I have ready numerous posts here on SO about framework1 vs framework2 however it seems to be alot of personal opinions that are one sided. Based on the following can someone tell me which framework would be ideal for my needs?
Build a rich featured API where other sites and devices can use the API to use website features and access it's content.
RSS Feeds with both XML and JSON for jQuery interaction.
Ability to use layouts / templates that are customizable.
Use of plugins so that I do not need to duplicate code.
Database querying with relationships.
GREAT documentation.
Actively supported.
Doesn't REQUIRE command line access.
Easy to manage file uploads and move the files around so only certain users can download them.
Customizable access level so users can have different access levels depending on which project/section they are viewing.
Low overhead usage.
SEO URLS that do not require the '/view','/edit','/add' in the urls (depending on which action you want to do.)
Support for jQuery
There have been a few frameworks I have seen that support some of these but not all. I am currently using CakePHP for one project but do not think it would fit my needs as the database querying can get horrendous. I have heard a little bit about CodeIgnitor however it doesn't seem to easily use templating (maybe I just misunderstood what I read).
If you could tell me which framework you think would be ideal for these needs and why that would be very helpful!
I'll just spamvertize my little framework overview table here. The simple table answers a few of your technical points:
http://matrix.include-once.org/framework/simple
Use the detail/feature view to cherrypick your options.
RSS isn't a standard feature even with the big frameworks, use a PEAR library
templates: all frameworks use them
plugins: depends on your concept of plugins, most frameworks are extensible though
look for "ORM"
GREAT documentation: that would limit you to codeigniter or cakephp
Doesn't REQUIRE command line access: except symfony+cake, few do
file uploads: this isn't a standard feature, but I'd just mix and match a library
Customizable access level: practically all frameworks come with a permission system
Support for jQuery: this is surprising. Prototype seems to be very strong, only half the frameworks use jQuery by default
CakePHP database querying doesn't have to be horrendous. (Though, I remember my first few projects were definitely hard on the database)
With the right optimization, normalization/de-normalization of your data, and a few tweaks here and there (persistent models comes to mind), you can accomplish everything you've inquired about with CakePHP, and keep your database load to a minimum.
That said, if you truly want to move to something else, I'd go with Zend Framework.
Symfony is bloated, (and yes, fanboys, this is still true).
Codeigniter is super lightweight, but you're going to be doing a LOT more work to accomplish your listed requirements. I've spun up two codeigniter applications, both relatively simple, and both took twice the work / twice the amount of new code than if I had gone with say, CakePHP.
A lot of religious fanaticism floating around when you talk about frameworks. But take a look at the documentation of Fat-Free Framework. It just might catch your fancy and requirements.
Before I answer, let me qualify that I'm certified on Zend, a frequent user of CodeIgniter, and daily user (and hater) of Symfony.
Zend's setup, especially if you're doing a small-medium sized site can be ugly. Especially using the data mapper strategy, you're talking a thousand or more lines of codes just for the model setup. CodeIgniter is much better setup-wise, but still not insignificant.
Command-line free --essentially-- knocks out Zend. It's doable, but not fun (see thousand lines of code, above) Built-in user auth isn't nearly as good on CodeIgniter as Zend, perhaps that's a serious knock....definitely no templating there. Symfony is flat-out done because of the addition of /view /edit, etc.
Hate to break it to you, but it seems that many users of all these frameworks are not native English speakers. Forget about Symfony, seems entirely eastern-European based. I'd hate to be a new-to-php user of Zend Framework with all the competing tuts with their assumptions of some semi-complex concepts. There's a reason that Zend's training is expensive and full.... Again, CodeIgniter is not horrible, but still can be frustrating.
Simply because of our extensive use of Jquery and desire to avoid a ton of hack-around, my company has dumped the frameworks altogether. Now setup is purposeful, not for a framework...just build a DAL, assemble classes, build views, and done. Established functions are re-purposed as "plugins" that we actually know and understand. Most interaction is Jquery based Ajax (sometimes XAJAX) which really doesn't take advantage of the frameworks anyway--and fights tooth and nail with Symfony. For those who argue that frameworks force MVC, I have a VP of Development who does that just fine, thank you. Perhaps it's not the right answer for you, but we're glad we went this route. It's saved weeks worth of documentation-hunting.
