I'm creating a small Web-Application with PHP, JavaScript, Ajax and of course HTML and CSS (and a bit jQuery).
Is there a Design Pattern which you recommend?
I know MVC, but only in Java, C++.
I'm just starting with PHP and JavaScript, and search for a source which can tell me how to use these languages correctly (in form of how they should interact with each other)
My Idea is to use PHP only for DB connects and store all data "locally" in JavaScript vars, and work with them.
So, my questions:
Are there any Frameworks (should be very small, i want to code most
of the functions on my own)
Is there a book/website which can train me to do it the right way? (or do you have any links?)
There are lot of web application frameworks in PHP out of which few are really famous in development world.
cakephp http://cakephp.org/
codeigniter http://codeigniter.com/
Both of them has rich support for MVC pattern and almost similar to spring and struts in java world.
A valid answer should not refer to Zend Framework, Code Igniter or Cake PHP.
In my opinion Silex could be the framework you search. It is a microframework which uses some parts of Symfony2 but is very lightweight and very easy to learn.
From the docs:
Silex is a PHP microframework for PHP 5.3. It is built on the shoulders of Symfony2 and Pimple and also inspired by sinatra.
A microframework provides the guts for building simple single-file apps. Silex aims to be:
Concise: Silex exposes an intuitive and concise API that is fun to use.
Extensible: Silex has an extension system based around the Pimple micro service-container that makes it even easier to tie in third party libraries.
Testable: Silex uses Symfony2's HttpKernel which abstracts request and response. This makes it very easy to test apps and the framework itself. It also respects the HTTP specification and encourages its proper use.
And the simplest application would just require something like this (from the docs):
require_once __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php';
$app = new Silex\Application();
$app->get('/hello/{name}', function($name) use($app) {
return 'Hello '.$app->escape($name);
});
$app->run();
This does everything a Controller does and even more. You then could add Twig to have a solid start for the View part. And for the Model part you could add Doctrine2 which has a great Object Relational Mapper (ORM) and even a Object Document Mapper (ODM) if you like NoSQL.
I recommend you to use Zend Framework. It's not "light" framework but is very modular and scalable. So you can use only few modules that you need and write rest of code by yourself. Another advantage is that is one of the most commonly used framework and have great documentation. Please see also javascript framework which can be useful for your project - http://knockoutjs.com/
Related
Is it advisable to use yii framework (or any other php framework) for application handling jsonrpc requests only?
I am confused between
creating my own file/folder structure with oop,
AND
using existing yii framework (or any other php framework)
Can anyone suggest, what i should do?
Is there any other php framework available to do same.???
Thanks
A framework will cut down the amount of development, particularly for something like JSON request handling (which is build into Yii) and thus you would get the project off the ground more quickly and have less code to maintain.
However, for you, there is, of course, the Yii learning curve ... but I reckon it would be worth it in the long run...
How big is your project?
I'm not sure if this is possible, but let's say you want to build a CMS, but you're torn between 2 frameworks because each has some features that you like. Is it possible to create the CMS with both framewoks? Does this approach have merits or pitfalls?
Speaking strictly about the Zend Framework (ZF) I would say yes. ZF components are written to be as independent from other components as possible. I would say that it would not be very difficult (It may actually be quite common) to integrate libraries of ZF into other frameworks like Cake, Symfony, or Codeigniter.
Is it possible to create the CMS with both framewoks?
While it's possible to use components from the Zend Framework inside other Frameworks / CMSs - this may be the case with other component libraries as well, but Zend's the most modular one that I know - It's usually not a good idea to mix two full-blown Frameworks.
Many central functions like MVC structures, URL routing, the database layer, Unit testing, error management and so on are by nature unable to be served by two frameworks at once without massive friction. Also, you're likely to get problems when one of the frameworks needs to be updated.
I would recommend to pick the framework that covers most of what you need, and try and add the missing features using plug-ins or own modifications.
Your question is too abstract.
For instance Zend Framework is more to be a library of specific functionalities ready-to-be-include into Your codebase then some closed development environment like for instance Symfony framework.
Thanks to it can be ZF simply included into your codebase (and Symfony too).
Symfony Framework compared to it is closed solution depending on front server environment so you cannot use it like some other framewor's slave.
It would really depend on which things you liked about both...
