Architecture Overview
One request enters. One dispatcher decides whether it is a page or a mutation, and the answer comes back as HTML or as JSON. Everything else is a layer serving that sentence.
Overview
WISECP is a custom MVC framework, not a general-purpose one wearing a costume. It has controllers, models and views in the usual sense, plus two pieces of its own. Operations are the only way data changes. Hooks are how anyone outside the core takes part.
Reading a feature usually means reading four files. The controller answers the address and the model fetches the rows. The template turns them into markup, and the operation trait changes them. Once that shape is familiar the codebase stops being large and starts being repetitive, which is the point.
Structure
The Request Flow
index.php
└─ bootstrap.php constants, autoloader, configuration, session, language
└─ Bootstrap::run() address -> route -> controller file + params
└─ {controller}->index(), or ->main() when there is no index()
├─ the request carries `operation` -> operation method -> JSON
└─ anything else -> page_{name}() -> HTMLThe fork in the middle is the thing to remember. The operation name is read from the request, not from the verb, so either verb can carry it. What it decides is that no page will be built. A request that names an operation never produces a page, and a page method never writes. That separation makes permissions, demo mode and error formatting decidable in one place instead of in every screen.
The Layers
Three Surfaces, One Application
The admin panel, the public website with the client area, and the scheduled command line all run the same core. They differ in which controllers answer, which templates are used and which session is in play. A helper written for one is available to the others. That is why business rules belong in helpers rather than in a controller.
Pitfalls
They often do the same thing through different files. A change made on one side is not automatically true on the other. When you fix a behaviour, check whether its twin exists elsewhere.
A query written in a controller or a template works. Later it becomes the reason a page cannot be reused, cached or called from the command line. Put it in the model even when it is one line.
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