Kohana: Is it necessary to check if SYSPATH is defined?

Question

I'm a CodeIgniter user and I'm taking a look at Kohana. First thing I noticed is that in the documentation every snippet starts with:

<?php defined('SYSPATH') or die('No direct script access.');

assuming I'll be using .htaccess for address rewrite, is this really necessary? Is it an alternative to .htaccess for the purpouse of avoiding direct access? Is it just a good practice for "defense in depth"?

Answer 1

If you are using a .htaccess file to protect your system files, this is not required. However, since kohana has to support non .htaccess use, we place that there in the core system files for some basic security.