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phpjsonfat-free-framework

file_get_contents or read JSON file from Controller

I am getting started with the F3 Framework (Fat Free Framework) and so far it's great. Simple and light. I set it up so that my controllers are in a separate folder App/Controllers and that is working great using classes and namespaces. On thing I'm having trouble with is reading a JSON file from one of those controllers. My code is below:

$json = $f3->read('settings/templates.json');
$templates = json_decode($json);
var_dump($templates);
$fields = $templates->$template->fields;

I tried it like that and like this

$json = file_get_contents('settings/templates.json');
$templates = json_decode($json);
var_dump($templates);
$fields = $templates->$template->fields;

But either way I get a file not found error. So somehow, F3 is not finding the file. I'm not sure if I need to include this in the AUTOLOAD or if there is some better way to do this.

I tried it as a database like so and it finds the file, but somehow this doesn't seem right:

$db = new \DB\Jig ( 'settings/' , \DB\Jig::FORMAT_JSON );
$user= new \DB\Jig\Mapper($db, 'templates.json');
var_dump($templates);
$fields = $templates->$template->fields;

It seems like I shouldn't be using the DB class and Jig just to read a simple JSON file. Can someone please shed some light on this?

EDIT: Ok the answer below helped, but in my particular case, everything (the syntax) was right. I think the reason it didn't work was because I had the paths wrong in this line of my index.php

$f3->set('AUTOLOAD','App/Controllers/');
Solution

  • The issue you're facing is not related to the framework but to your understanding of relatives paths in PHP. Relative paths are always relative to the working directory.

    If you're using the framework for the web (and not in CLI mode), the working directory is the directory where your index.php is located, as long as you don't explicitly change the working directory with the chdir command.

    You can verify it by echoing getcwd() at the very top of your script.

    That means that any relative path used in your application (no matter if it's being called from index.php, lib/web.php, app/controllers/foo.php or any file located in any directory) is relative to that directory.

    So in your case, the settings directory is expected to be found in the same directory as index.php:

    apps/
  controllers/
settings/
  templates.json
index.php