Subversion repository structure for web applications

Bruce — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:27:39 +0000

If you are coding a lot of web applications, it helps to have a standard directory structure that you start with. That you always know where files should go, etc. This page contains my (current) take on the topic.

These steps assume you already have Subversion set up and working. If it’s on a remote machine, use the appropriate protocol designator (http://, svn://, etc.) below where you see file://.

Alternatively, you could just put the directory creation commands into a script and run that script every time you needed to set up a new project. But we should all be using some sort of version control system, now shouldn’t we?

Just copy and paste the commands into a terminal session on your workstation or server, and that should be all you need to do to set this up. You will need to make some changes for your actual repository path and project names, of course. I’m just putting sample stuff in my examples.

Set up your desired directory “skeleton” in a temporary directory. Note that this uses a “shortcut” feature of mkdir that allows you to specify multiple subdirectories at once. The format is important – no spaces after the , etc.

cd ~
mkdir -p skeleton/{branches,tags,trunk/{data,db,doc,util,www/{include/{css,js},media/img}}}

You now have a directory system that looks like this:

/home/user
          /skeleton
                   /data
                   /db
                   /doc
                   /util
                   /www
                       /include
                               /css
                               /js
                       /media
                             /img

This will yield a website structure like this:

[web_root]
          /include
                  /css
                  /js
          /media
                /img

Of course you can add other directories as needed to further organize the website, but this will give you a good beginning, and help keep things organized. You will always know the path to CSS and Javascript files, regardless of where on the site you reference them in your HTML.

/data is where any “test” data goes that you need to prepopulate the project. This may not be relevant for the app you are building, so you could leave this one out.
/db contains SQL scripts used to create and populate any needed databases and tables. Be sure to add migration or update/upgrade scripts if the schemas change at some point during the project’s lifecycle.
/doc is for any and all project documentation. Be sure to paste important emails into text files and stash them in here!
/util is where any supporting scripts (Perl, shell, etc.) would go.
/www is the root dir for the website content.
/www/include is where any included files would go (think PHP’s require and include commands).
/www/include/css is where all your CSS files go. You are using CSS, right?
/www/include/js is where all Javascript goes. Javascript should be included in your HTML and PHP files via the

brucetimberlake.com » subversion

Subversion repository structure for web applications