htaccess and index.php)
• navigate to your project in terminal and type composer install to initiate the composer install.
• edit public/.htaccess set the rewritebase if running on a sub folder otherwise a single / will do.
• edit app/Config.example.php change the SITEURL and DIR constants. the DIR path this is relative to the project url for example / for on the root or /foldername/ when in a folder. Also change other options as desired. Rename file as Config.php

Option 2 - everything inside your public folder

• place all files inside your public folder
• navigate to the public folder in terminal and type composer install to initiate the composer install.
• open index.php and change the paths from using DIR to FILE:

define('APPDIR', realpath(__DIR__.'/app/').'/');
define('SYSTEMDIR', realpath(__DIR__.'/system/').'/');
define('PUBLICDIR', realpath(__DIR__).'/');
define('ROOTDIR', realpath(__DIR__).'/');

• edit .htaccess set the rewritebase if running on a sub folder otherwise a single / will do.
• edit system/Core/Config.example.php change the SITEURL and DIR constants. the DIR path this is relative to the project url for example / for on the root or /foldername/ when in a folder. Also change other options as desired. Rename file as Config.php

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##Nginx configuration

No special configuration, you only need to configure Nginx and PHP-FPM.

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name yourdomain.tld;

  access_log /var/www/access.log;
  error_log  /var/www/error.log;

  root   /var/www;
  index  index.php index.html;

  location = /robots.txt {access_log off; log_not_found off;}
  location ~ /\\. {deny all; access_log off; log_not_found off;}
  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include fastcgi_params;
  }
}

---

##IIS with URL Rewrite module installed - http://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/url-rewrite

For IIS the htaccess needs to be converted to web.config:

<configuration>
    <system.webserver>
        <directorybrowse enabled="true"/>
        <rewrite>
            <rules>
                <rule name="rule 1p" stopprocessing="true">
                    <match url="^(.+)/$"/>
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="/{R:1}"/>
                </rule>
                <rule name="rule 2p" stopprocessing="true">
                    <match url="^(.*)$"/
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="/index.php?{R:1}" appendquerystring="true"/>
                </rule>
            </rules>
        </rewrite>
    </system.webserver>
</configuration>

---

##Setting up a VirtualHost (Optional but recommended)

Navigate to:

<path to your xampp installation>\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf

and uncomment:

NameVirtualHost *:80

Then add your VirtualHost to the same file at the bottom:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot "C:\xampp\htdocs\testproject\public"
    ServerName testproject.dev

    <Directory "C:\xampp\htdocs\testproject\public">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Finally, find your hosts file and add:

127.0.0.1       testproject.dev

You should then have a virtual host set up, and in your web browser, you can navigate to testproject.dev to see what you are working on.

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This has been tested with php 5.6 and php 7 please report any bugs.

See complete Change Log