I have been using .net for the past couple of years, and I like the way you can add controls at any point in the page from anywhere. For example, you can say Head.Controls.add(new LiteralControl("<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='styles.css' />")) even if there is already a body.
Is it possible to do this kind of thing in php? My site is set up so that we have agents, customers and artists (this is for a card manufacturing company who wants a customer application for use offline at tradeshows). The add agent form may have different styles to the add customer form. I want to therefore have each type in a different folder (for example agents, customers and artists) each with their own stylesheet. There will be one form page which takes GET parameters of type (artist, customer etc), mode (create, edit) and an optional parameter of ID (when in edit mode). I would like to be able to call $agentForm->generateForm() and $agentForm->generateStyleTag() in one go, rather than what I am currently doing which is to call $agentForm->generateForm() in the body and $agentForm->generateStyleTag when in the head (without even the start body tag being generated yet).
A good way to put this is that I have a Head tag and a Body tag. In another function called $agentForm->generateHTML() I want to say Body->addChild("bla") and Head->addChild("bla"). This makes developing a new page a lot easier since it ensures the styles are there and are correct for the section of the site the user is in.
Is it possible to achieve this, or is this one of the major differences between php and .net?
PHP is in essence designed just to throw strings into STDOUT, unless buffered. To make this work, you'd have to use a templating system that supports this, or roll your own. There is no 'built-in' templating system unless you count loading the whole thing in DOMDocumentor something, and do major raw DOM manipulations, which would be quite a lot slower, and which I wouldn't recommend unless you plan to do a whole lot of other DOM modifications. Google around for PHP templating systems and check which one supports your needs.
You need to realize something. .NET is a framework, not a programming language. The question is identical to Can you do this in C#. Realize that you're comparing Apples to Oranges.
The PHP language is Turing complete, so yes you can do it. That doesn't mean the code to do it is written yet (it may be) or that it will be easy (who knows). It only means it's possible.
With that said, you need to find a framework to do what you want. No language will come with that kind of operation (since it is far too limiting to the language as a whole). So your task is no longer "Can PHP do this", but "I need to find a framework to do this". Try looking into frameworks, and I'll bet you'll find your answer quite easily...
Have a look at the PRADO framework and the Yii framework. They have a hierarchical, component-based philosphy that allows nesting and composition, essentialling building a whole site from smaller, pluggable components.
As has already been pointed out, PHP is a language, while .Net is a framework. The two are very different things.
If you want to use PHP as a scripting language for .Net, there's always Phalanger
Related
I first learned web programming with php a while back. It has some features that I find very helpful, but the overall language is not something I enjoy, just as a matter of personal preference. I am wondering what alternatives I could use to provide similar functionality using a different underlying programming language (Python? Ruby?).
What I am looking for:
general purpose programming capability
in-line server-side code embedded in HTML (i.e. I want to be able to make my documents pure HTML if desired, rather than demanding special syntax even where I don't want dynamic content)
access to request parameters
ability to send headers, set cookies, etc
Preferably:
does not require a separate server process
easy to connect with Apache
Does anyone have any suggestions?
One thing I tried to do was embedded Ruby (erb) through CGI. This looked like a good fit on paper. Unfortunately, I was not able to get it to work, because I was following a few different guides and the result of combining them did not work out. At any rate, it seems this would not allow me to set arbitrary headers (and more importantly, use sessions and cookies).
Note: I'm not looking for a full web framework at the moment. Just relatively small amounts of dynamic content among otherwise HTML pages.
Thanks!
You've hit on the big reason why PHP is so popular - it has all of those pieces in a server-embeddable package. There aren't really many solutions with its ease of deployment; PHP is written specifically for what you want, which is both its strength and weakness. It's why it's such a weak general-purpose language, and why everyone and their dog knows it. It's everywhere, and the barrier to entry is near zero.
