It is generally adviced to store module assets inside the module's directory, inside moduleName/public (or whatever you want to name the asset's directory).
Zend Framework 2 unfortunately doesn't support asset publishing for module assets by default. According to MWOP, there was nothing planned ~1 month ago and I guess there still is no real plan (they had probably a lot of work to get the stable version ready). (But, some day, they are going to address this issue.)
As my ZF2 app is growing and growing, I reached the point where I need to have module-specific assets. At the moment, I maintain them inside the module directories and copy them to the application's public directory. You can imagine that this method is error-prone and exhausting.
How do you handle this problem? Is there maybe a simple solution to this issue with little coding effort? My project plan doesn't allow me to create a complex asset handling on my own. Is there a recommendable, lightweight asset framework compatible to ZF2? I've already considered creating symlinks but I don't think this would be the best solution because it would require some additional web server configuration (FollowSymlinks) and additional maintenance work (the app is developed locally and deployed on a remote server).
Thanks in advance.
This has been discussed before in many places and it comes down to three ways to manage this.
Copy and Paste the assets into the public/ directory
Use symlinks
Use an asset loading module like assetic
A simple solution would be to make the copying of assets part of you build process.
Another question was already asked How to merge Zend Framework 2 module public directories for info.
I know this is pretty old, but I wanted to add this information for other readers.
Now there's also a module for this, which has been fully tested and is being used (and even depended on) by many modules.
Check it out here: https://github.com/RWOverdijk/AssetManager
Hope this helps.
There is also fourth option. Use a directory Alias in VirtualHost configuration.
Related
Essentially, I'm looking to have a PHP development workflow that needs to be modular, but using a Single Page Application technology.
I understand it is recommended to separate the back-end from the front-end. Develop them separately. But is there a way to group all related code into one module (or folder), meaning all backend code with its own views presentation inside the same folder?
It's like MVC, but the "V" contains fragments of vuejs (or angular) files, which extends from a master file somewhere in your project.
For example
Assume we are building a modular CMS, where you can upload "plugins" (really, PHP modules), extending the CMS' functionality:
-project[root-folder]
----core[folder] # contains all infrastracture code, api routes, master view file, magic, etc.
----modules[folder] # uploadable modules goes here
--------User[folder] # sample module; follows the MVC pattern
------------Controllers[folder] # contains files, e.g. UserController.php
------------Models[folder] # contains User.php
------------views[folder] # where vue components is housed
----------------users/index.php # contains vue code
----------------users/create.php # etc...
----------------users/js/user.js
----------------users/css/user.css
--------Blog[folder] # another module
----index.php # the master view or just the bootstrap file
----gulpfile.js
Then inside the core/ folder, there is a master layout that binds all views together.
Will a folder structure like this be viable?
Obvious problem there is you can't use .vue files (as that would mean, every time you upload a new module, you need to run gulp or re-compile).
Hoping for your feedback. Thanks.
This question will strike a lot of folk as bizarre and twisted. That's the reaction I got when I asked it in the context of .net mvc. I'm with you 100%.
I'm too new to js frontend development (and too ignorant of PHP) to have much advice. It's going to be tricky. Ajax calls to PHP code will need to go to paths below the src directory. But then you want to stop your frontend resources being served from these same paths. Both PHP and gulp will want to use file paths for urls, but at least for Gulp this can be controlled.
I'll follow this with interest. My ambition is to keep in the same folder things you're likely to want to delete together, and for those things to be able to call each other with short, relative paths. The ideal would be to be able to specify the module route independently of the path on disk, and to have this route work for both frontend bundled resources and services. Good luck !
I came across this question whilst searching for an approach for exactly the same problem. I'm building a "platform" rather than an application with a plugin system along the lines of Wordpress. I have the additional issue of the platform itself being a 'multitenancy' environment, too - so any plugins cannot interfere with the core "Dashboard" that holds these things together.
So; posting for a few reasons, two years on...
Did you get anywhere and would you care to share any thoughts?
I came across a quite extensive article for PHP Phalcon that has certainly given me a few ideas. Sharing incase it helps you/others:
https://blog.antsand.com/singlepost/index/5619/How-to-integrate-php-(Phalcon)-and-Vue.js-components
There's a line buried in the series that says "As a rule of thumb. Structure your code, based on the application and NOT on the programming language and frameworks." I'm not sure how wise or not this is, but it certainly gave me something to crack on with.
