Using the IMu API

The IMu API source code bundle for version 2.0 (or higher) is required to develop an IMu-based application. This bundle contains all the classes that make up the IMu PHP API. Contact Axiell Support for access to the IMu API bundles.

To build PHP web-based applications (the most common use of the IMu PHP API), the source code bundle must be extracted on the web server machine and be accessible by the web server.

In order to use the IMu PHP API, include IMu.php in the PHP code. For example, if the IMu API source code is installed in the directory /usr/local/lib/imu the following line would be added to the PHP code:

The IMu.php file defines the IMu class. This class includes static members which contain information about the IMu installation. The class includes:

• IMu::$lib - the path to the IMu PHP API files.
• IMu::VERSION - the version of this IMu release.

The $lib member should also be used to simplify the requiring of other IMu library files, for example:

<?php
require_once IMu::$lib . '/Session.php';
?>

Test Program

Building this very simple IMu-based web page is a good test of whether the development environment has been set up properly for using IMu:

<?php
require_once '/usr/local/lib/imu/IMu.php';

printf('IMu version %s', IMu::VERSION);
exit(0);
?>

Exceptions

Many of the methods in the IMu library objects throw an exception when an error occurs. For this reason, code that uses IMu library objects should be surrounded with a try / catch block.

The following code is a basic template for writing PHP programs that use the IMu library:

<?php
require_once '/usr/local/lib/imu/IMu.php';
// ⋯try
{
    /* Create and use IMu objects
     * ⋯
     */
}catch (Exception $e)
{
    /* Handle or report error
     * ⋯
     */
}
?>

Most IMu exceptions throw an IMuException object. The IMuException class is a subclass of the standard PHP Exception. In many cases your code can simply catch the standard Exception (as in this template). If more information is required about the exact IMuException thrown, see Exceptions.

Note: Many of the examples that follow assume that code fragments have been surrounded with code structured in this way.