Roundcube Documentation

Code Layout

Controller

The controller (index.php) creates an instance of the main application class rcmail which is a singleton
Configuration is read from config/config.inc.php and config/defaults.inc.php
Login to the IMAP server (-> user authentication) is triggered from index.php
Basic sequence: rcmail::get_instance() -> rcmail::load_gui() -> new rcmail_template() -> rcmail_template::send()

Tasks & Actions

index.php limits tasks to set list
and includes a specific PHP file (from program/steps/<taskname>/) for the requested action

View

Templates for each task/action are stored in skins/default/templates
In templates <roundcube: /> tokens will be replaced with dynamic content by the rcmail_template class
All absolute paths (starting with "/") within the templates will be altered to point to the skin directory
AJAX requests are handled by the rcube_json_output class which is created by rcmail::init_json()

Image(mvc_diagram.png)

Directory structure

The root folder of a Roundcube installation contains the following folders:

config/ Home of the local configurations files
program/ All application files are stored in this folder. These files will be replaced when upgrading the installation.
program/js/ Client JavaScript files
program/lib/Roundcube The Roundcube framework classes which can be used outside the webmail package
program/lib/* External libraries used for Roundcube
program/include/ Webmail-specific classes and core functions
program/localization/ Contains subfolders with localization files.
program/steps/ Include files for every task/action
plugins/ Container for all plugins. Each plugins is represented in a separate subfolder
bin/ Commandline tools and shell scripts for internal use and maintainance
logs/ Contains log files. This folder has to be writable for the webserver.
temp/ Location of temporary saved files such as attachments and cache files This folder has to be writable for the webserver.
skins/ Contains skin subfolders
SQL/ SQL files for database initialization and updates. Only needed for installations or upgrades.

Important files

All requests from the client are sent to index.php. This index file - together with the rcmail class loads all core components and establishes connections to the database and the IMAP server. It analyzes the request and then includes one of the step files. Direct access to config, log and temp folders should not be permitted.

For Apache webservers which allow local overrides, the .htaccess file includes some PHP configuration settings as well as file access directives. More .htaccess files are located in the protected folders mentioned above.

Code Documentation

For a detailed documentation please refer to the Online PHPDoc.