Zend Frameowrk is more like a library, so you can pick and choose components from it. Symfony also has some re-usable components you can use.
Really, you can do anything... it just depends how much work you want to do, and how willing you are to modify the framework code. Note: most other PHP frameworks are not nearly as flexible as Zend Framework (next up probably being Symfony).
This sounds very messy, so I'd advise against it, unless you use it in the fashion I've described above. It's easy to pull ZF or Symfony components into other frameworks, but not the other way around.
Hope this helps.
The composability of most frameworks is such that that is most likely to give you all the disadvantages of both, while simultaneously eliminating most of the individual advantages of both.
It seems to me like one framework will for serve as the core - bootstrapping, MVC stack, routing - while the other will be used to pull in specific functionality - like classes for forms or filtering or interacting with web services, etc.
As much as I prefer Zend Framework for the core - and most everything else - its use-at-will architecture argues for making the other framework the core and pulling in ZF components where you need them.
As #Adrian notes, it's easy to pull in ZF components into a project built primarily on another framework, since ZF is designed with that flexibility in mind. Other frameworks are less accommodating in this regard.
You can do it. Most modern frameworks (Zend, symfony, flow) is capable to use parts of other frameworks. Symfony 2 uses Zend Logger, flow3 uses sfYaml... It is possible tu interchange some components.
But, imho, you should stick to one framework as a core, and use second only to relatively isolated subsystems. Adapter and Facade design patterns can help you to mix them together - some components / clases demands some wrapping before use in non-native environment.
For further reading: http://www.symfony-project.org/book/1_2/17-Extending-Symfony#chapter_17_integrating_with_other_framework_s_components
Of course it is possible and I don't see something wrong with it. For example I used CakePHP and Zend on a relatively large Project which was kind of a cms. CakePHP for the core (Routing, MVC) and Zend for some "Modules". Mainly for PDF, E-Mail (smtp), FTP and a few others that CakePHP was not that good at. With Cake it was fairly easy to use ZF components and didn't feel hacky at all.
In fact, ZF was written to be as independent as possible, so that you can use any component at any time anywhere. Yet, it would not work the other way round (Using ZF as core, and Cake components). Surely it is possible, but a real pain with no benefits. So ZF could be used propably inside of pretty much any other framework and nothing would be wrong with it, imho.
For class, I would like a to use PHP MVC framework very similar to ASP.NET MVC with NHibernate. I am very comfortable with ASP.NET MVC. I need to use PHP and MySQL. I would not like to be concerned with the SQL to save me time. I would like to just design my PHP model classes and controllers without all of that data-access logic behind it that I would have to write.
Any suggestions? Thanks.
Also, I'm very limited on what I can install on the server. For instance, I can't upgrade PHP or run other installers. I want something I can drop in.
I prefer Zend Framework MVC components combined with Doctrine if really want great power. but for something simple try CaKePHP as it has its own simple ORM implementation, and the framework is built to be the php version of Ruby on Rails.
My personnal preference for "MVC Framework" would probably be Zend Framework -- though it's not the only possible choice (I'm thinking about symfony too, for instance).
About the "not writing SQL" part, I would use Doctrine, which is a great ORM Framework.
It's actually the default ORM Framework of symfony, and can be used with Zend Framework quite easily.
I suggest Symfony. It uses Doctrine (which is inspired partly by Hibernate) too, but it is integrated deeper with Symfony than Zend Framework. Symfony provides a number of helper classes which really help automate things with Doctrine (my favorite is sfDoctrinePager). Zend Framework is a good choice, but I recommend looking at Symfony first. I would avoid the other PHP MVC frameworks as they tend to be less flexible, and if you're coming from another language you may have your own preferences on how to attack a certain problem - Symfony and ZF will both give you leeway in this sense.
I use ZF a lot and I like it very much. I've learned how to solve a big part of perfomance problems with ZF, so it's became not "enormous" and "monstrous" for me.
But I'd like to know if there are any as powerful frameworks as Zend for PHP. Maybe CodeIgniter is? What is it? What are its cool features? Anything else?
And, are there any powerful frameworks which realises not MVC? Powerful means not just implementing of design pattern but a library of useful classes, functions, etc
There is a difference between frameworks, some are regualr frameworks (used to be called 'class libraries'), and some are 'full stack frameworks' (used to be called 'frameworks'). The web is and will always be about buzz-words...