So right now, I have a module folder a bit like:
/mymodule
/Controller
/Model/
/Template
thing.vue
/Assets
/js
/css
MyModule.php
Assets are handled via a framework route (i.e, /assets/{path:.*} )
Templates are handled via the (PHP) module install script to make sure webpack knows where they live.
Still at proof-of-concept stage but rightly or wrongly, it seems to work well enough!
I am currently working on several zend projects, and the approach I took initially was to dump the Zend framework into Wamp Servers root directory (wamp/www).
I then used the zf tool to CREATE PROJECT (multiple times) into a folder called Projects_Zend which is also in Wamp's root.
I then copied and pasted the entire Zend framework into each of my projects library folder, where I set the appropriate paths for each project.
QUESTION:
Is this a good approach, as I now have multiple duplicate copies of the zend framework, one for each of my projects.
QUESTION TWO:
How to avoid this??
Any help/advice welcome....
Well, if all the websites will always be on the same server this is good reason to have only one copy of ZF. But keep in mind if one project uses something that gets broken/removed/whatever in a future upgrade you could find it difficult to manage.
This question is very situation dependent. Both solutions can be right.
Personaly I always have a copy of zf in a projects folder since it's not like its a ton of space lost and my projects tend to be on seperate servers.
Hope this helps!
About question 2: you don't have to avoid anything. Just do whatever is right for your context. If you want a more precise answer I guess you should give us more information about the relation between all these projects/websites.
About "Does the location of the zend library even matter? ": well as long as its out of the public directory to avoid peoples invoking script files no it does not mater much.
you can either put zend library on the php include_path or in your case using symlinks maybe better.
but there's no harm in putting it in a library folder inside of each project.
I am looking to reduce redundancies in code shared across entire web sites. I have tinkered with several frameworks but cannot think of any that allow you to EASILY separate the framework code from the site code while sharing it to multiple sites at the same time.
What PHP frameworks can do this easily?
EDIT - I am trying to determine which frameworks are the easiest to share.. I was already guessing that nearly all could be shared, but which frameworks are geared towards sharing? It sounds like Yii recommends placing the framework code outside the site code, that is a good start.
If someone is sharing the same framework code across sites already, I would love to know about that.
It's pretty easy to do that with Fuel (http://fuelphp.com).
Each website has an index.php where some paths are defined:
/**
* Set all the paths here
*/
$app_path = '../fuel/app/';
$package_path = '../fuel/packages/';
$core_path = '../fuel/core/';
As you can see, you may share the core and packages in a central repository and create a single app and public folders to each web site.
You may even share an app with different web sites customizing stuff (let's say, the site title or the database used) by just setting a different environment in the .htaccess. That works out-of-the-box for development/stage/production sites, for example, but may be extended to anything. You may also setup central packages to use in multiple apps. Powerful, easy and just works.
Many can do this. For instance YII is supposed to be installed OUTSIDE of your www-root directory (httpdocs, /var/www/ or something like that). You can use several sites to point to that base dir.
Any framework (or part) that does not need specific settings for your site can be shared among multiple sites I guess.
I believe Zend can do what you ask, possibly even Symfony and Fuel, and I'm sure many other frameworks that allow you to pick what parts of it to use will let you do this.
However, doing so will require you to do a little more configuring to get it all running. Which is kind of why I ended up creating my own framework.
Symfony does. I love the Symfony framework, and it comes with some great frameworks. You might like the Routing and YAML ones. A person I know calls Symfony the best php framework.
Symfony components
Some of the components have their own specific sites
You can find a really good documentation here.
Symfony2 is suitable for your needs. It's a full stack framework with a lot of standalone components. It works with "bundles", a bundle is a kind of container with a complete logic (controllers, model objects, views, assets, configuration, ...). That means you write one bundle and you can reuse it without any problem.
But you can also consider symfony 1.4. One project can handles many applications so your model is shared across these applications and the same code can be reused in all applications. Note an application can be a complete website.
I can't think of any frameworks that do this natively, but you could use several SVN (or hg, etc) repositories to accomplish this. Example using CakePHP:
1 repo has the CakePHP default files. If you wish to update CakePHP,
you update this repo in the future.
