Applications

An application is the container for everything the framework does: config, aliases, params and components. A WordPress install can run several applications at once — typically one for a plugin and one for the theme — each fully isolated with its own config, aliases, router and components.

Defining an application

use wpmvc\App;

class Theme extends App {

    public static $app;

}

Redeclare public static $app;

Every application subclass must redeclare the $app property. Without it, all application classes share (and overwrite) the same static slot. init() warns via _doing_it_wrong() when the redeclaration is missing.

Initialization

$config = require __DIR__ . '/config/main.php';

( new Theme( $config ) )->init();

The config array supports these keys:

Key	Purpose
name	Application name
domain	Translation text domain used by App::t()
aliases	Application-specific path/URL aliases
components	Component definitions, keyed by component ID
bootstrap	Component IDs to instantiate eagerly during init()
options	Admin options pages configuration
params	Arbitrary application parameters (Theme::$app->params)

Accessing the instance

Theme::$app;    // the instance, or null before init
Theme::app();   // the instance — never null

Theme::$app and Theme::app() return the same instance. The difference: app() never returns null — calling it before the application is instantiated throws wpmvc\exceptions\App_Not_Initialized_Exception.

When app() is called on a class with no registered instance of its own (e.g. the base App::app() from shared code), it falls back to the most recently initialized application — the theme, since plugins load first. The same fallback rule applies to App::alias() and the static Router::get()/post()/any() methods.