Here are two parts - one about how it works and another about how to run it. Consult them in any order according to your needs.

To make studying the project easier it could be done in steps. These steps are represented by certain points (branches) in repository, as more and more functionality are added.

• Step 1 - framework - at this point here is bare minimum of files, or "framework" which work for page loading. Refer to README in this version to learn more.
• Step 2 - users - now database is enabled and functionality of registering users, login, logout is added.

When you first open the main page, you'll see "Login" link in the top-right corner. Clicking it you'll get to the login form which is provided by controller ctl/Login.php and corresponding template ctl/login.php. If you see any errors at this step (or any of the pages is loaded malformed and you find errors when looking at page source) - examine them, quite probably there is an issue with database, e.g.:

• library for working with database (mysqli) is not installed or enabled (this shouldn't happen with Docker or shared hosting setups discussed below... so investigate on your own)
• credentials to database (user, password), or database name and connection info are wrong or privileges are lacking - check them in conf.php, make sure you initialized user if it is not shared hosting where user is preconfigured
• database tables are not initialized yet (review setup procedure below).

If everything is fine, you can enter some name and password and try login (which should fail) - and you can try registering (for which you enter password twice and supply some email, possibly fake). When login is successful, you are redirected to "Task List" page, for which only stub is currently added. User profiles and settings pages are absent yet. Try logout.

When you examine login page source you'll see the new modules are being used, namely UserService.php and LoginService.php while MiscService.php and Auth.php are updated. Moreover they now use UsersDao, UserDataDao and RolesDao (via $ctx variable) - they are "Data-Access Objects", with them we perform database operations. Most of them are just instances of MysqlDao.php and there are just typical operations (read, find, save, delete etc) - but for some (UserDataDao) the class is extended with dedicated file (modules/dao/UserDataDao.php) adding some extra queries (not necessary right now).

Excercises

Examine database (e.g. with sqlexec.php page) fetching data from users, roles, userdata tables (e.g. select * from roles). Investigate how passwords/emails are hashed in the users table. Where salts for these hashes come from? You should modify them in "production"!

Try changing some user's role to admin. You should see the menu line is slightly different then, after login.

Try to invent some basic code for ctl/user/Profile.php controller and pages/user/profile.php page template so it shows some basic information about user, for example registration and last login date.

Examine difference of the branches for Step-1 and Step-2 in GitHub (click compare branches and select these two) to see which files were added and which lines are modified. In most cases you will easily grasp what is happening in those lines.

This is a typical PHP + MySQL application, so you need an http-server with PHP interpreter and MySQL (MariaDB).

There are THREE ways to launch this zoo relatively easily.

Docker is something resembling virtual-machine (but not exactly) widely used in industry. We describe the content of "containers" we need in a file (or few) and docker prepares everything. You'll need to install docker itself (there could be subtle steps like setting user group in linux but generally it is not much complicated) - this is available in linux, windows and OsX. Then run files docker-build.sh to build an image containing our Apache2 httpd + PHP server with MariaDB in one. then docker-run.sh to launch container from it. If all is fine, the site should be ready at http://localhost:8080/

To initialize database: open http://localhost:8080/sqlexec.php and copy-paste content of the file dbinit.sql into the textarea, then click exec.

Pick some free hosting, for example AwardSpace / AtWebpages and simply copy files there. You'll need setup database here also and put its details into configuration, but at the first step this is not important.

Then you'll get the site running on the web. There could be some limitations about some auxiliary functions (e.g. 3rd party login etc) but that's not much important for you now (such things anyway require efforts to setup).

Setup database: this is done with control-panel of the hosting - generally you are provided with some database name and connection info and create user here via web-interface. So then you need to put corresponding settings into conf.php file and populate database with tables, for which use the content of dbinit.sql except first few lines (no user or db creation) with some query running tool in the web-interface.

With this approach you'll find software package (by the name XAMPP probably) which contains HTTP server, PHP and MySQL inside and set up on your machine. It is not very difficult also and in some respects more handy than with docker. Then copy files there and setup database. For managing database there should be PHPMyAdmin web tool in the LAMPP packet - make use of it and generally follow instructions for shared hosting given above.