Related
I'm a beginner php developer who is trying to build a social network for my school students. Knowing that the school has over 1000 students who are already active, I must have a plan of expanding / scale the code that I write.
Earlier it was just the LAMP Stack, now the modern web development is way more than that as I see, I'm truly kind of lost in what technologies to use and how to incorporate them to build a scalable app. I'm hoping to divide this application into 3 layers.
Application layer (phalcon,reddis,apache,php)[mvc api centric]
Database layer(mysql)
UI layer - (html/css/js/)
This is where i need help, is this design approach good for a scalable app ? where can i improve ? any explanations, links for further reading will be a highly appreciated.
Welcome to SO. I cannot think of a particular reference guide to direct you to (although the PHP manual is a good place if you end up stuck with how to do something specific). I would suggest reading a bit of several results when you search "Getting started with MVC in PHP" and noting what they agree on. That said, take a look at what I say below (and then ignore it as much as you please ;) ).
Firstly, you are wiser than many in sorting out a scalable design before launching into the project...
I'm excited to see Phalcon in your list there already. However, as DevDonkey suggested, start with something simpler first (Phalcon is very powerful but to really get to grips with it you need a good grasp of PHP, particularly object-orientated programming).
If you are completely new to PHP...
... try building a small app (products table, view/add/edit/delete functionality) and learn the beginnings of the language that way, as this answer suggests. Things will go wrong and you'll discover lots of headaches when you want to change one feature and it affects everything else but that will help you to understand the importance of...
MVC design
From your question I can see you have at least heard of this. This is really where the layers of your application lie:
Model - interactions with the database (retrieving/editing data) are handled through this. So you could have a MYSQL database and then your models provide a nice interface to interact with the data (generally you have one model for each table).
View - this is the last layer, what the user sees. So you will make use of your html/css/js knowledge here. On this topic, unless you really want to do your own css consider using a CSS Framework such as Bootstrap. It will really help speed up making your site look good and there are loads of free templates out there to use with it.
Controller - this is the application logic. The controllers request/manipulate data through the models and then decide what to send to the views for rendering.
Use a framework?
Using a good framework can make your application more reliable and quicker to build. But using a framework without understanding it will be frustrating, slow and possibly result in worse code than if you didn't use one to begin with (as you employ hacks to get around the pieces of the framework you don't understand). My current favourite is Phalcon but as a relative beginner to PHP I would suggest something more like CakePHP although both Laravel and Symfony are also popular.
Summary
Start small, learn, test ideas out and then build up to a bigger project.
Get comfortable using PHP (including OOP style) before using a framework.
Use an MVC framework
The layers you laid out in your question are good, but I would split it slightly differently (considering that MVC is the 3 layers)
Application Layer - controllers, written in PHP, handles logic/manipulation, often the biggest layer
Database Layer - models, written in PHP, you will also need a database which could be in your favourite database language - MySQL ;)
UI Layer - views, possibly written in PHP (depending on the framework) but also HTML, CSS and JS as well as well as a templating language if you wish (e.g. Twig or Volt), essentially a way to make the response from the controller nice for a human
First Project (for CakePHP)
This blog tutorial is a good place to start if you decide to use CakePHP.
Getting started with Phalcon
Phalcon is more powerful/verstile, but to get started with it I feel you have to be a better PHP developer than you do to get started with something like CakePHP. Take your time to understand each new concept with Phalcon, particularly Dependency Injection.
Even having used CakePHP for the past 2 years and being familiar with MVC patterns and PHP, I still worked my way through all 7 of the tutorials in Phalcon.
Having said this, my favourite thing about Phalcon is that it is highly decoupled - so it is fairly easy (after a while) to replace bits of it with your own extensions if it doesn't quite do what you want.
Note about Phalcon: It is not as popular as many other frameworks (although popularity is growing) and so you may have to spend some time digging around when you get stuck. However, the docs are improving all the time and the forum is very active. Unfortunately the number answering questions about it on StackOverflow is still small compared to many other frameworks.
I'm looking for some kind of CMS or framework + ORM (I don't really know exactly what I'm looking for).