1 repo per website that stores everything inside your app folder.
It's not built in functionality, but it isn't very difficult to setup either.
I'm having a bit of an application structure design dilemma.
I have created a web app that creates online surveys. It all works fine, but I would now like to create a new site that does different types of online surveys. This new site will be pretty much 95% similar in terms of layout, logic, functions, etc.
Rather than duplicate all the code from the current web app, I'd like the new app to share in the "fountain of knowledge" created by the current app - so to speak.
Can anyone enlighten me with their experiences of doing this sort of thing? Their best practices?
As a rough guide, I'm currently thinking of using symlinks for all the major logic files (library.php, functions.php, etc), and then deciding which logic to use based on which URL the user logged-in from.
Does that sound like a good or bad idea?
Would it be any better or worse to divide the whole system in to 3 sites, with the site in the middle containing all the common elements and logic? This middle site would have no independent use - it would be used from either of the 2 applications looking for functionality and assets, etc.
Any help and experience on this matter is very much appreciated indeed.
I'm very wary of going down a dead-end solution.
Kind Regards,
Seb
Good solution if:
you host your website yourself and creating symlinks between differents virtual hosts is not a problem
you won't have to make significative changes between the 2 websites
But instead of using symlinks, I could take advantage of PHP's include_path directive and put the common libraries in this path. This way, just write your includes relative to this path, the files will be accessible from any site you want on the same server.
The second advantage of using include_path is you can bypass any open_basedir directives which wouldn't allow you to include files which are not in the same virtual host base dir.
This is how I'd do it...
Create a core library.
Create you 2 site directories.
Create site specific code folders in
each site.
Create core library folders in each
site that simlink to the main core
library created.
I run multiple websites all running off of a single installation of CodeIgniter on my server (separate application directories and a single system directory). This has been working fabulously and I don't see any reason to change it at this point.
I find myself writing library classes to extend/override CI all of the time and many times if I find a bug or improve effeciency I have to go back to several websites to make the same adjustments at risk of a typo that breaks one of the websites. Because of this it requires that I change each file and then test that site for bugs.
I have been pondering a solution of using a single libraries directory in a central location and symlinking all of my websites to that central directory. Then when I make a file change it will immediately propagate to all of the downstream websites. It will still require that I test each one for errors, but I won't have to make the changes multiple times. Anything that is specific to a single website will either be a non-shared file (still in the linked directory just not used elsewhere) or can be put in a local helper.
Also, I keep separate 'system' directories by CI version so I can migrate my websites independently if necessary--this central libraries file would be attached to a specific version to reduce possible breaks.
Does anyone see potential issues or pitfalls from taking this approach? Has anyone accomplished this in another direction that I should consider?
Thanks in advance!
I think this actually makes sense :] Go for it. Even on official CodeIgniter page, they mention it's possible.
Also, I don't see one reason why there should be any problem.
Edit: they touch the problem of multiple sites here: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/managing_apps.html
also:
http://codeigniter.com/wiki/Multiple_Applications/
http://www.exclusivetutorials.com/setting-multiple-websites-in-codeigniter-installation/
How to Handle Multiple Projects in CodeIgniter?
http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/56436/
I have a single system directory and separate application directories for my CI apps. In order to share libraries and some view templates between my apps, I have created a "Common" directory, in the same folder as the CI system and with the same structure as a regular app folder and used symlinks, but you can modify the Loader class so that it looks in the Common folder too. My setup looks something like this:
/var/CodeIgniter/
/var/Common/
/var/Common/config/
/var/Common/controllers/
...
/var/Common/libraries/
...
/var/www/someapp/
/var/www/someotherapp/
...
I'm not sure how you handle publishing your sites (assuming you actually do any of that), but I'd look into version control. For example, in SVN you can make external to another svn directory (or file) and then just update the current svn directory which grabs the external file. This approach gains one benefit from the others, which is when you modify the common library, the others aren't immediately affected. This prevents unwanted breaks before you have time to go test all the sites using the common library. You can then just update each site's folder whenever you are ready to test the changes. This is "more work", but it prevents code duplication AND unwanted breaks.
I wrote a MY_Loader to do exactly that.
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/136321/