Zend is a regular framework, which means you can use it's components separatly, and you aren't forced to use them. In a full stack framework, like CakePHP (I don't reallt know code igniter), you are locked inside. You can only use it's classes and they are hard to extend.
If you are looking for a competitor for ZF, be sure not to compare it with a 'full stack' framework, because it's a different thing, and it solves different problems...
Other then that, I don't know any frameworks that do not implement or give you the possibility to implement MVC, just because it's very applicable to web applications.
I'm a big ZF fan, but you can take a look to Symfony which is pretty powerfull but maybe a little to heavy sometimes.
I'd personally recommend Kohana. They just released 3.0 less than a week ago (it's in the forums, not on the dl page). It used to be a branch of CodeIgniter for PHP5, but it just underwent a big rewrite so now it's much cleaner and faster.
Basically, it does just enough to help you, but stays the hell out of your way. It's very lightweight and fast. It beats the pants off of pretty much any other framework I've used - Zend, Symfony, CakePHP, and CodeIgniter.
The thing about Zend is that you can actually decouple its components. You can use them without using the rest of the framework (just register the autoloader). Really, Zend to me is more like a heavy framework with a bunch of PEAR libraries in it. The framework is too heavy for normal use, but the components are nice.
I personally like CodeIgniter, it is good to start from 0 due to its great documentation and it can be easily expanded with the lot of plugins. It is considered pretty fast framwework (faster than ZF, Cake php and Symphony) however its speed is lowered by PHP4 support and any framework will lose its speed as you add new libraries and plugins there.
ZendFramework is the most powerfull php framework I have found. CodeIgniter is a lightweight MVC framework so its not powerful.
ZendFramework also has loose coupling so you can use some Classes without other classes like the front controller.
CodeIgniter MVC is not as powerful and the ZendFramework MVC but i haven't tried any other framework
I've choosen CodeIgniter because it is lightwight and because i'm not using a ORM and Smarty, this means i only need the router and controller/model class.
But it is missing a few features like user/login handling being the most serious.
I also use some zend classes like amazon access.
Duplicate of
What is a PHP Framework?
and many more
So far, I've been using PHP for small tweaks, mostly with WordPress. What are PHP frameworks? Why do I need them? WHEN do I need them?
Any insight will be helpful. Thanks.
Frameworks are organized groups of code or libraries, built on top of a language to either
Make Common Tasks Easy/Simple
Create a Consistent Way to Develop Applications
Some frameworks are very restrictive (as in it's not easy to do things, unless you do them the 'framework' way), others are looser. I've found Zend's Framework to be a good mix of both, making easy to use single components (for example, you can drop the 'Feed' library into your existing application without needing to rewrite the application the Zend way), or you can use the Zend MVC and Application libraries to for an entire application.
I'd stay away from frameworks that are 'all or nothing'.
From Zend's Framework (restating the above, perhaps more completely):
Zend Framework is an open source framework for developing web applications and services with PHP 5. Zend Framework is implemented using 100% object-oriented code. The component structure of Zend Framework is somewhat unique; each component is designed with few dependencies on other components. This loosely coupled architecture allows developers to use components individually. We often call this a "use-at-will" design.
While they can be used separately, Zend Framework components in the standard library form a powerful and extensible web application framework when combined. Zend Framework offers a robust, high performance MVC implementation, a database abstraction that is simple to use, and a forms component that implements HTML form rendering, validation, and filtering so that developers can consolidate all of these operations using one easy-to-use, object oriented interface. Other components, such as Zend_Auth and Zend_Acl, provide user authentication and authorization against all common credential stores. Still others implement client libraries to simply access to the most popular web services available. Whatever your application needs are, you're likely to find a Zend Framework component that can be used to dramatically reduce development time with a thoroughly tested foundation.
A framework tries to provide all the things that are common to every (or most) projects - html rendering, database access, and so on - in a way that's simple and easy to use.
You would use one to speed development, because you can skip all that stuff, and focus on what's unique to your project. Depending on the one you use, it can also add some security features by automatically escaping data on the way to the database, or to the screen.
I use them in any situation where I don't need something so custom that it's more work to bend the framework to my needs than to create the whole thing from scratch. That's pretty rare.