My goal is to build a web app to view and manage database records.
To help understand, I would like some sort of end-user phpmyadmin/CMS hybrid with minimal programming efforts. In fact, that is to build a database of a particular kind of products, where those are submitted and consulted by end user and validated by myself.
I first thought that wordpress + plugins, mediawiki + semantic or drupal could be quick solutions but
those are quite heavy for the purpose.
Playing with tons of plugins don't reassure me, as they can become unmaintained, conflicting, ..
Solutions like mediawiki requires bunch of time to write templates, etc..
Then I thought at using a framework (let's say symfony) but it's also very time-consuming (compared to an almost out-of-the-box solution).
Finaly, I thought that the quickest solution may be to develop it all by myself using an easy ORM (like RedBean), but I wish I could find a quicker solution.
Any idea ?
Note: I intend to use a php/mysql solution.
There are plenty of "micro-frameworks" for PHP that work very well with RedBean (which I love btw). It's a compromise between writing everything from scratch and using a full blown framework. I find their is a good degree of flexability using these small(ish) tool kits.
One I've used a little bit is Slim, which gives you routing and some other small things a controller would.
Other similar "micro-frameworks" like Slim:
Silex
Limonade
GluePHP (which is about 30 lines of code)
These all give you routing and some other neat tools. In regards to MVC, they sorta give you the C.
If RedBean is your Model, or the M, all your missing is the V, should you want the whole MVC organization.
For that you can use Smarty, Twig or Mustache, or any other templating tool.
I personally love working with these components separately, because I find that they are all highly specialized, integrate nicely, and allow me to control to what extent they are in charge of things. The downside is is that they may have compatibility issues with each other and that you have to maintain three, as oppose to one, third-party library to update and depend on their development.
Here's a good article on using Slim with Idiorm (an ORM) and Twig, though I find Idiorm rather nasty to work with.
Sounds like you could use:
asp.net + mvc or django
Sorry these are two different comparable environments that should help with not a lot of overhead on learning, and can function quite well with mysql
I've recently inherited a medium-sized php site which is horribly coded. It violates every best-practices methodology, from MVC to DRY, is vulnerable to SQL-injection and everything in between.
I've visited the other questions and already put everything on a VCS and am considering the framework alternatives. However I'd like your opinions on a framework that lets me slowly migrate from the actual site to a framework controlled one.
Thanks.
Zend Framework would actually be the best choice in my opinion, as it has a great use-at-will structure and it is no full-stack framework like most of the others.
That means that you can start with migrating the model-layer first without having to touch the view or controller part. And even when it comes to the controller part, you could first put everything into controllers without having to rely on the router, so you could still use your old URLs.
I will put my vote in for CakePHP (http://www.cakephp.org). It has the ability to manage everything very nicely.
Template
This will allow you to create the base template / layout for the site. It is the main body of the site. You can store multiple layouts all in the views/layouts directory. You can identify what layout you want to use for any given page within the site.
Static Content
If you have static content pages, they all reside in views/pages. These will load into the layout wherever you put the <?php echo $content_for_layout; ?>.
Custom Code
Many times, you will have custom code that may not fit in the framework. No worries, you can add this to the libs or vendors folders and call the functionality from there.
Speedy Upgrade Via Bake
One of the cool features of cake is the bake feature. Once you have added your schema to the database, you can use bake to have CakePHP write all of the models (with relationships), the controllers (with basic CRUD and admin sections), and the views for each action within the controller.
Cake has been a great fit for all of the projects I have worked on. It keeps the code well organized, has a very active community, and their documentation is very well written and understandable.
UPDATE: For additional information about some sites who use cakephp you can see a sample list here: http://book.cakephp.org/view/510/Sites-in-the-wild
A few notable (high traffic sites) would be:
https://addons.mozilla.org
http://scratch.mit.edu/
Kohana is my framework of choice, but I won't start to wax about its good points, I'm sure it can do anything the others can do.
Faced with the same legacy codebase problem as you described, my response was to take Kohana and disable the request routing, so that you can just use it as an include on a page-by-page basis until you're ready.
