Installation - serverboy/Interchange GitHub Wiki

Drop the whole package in the root directory of your site. The index.php file should otherwise be accessible via http://foo.bar/index.php. Make sure the .htaccess file is properly installed in the root as well and that mod_rewrite is enabled in Apache.

Though it is likely that mod_rewrite is already enabled, you may need to turn it on yourself. To enable mod_rewrite on most *nix installations, simply run a command like ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/rewrite.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rewrite.load && /etc/init.d/apache2 restart. This will load in the rewrite extension and reboot Apache.

Create a file in /etc/nginx/sites-available/ containing something like this:

server {
    listen          80;
    server_name     example.com sub.example.com shortlin.ks;
    error_log       /var/log/nginx/com.example.errors.log warn;
    root            /var/www/interchange.com.example;
    index           index.php index.html;
    fastcgi_index   index.php;
    location /  {
            include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
            fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root/index.php;
            fastcgi_pass    unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
    }
}

This script assumes that you’ve using PHP-FPM with FastCGI and it’s set up with all of the default file paths.

You’ll then install Interchange to /var/www/interchange.com.example/.

The next step is to ensure all of the appropriate directories are created. Make sure that /views and /endpoints both exist. If they do not, create these directories.

Your next step is to load in application endpoints. An application endpoint is similar to an app in Django. Unlike a Django app, however, your endpoint doesn’t need to be specifically designed for use with Interchange.

Endpoints should be loaded into the /endpoints directory. The name of directory that the endpoint is contained within (i.e.: my_endpoint, as below) will be used to refer to the application endpoint.

/endpoints
    /my_endpoint
        index.php
        header.php
        footer.php
    /another_endpoint
        endpoint.php
        add.php
        remove.php
    /static_endpoint
        default.css
        jquery.js

There are two types of application endpoints:

An Interchange endpoint is an endpoint that has been specifically built for compatibility with Interchange, containing code that takes full advantage of the power and functionality of the Interchange back-end. This type of endpoint is the default endpoint; if an endpoint is referenced, this type of endpoint will be searched for first.

An Interchange Endpoint is defined by placing a file called endpoint.php in the root of of the endpoint directory (see /another_endpoint above). If Interchange detects this file, it will automatically be assumed that the endpoint is an Interchange endpoint and the application will be loaded as such.

A traditional endpoint is effectively a standard PHP application: the root page is named index.php and subpages exist adjacent to the root page or in subdirectories. A traditional endpoint is characterized by a lack of an endpoint.php file. If no endpoint.php exists, Interchange will attempt to emulate a standard file-based web server (such as Apache under the default configuration).

Interchange will first test if the URL corresponding to the request exists in the endpoint directory. If the URL does not correspond to an object, a 404 error is returned. If the URL corresponds to a file, the file is served. If the URL corresponds to a directory, a “default file” is searched for in the directory. A default file is a file like index.php or index.html. This list of default files can be found in /defaults.php.

Note: URLs without a trailing slash WILL NOT (by default) automatically correspond or redirect to directories. This functionality can be adjusted in constants.php.

The PHP include_path value will automatically be appended with the application endpoint’s root using ini_set.

First and foremost, check out constants.php and double check that everything there is kosher.

Next up, you need to modify your index.json file. This file is the file that describes the rules that Interchange should follow when routing requests for your application. Information on this file can be found in index.json Reference.

You’ve successfully set up a new instance of Interchange. Now get to work!