Labo-Esi

Labo-Esi is a PHP/MySQL web application for managing a research laboratory website. It covers public laboratory pages, research projects, publications, teams, equipment reservations, events, contact messages, user dashboards, notifications, PDF reporting, and an RBAC-protected administration area.

The project intentionally uses a custom lightweight PHP mini framework instead of a full-stack framework. The framework is small, explicit, and easy to follow: one front controller, a query-string router, base MVC classes, PDO models, .phtml templates, and reusable PHP UI components.

Framework Overview

Requests enter through public/index.php, which starts the session, loads local configuration, loads the core framework classes, loads view/component classes, and dispatches the request through Router.

The routing convention is:

public/index.php?controller=Home&action=index
public/index.php?controller=Project&action=detail&id=12
public/index.php?controller=AdminProject&action=edit&id=12

If no route is provided, the router defaults to:

controller=Home
action=index

Core framework files:

core/
  Controller.php   Base controller helpers: model(), view(), loadLang(), redirect(), json(), pagination
  Router.php       Maps controller/action query params to app/Controllers/*Controller.php
  Model.php        Base PDO model with shared database access
  Database.php     PDO singleton for MySQL
  View.php         Base view class and .phtml template inclusion
  Component.php    Base class for reusable renderable PHP UI components

Main Features

• Public website pages for the laboratory homepage, presentation, projects, publications, teams, members, equipment, offers, events, and contact.
• User authentication with session-based login/logout.
• Member dashboard with profile editing, projects, publications, and reservations.
• Admin dashboard protected by permissions rather than hardcoded roles.
• User, team, project, publication, event, partner, equipment, contact, settings, and role management modules.
• Equipment reservation workflow with maintenance windows, conflict detection, urgent reservations, admin approval/rejection, and reporting stats.
• Publication submission and validation workflow.
• Event publishing, registration, reminders, and member notifications.
• Dynamic homepage/layout configuration stored in the database.
• Bilingual language files in lang/fr.php and lang/en.php.
• PDF report generation through bundled FPDF classes.
• Native test runner without PHPUnit.

Project Structure

app/
  Components/      Reusable PHP UI components
  Controllers/     Public, dashboard, auth, and admin controllers
  Helpers/         URL and date helper classes
  Lib/             Bundled libraries, including FPDF and PDF report classes
  Models/          PDO-backed business/data access classes
  Views/
    Classes/       View classes that prepare/render templates
    Templates/     .phtml templates

core/              Custom mini framework
lang/              Translation arrays
public/            Front controller, CSS, JS, images, and uploads
tests/             Native transactional test suite

Requirements

• PHP with PDO MySQL enabled
• MySQL or MariaDB
• A web server that can serve the public/ directory, or PHP's built-in server for local development
• Existing project database schema and seed data

No composer.json is present in this repository, and the app does not require a Composer install for the committed code.

Local Configuration

Local config is intentionally ignored by Git:

app/Config/config.php
app/Config/*.local.php

Create app/Config/config.php before running the app. A minimal local config should define the constants and helpers expected by the mini framework:

<?php

define('BASE_PATH', dirname(__DIR__, 2) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
define('BASE_URL', 'http://localhost:8000/');

define('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1');
define('DB_NAME', 'TDW');
define('DB_USER', 'root');
define('DB_PASS', '');
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8mb4');

define('DEFAULT_LANG', 'fr');
define('UPLOAD_PATH', BASE_PATH . 'public' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'uploads' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);

define('KEY_SUCCESS', 'success');
define('KEY_ERROR', 'error');

function getCurrentLanguage(): string
{
    $lang = $_GET['lang'] ?? $_SESSION['lang'] ?? DEFAULT_LANG;
    $allowed = ['fr', 'en'];

    if (!in_array($lang, $allowed, true)) {
        $lang = DEFAULT_LANG;
    }

    $_SESSION['lang'] = $lang;
    return $lang;
}

Adjust BASE_URL, database credentials, and database name to match your environment.

Running Locally

From the repository root:

php -S localhost:8000 -t public

Then open:

http://localhost:8000/index.php

Example routes:

http://localhost:8000/index.php?controller=Project&action=index
http://localhost:8000/index.php?controller=Publication&action=index
http://localhost:8000/index.php?controller=Auth&action=login
http://localhost:8000/index.php?controller=Admin&action=index

For WAMP/XAMPP, point the virtual host or browser URL at the public/ directory and make sure BASE_URL matches that public URL.

Database Notes

The database schema is not committed in this checkout; .gitignore excludes *.sql. The code expects a MySQL database with tables for users, roles, permissions, teams, projects, publications, equipment, reservations, maintenances, events, partners, settings, notifications, contact messages, activity logs, PDF settings, and layout settings.

The admin settings module can generate database backups from an existing database through SettingsModel::generateBackupSQL().

Adding a Feature

Follow the mini-framework convention:

1. Add or update a model in app/Models, extending Model.
2. Add or update a controller in app/Controllers, extending Controller or AdminController.
3. Add a view class in app/Views/Classes when needed.
4. Add a .phtml template in app/Views/Templates.
5. Add reusable UI pieces under app/Components when markup is shared.
6. Link to the route with index.php?controller=Name&action=method.

For admin modules, extend AdminController so login and admin.access permission checks happen before module logic.

Tests

The project uses a native test runner, not PHPUnit. Tests run inside a database transaction and roll back at the end.

Run with a PHP CLI that has PDO MySQL enabled:

php tests/run.php

On WAMP, the command may look like:

C:\wamp64\bin\php\php7.4.33\php.exe tests/run.php

Existing test coverage includes authentication, equipment reservations, publication logic, project queries, and RBAC permissions. See tests/README.md for details.

Development Notes

• Keep public/index.php as the only browser entry point.
• Keep local secrets and database dumps out of Git.
• Store user-uploaded files under public/uploads/; this directory is ignored.
• Use Controller::json() for AJAX responses.
• Use Controller::loadLang() and lang/*.php for translatable UI strings.
• Use Component classes for repeated UI blocks instead of duplicating template markup.
• Run php tests/run.php after backend changes that affect models, controllers, permissions, or reservation/publication/project logic.