The changes are minimal; if you're interested the fork of kohana is up on github
You may need to adjust the php error level settings depending on the kludgey-ness of your codebase ;)
Zend Framework is awesome.
Even better, this excellent post from Chris Abernethy shows how to gradually migrate an existing site from a twisted plate of pasta into a nice MVC structure using ZF.
Take a look at Fat-Free Framework. It allows both procedural and OOP code, so you can have a two-stage approach. If the base code is currently procedural, then you can focus all efforts first on transformation to MVC architecture. That way you can have a proof of concept that all future efforts can be as fruitful as the first phase. Then you can move too strictly-OOP. No other framework will give you this kind of flexibility. And your end-users will not feel any delays, or worse, a culture shock.
You will get as many answers as framework users there are in this place. It's obvious that someone using framework of his choice will advice it to the others.
I opt for symfony.
However, if you care about best practices than both symfony and Zend are a good (and only) choice.
This sounds like a massive undertaking.
I can only recommend CakePHP because that is what I use, but that does not mean another framework would be less or more suitable. They're all pretty much the same when it boils down to it.
Choose on whatever criteria you wish, such as public support/user base (Cake's is massive), feel, name, colours on the webpage, whatever. But my advice is to stick with that choice and ride the learning curve.
All the frameworks mentioned are good, but you will need to rewrite loads of things like the queries. You might not want to use an ORM like Doctrine or Eloquent. Just stick with something like Active Records. Codeigniter, CakePHP and Yii will do just fine.
but it is not going to be an easy task. be warned!
Something easy like CI (this means mandatory good, easy, up to date documentation). But also with some more features than CI.
Yii has lots of features, but it is also more complex (and it kind of forces you to have to use lots of it features). That means adding some functionality to your web-app takes three times as long because you have to figure out lots of new small functionalities of Yii.
It's kind of like the CI "gets out of your way" when it needs to, and Yii gets in your way, and if you don't do it its way, it breaks.
Features missing in CI that would be nice to have in this new "intermediate" PHP framework:
Code generation (crud).
Authentication.
Access control.
Layouts.
Widgets.
Easyer / automated pagination (like yii)
easy uri parameters
Where Yii causes me problems:
It's like for every small task there is some inbuilt functionality (this is good), but, YOU HAVE to use the inbuilt functionality, otherwise bad things happen. (CI gets out of your way, but does it too much, Yii helps a lot, but is butting in too much at times, and it forces you to sift through its documentation so that you discover these functions without which you are not able to accomplish a task that would take four time less, in CI, or in a non framework app).
Is there something in between ?
(ASP.NET MVC could be 'it', but I don't know the language, so the effort to learn it would be greater than learning Yii php framework really well, so I am looking for a PHP Framework)
I am a fan of CakePHP. I feel it has the specs you provided. If you want something more cutting edge you can take a look at Lithium
I have found some resources that kindof solve the problem, because they contain examples (Milan Babuškov's sugestion helped focus on "the solution").
Yii playground - examples
Yii cookbook - examples
Yii blog tutorial - more examples
PS. there is also google - I find solution (and examples) the fastest this way - ex: implement + pagination + yii
I've used both CI and Yii (on my own projects if that makes any difference). CI was my first introduction to MVC, and I found it easy going because it let me use any crappy structure and code. I wrote two full sites in CI (www.insolvencynews.com and www.thebigeat.com if you want to see complexity.)
I had a look at CakePHP but got NOWHERE.
Then I moved on to Yii and, like you, I found it pretty tough and rigid. But I then found that it was so powerful and extensible that I was so much more efficient. When I needed to add a few new features to the old CI sites, it was faster to rewrite the entire sites on Yii than to code up the extra features in CI.
I can't recommend a framework in the middle, but I can recommend sticking with Yii. When you say Yii gets in the way, can you give an example? Looking at DB stuff (in ascending order of dependence on Yii):
you can code using PHP's core MySQL functions.
$result = mysql_query($sql);
you can use Yii's DB abstraction layer.
