Cascade is a Model-View-Controller application development framework written in PHP 5.

Although inspired by the Java Struts framework, Cascade is significantly different; in particular, it provides a built-in mechanism for caching result pages and a concept of execution mode which affects how chains are followed.

An application is composed of:

• An ApplicationController which provides methods and properties usable by all the components it contains.

• An optional Authorizer which determines who has the right to access a page, and sets an execution mode according to users' roles. This mode is used to determine which execution chain to follow and which Views and Settings to load.

• An application-level View which is responsible for preparing the final Response which will be delivered to the browser.

• An optional chain of Prefilter Actions.

• A required chain of Actions, the first of which is selected by the action portion of the URL. An optional method portion of the URL can specify which method the Action should use to service the request.

• An optional chain of Postfilter Actions.

• Each Action has an associated View which generates a fragment of text forming part of the Response. The application-level View is responsible for assembling these fragments into the final response delivered to the browser.

• ViewPlugins may be associated with any View, and plugins associated with the application-level View may be made globally available to all Action Views.

• Global Constants and local or global Assigned variables can be defined.

• Actions can be linked to Forms which are executed before the main Action method and control whether or not the Action's method is run at all.