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Generate PHP Code

After installing StarUML PHP 5 Code Generator Template , StarUML will have a capability to generate PHP template code based on the models we have defined before. But there’s a little hack to be done so that the naming of the file generated complies with CodeIgniter.

These PHP template code files can be used to simplify our jobs by not typing all class’ attributes and methods that we have done in the UML design and analysis phase.

Now open and edit the template file for PHP 5 code generation, located at “C:\Program Files\StarUML\modules\staruml-generator\templates\PHP 5 Code Generator\template.cot”. Locate at around line 327:

remove the .class extension and change it to

Save the file. After editing the above line, PHP template file generated will have .php extension and not .class.php extension which is not suitable to be copied to CodeIgniter file structure.

Next we will generate the PHP template code. Open the UML diagram file. Click on “Tools – StarUML Generator..” menu.

A new dialog will be shown where we can choose a template for code generation.

On the dialog, choose PHP 5 Code Generator. Click Next. A new dialog will be shown where we can choose the destination folder to save the generated files.

On the dialog, choose any folder you wish. Then click Next. A new dialog will be shown showing that the generation process is ready to run.

Click on Generate button to start the generation process. Wait a moment until the process is finished. When it was finished, we will have some PHP files that each related to our model and controller class diagram before.

After generating both model and controller template files, we can see them on the destination folder specified before, for example, mine is on “c:\temp” folder.

Next, we need to move or copy all model files to CodeIgniter “models” folder and all controller classes to CodeIgniter “controllers” folder. If you followed the instruction exactly as in this tutorial, the it would be at “C:\xampp\htdocs\acct\system\application” folder where you could find “models” and “controllers” folder inside.

Let’s take a look for the generated PHP template file for a model, for example Bankbook_model.php file:

As you can see, we already have a template for our CodeIgniter model that’s ready for us to code the scripts logic inside. It has all the attributes and methods exactly the same as we designed in the UML diagram.

As in the model class’ template, we could also see the controller class’ template. Let’s take a look at the Bankbook.php file for example which is for Bankbook controller class.

Again we can see that we already have all attributes and methods exactly the same as defined in the UML diagram.

Edit config.php

Next, we need to edit our CodeIgniter configuration file to suit our application environment. Open and edit the file “system/application/config/config.php” and locate the line of:

Change and modify the content of base_url configuration to your own server name, for example http://localhost/ . Don’t forget to put a trailing forward slash (/) on it. This will be the reference of other CodeIgniter’s class for your server base URL, ie. for calling other web resources on your application like other controller, images, JavaScript files, CSS, etc.

Edit database.php

Next, we need to configure our database connectivity parameters to be used by the application. Open and edit the file “system/application/config/database.php” and locate these lines and adjust the parameters to suit your own MySQL database settings:

Edit routes.php

Next, we need to configure the default controller for our application. By default, this controller is called “welcome” and we can find the corresponding controller class file in “system/application/controller/welcome.php”. We need to change it to our main page called “Mainpage.php”.

Open and edit the file “system/application/config/routes.php” and change the default_controller parameter like this.

At this point you should be able to access your controller class from browser even though it still do nothing but a blank page.

In this case, a blank page is all right, because we have not defined anything inside the controller methods (index() method in this case). Compare this to access an undefined controller class, for example ‘bank’ controller, that will result a Page not Found error message like this:

Try to access other controller classes like cashbook, coa, mainpage, etc. All of them should return a blank page and not any error messages.

In the next step, we will start  to code the logics inside each controller and model classes’ methods based on the specification and user requirement.