Yii::app()->db->createCommand($sql)->queryAll();
You can use Yii's ActiveRecord:
Takeaway::model()->findAll();
you could try kohana (especially coming from ci)
You should check out the CI community, some of those extensions maybe have been written by someone else (I remember seeing Authentication and Components/Widgets somewhere)
Symfony is worth checking out. I personally don't like it much because they chose Prototype over jQuery for their ajax features, which is really annoying to use when you're used to jQuery.
Lithium might be good to check out too. However, it is php 5.3 only and you need to be really careful that this version of PHP is going to be supported on the server the site will be deployed on.
See this list for good comparisson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks#PHP_2
From a personal point of view, I would go with symfony because of it's
rich features and
great integration with many other already bundeled components (Doctrine, Swift Mailer,..),
good (but at first complex) code generation that produces realy useable code to get you startet quickly,
powerfull use of templating (that will be the point you mention under "layouts)
many different, powerfull plug-ins, including Authentication & Access Control (it also has a plug-in to get jQuery support)
one of the best tutorials that I've seen with a framework
Downside is a
more complex structure,
IMO wired file structure,
a rather messy API documentaion compared to the tutorial
CodeIgniter is a nice framework if you don't want to create big apps but it lacks a great database integretaion and you already mentioned code generation.
im very good in Raw PHP, where the project at hand became too much to handle i decided to move to zend, with too too much complexity i finally moved to YII which really reduced the cost and overhead time for project development and most importantly for me is the simple integration of jquery, widget and advanced-OOP.
You could have a look at Qcodo / Qcubed.
They are both easy to pick up and offer code generation / ORM
Easy way to create forms in an mvc kind of way.
For what its worth, if you're looking for a PHP Framework that is like ASP.NET MVC then I think Prado is the closest thing you will find.
The debate is that I need a PHP Framework/Drupal with the flexibility to add custom features to a potentially large application (web and with an api).
However, with a framework, like Kohana, I see myself tackling and re-inventing the wheel with the simple stuff like account management and cms stuff. Account management and quick data collection, like fast form creation, are tedious in Kohana but appear incredible simple in Drupal. On the other hand, based on my limited Drupal experience, I doubt building rapid custom "features" and allowing users to create "groups" and to manage their own roles within those groups is something Drupal can easily accomplish.
To simplify, is Drupal capable of true Web Applications; where the application is a service and provides custom results to each user? Can it provide a dashboard-like interface for users to change their settings or preferences? Can it aggregate data from particular users to provide better results/info to others?
If so, please point me to some knowledge :-)
I'll admit right away I'm a big fan of Drupal and I have never used Kohana, so this post will be one-sided.
In the company I work for they use Drupal or Zend Framework for pretty much all projects (Drupal being in the majority). Many ZF-oriented people dislike Drupal as it's structure is so far from the object oriented ZF-stuff, and Drupal is "just an CMS". As I see it Drupal is more of a Framework than "just" a CMS, and the best part being that it is incredibly flexible: everything is possible.
And yes there is indeed a module for everything. To be more specific:
On the other hand, based on my limited Drupal experience, I doubt building rapid custom >"features" and allowing users to create "groups" and to manage their own roles within >those groups is something Drupal can easily accomplish.
I can only guess what you mean with rapid custom features, but imo it's easy to expand Drupal with your own modules. Most features are available as (free, community contributed) modules, and many advanced looking features can be easily created for example with the "views" and "cck"-modules.
http://drupal.org/project/cck
http://drupal.org/project/views
Creating groups:
"organic_groups" ( http://drupal.org/project/og)
"og_user_roles" ( http://drupal.org/project/og_user_roles )
These modules together are what you need to create groups that have group spefic roles (and roles having specific rights). There are probably other ways than using "og_user_roles", but I'm advertising it because I've made a few patches for it a few years ago. The problem is usually a bit too many options.
If you want to extend group specific options you could code your own module, but most likely you don't need to because there already is a module for it. For example, there are at least 120 modules that integrate somehow with the "organic_groups"-module:
http://drupal.org/taxonomy/term/90?page=19
To simplify, is Drupal capable of true Web Applications; where the application is a >service and provides custom results to each user? Can it provide a dashboard-like >interface for users to change their settings or preferences? Can it aggregate data from >particular users to provide better results/info to others?
In short, yes. There are so many ways to achieve something you described. But probably they would involve at least the excellent "views"-module. I think of views as some kind of ultimate abstraction SQL layer and UI for anyone. And there are over 300 modules that somehow integrate with Views... ( http://drupal.org/taxonomy/term/89?page=55 )
This sounds that Drupal is all about the modules.. and I know some of my collegues even dislike it for that, because you never get to code fun stuff because it's already been done. At least you can look at the module code and learn from that. Or laugh at it, there's lots of badly programmed modules around too.
When you get to coding modules, you'll probably need lots of time to get used to the Drupal API, Forms API, Module hooks, the Theme override system, and the endless options from contrib modules. But it's worth the trouble.
I find this site very usefull to find a module for some specific need. The site shows the same module info as Drupal.org, but also user feedback/ratings, to find the best option:
http://drupalmodules.com/
If it's unclear, my answer would be go with Drupal :)
PS: D7 should be out very soon. Some might wait for it instead of starting with D6. During D5 people would wait a long time before upgrading to D6 because of missing modules. I believe for D7 the most important modules will be available for D7 very fast. Some research at the moment (04.12.2010):
About 190 modules promise to have a Drupal 7 version the day D7 is released:
http://drupal.org/project/modules?solrsort=sort_title%20asc&text=d7cx&display=table
About 130 modules are already available for D7 (most are included in the previous link):
http://drupal.org/project/modules?filters=drupal_core:103&solrsort=sort_title%20asc&text=d7cx&display=table
EDIT: As a newbie I'm only allowed to post one link, so, I removed http:// from the drupal.org-links
I worked with both Drupal and Kohana.
In my insight it really depends what you want to do. If you are going to make a web application that needs to grow a lot and should be flexible for it's growth then I recommend using Kohana. Kohana is made to keep your codebase clean and supporting in DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself). While it likely doesn't have as many modules as Drupal it does have some Auth and ACL modules.
If you want to be done fast and you don't mind making your application out of others their modules Drupal will get your work done fast. But keep in mind that when you are going to extend you will most likely run into problems that come from modules you don't know. Also it takes a bit flexibility from you.
Ultimately it's your choice. But I recommend using a MVC framework if you are going to write it from scratch.
There is no impossible thing to accomplish. The question is do you want to work with someone else code and try to figure out how to dig inside and extend so it can fit your needs or you want to go with a light framework like Kohana or maybe CodeIgniter(my personal favorite) and drive your own car, although you might need to "invent" some of the wheels.
Go ahead and research what plugins are there to your framework of choice as there are a lot of frameworks providing very good solutions which can provide you with these wheels.
In my personal opinion the time you will spend studying Drupal will be equivalent to the time needed for you to create your basic CMS functionality, but the nerves you will use dealing with stuff out of your control like the core Drupal code will shift the scales in favor of Framework.
The fun stuff about Drupal is what the community calls jokingly rule #35: there is a module for it. Unless you want to do something really tricky, you will often find that the functionality has already been implemented and you just need to configure it.
I am new to both Drupal (7.12) & Kohana (3.2.0)... My experience thus far is that Kohana's documentation SUCKS (or at least, what I've seen of it). And if their website and/or forum is written in Kohana, it sucks as well (slooooow, with overlapping fields, etc.). Whereas with Drupal, it has been clean and so far, very efficient (as best I can tell thus far).
I guess I'm wondering if the comments thus far were focusing on Drupal 6.x and haven't taken into consideration the more recent innovations in Drupal. Any thoughts/comments? Thanks.
As a newbie web developer, I can tell you that you need to analyze the use cases for your web application very strictly. If you are able to cover at least 75% of the use cases you foresee, that's a good start.
With that done, you need to figure if Drupal/Joomla/CMS(x) will give you all of that and with another potential unknown 5-10% feature creep. If so, you maybe better off getting in with Drupal etc.
Else, I think CodeIgniter or Symfony are great PHP frameworks to jump in with. Both offer solid tutorials, video and otherwise, and a helpful community. Kohana, which I am working on, I think you should get into if you really understand PHP and its flaws and realize that speed will be a critical factor. Those are the two big strengths that KO3 brings to the table and you should really need them to use it.
Hope this helps.