PHP is a language plus templating plus a web framework all baked into one package. To get an equivalent, you're going to need a web framework, even if it's a small one. Something like Sinatra is a super lightweight way to do similar in Ruby, though it requires a separate server process.
You could look at something like Perl with cgi.pm, but it may be a step in the wrong direction if you're wanting something cleaner than PHP.
I don't know Python packages well enough to offer suggestions there, but Twisted makes it easy to bind a Python program to a web interface. That does end up running in its own server process, though.
You'll need to do a little more work than your standard PHP deploy if you want to use something besides PHP, but that's often a choice that people consider to be a reasonable tradeoff for gains in productivity.
Python Flask is a good web framework: it fits your requirements, easy to learn, and scales gracefully. Go through the tutorial to see!
I have three suggestions.
The first is Ruby on Rails - It's pretty fun once you get into it.. I would recommend going through Rails for Zombies to get a general idea of whether you like it or not.
http://railsforzombies.org/
It's really easy to get something up and running on Heroku for free, so you don't have to spend any money to get something up on the web..
My second suggestion is one I'm just trying out called Node.js. I'd recommend watching this video to get an idea of what it's about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo_B4LTHi3I
If you're into Javascript, I think you'll get it right away. You can also build an open source Node.js project on www.cloud9ide.com which is pretty nifty too.
A third one, if you're into learning Java, is "Play". A cool video on this is:
http://vimeo.com/7087610
I haven't used this much, but it's on my "to do" list of things to check out. Overall, I suggest just dipping your toes in the water for a bunch of different frameworks and get an idea of how they work and then you'll naturally pursue whatever makes the most sense to you. Good luck!
I'd say given your requirement
Just relatively small amounts of dynamic content among otherwise HTML pages.
then, PHP is going to be hard to beat for getting going quickly and a minimum of learning overhead. It avoids all the CGI issues that you would otherwise have to deal with, and is in fact its own templating language. That's why so many get started with it. Once you get past the point of your goal of mixing a little programming logic into HTML pages, and developing more flexible, maintainable and testable applications, then frameworks such as Rails, Django and others will be worth your time to learn.
Using Scheme as a web development language meets your criteria, with a caveat: instead of inline code embedded in HTML, you have inline code embedded in the Lisp-ish representation of HTML called s-expressions. (There is a one-to-one correspondence between HTML and is s-exp equivalent; they can be interconverted with one function call.) So the static parts of your page and the code share the same syntax - something I really like about Scheme.
> (sxml->xml `(div (p "It's been: " (i ,(current-time)) " seconds")))
<div>
<p>
It's been: <i>1339772791</i> seconds
</p>
</div>
I've now got some very good understanding of (X)HTML and CSS, and plan to move on. My next choices are PHP and JS (and don't know if I'll ever end up learning one of them, but I would love to).
So, I need to choose one of them. I have learnt that PHP is server-side programming and JavaScript is client-side programming, and I am NOT asking you to compare the two of them for me. What I would like to know is, can I do anything (or most of) in PHP that can be done with JS? (or put it this way, can do everything people use JS for, on the server-side with PHP?)
Instances include, using PHP instead of JS in web themes, real-time content display (as in live blogging, live comments etc), effects etc.
This might seem dumb, and there's definitely a reason why people use JS in all the above instances, but since I cannot (really) learn the two of them, thought I should ask for some advise here.
EDIT: Would it be possible to reload only a part of a web page (not the entire web page) every few seconds with PHP? That should be good enough for the real-time application that I am planning.
If you absolutely don't want to learn both, then learn Javascript. There are possibilities to implement a Javascript-based backend with node.js.
I advise you to at least try PHP since it is widely used - maybe even at your company.
For nice user experience (dynamic menu, ajax, effects, ... ) you need client-side programming and for dynamic content you (almost always) need server-side programming.
In short, you need both.
PHP and JavaScript cannot really be compared in the way you're asking...
Both are powerful in what they've ment for and they have a very similar syntax. If you can't absolutely study more than one of them, learn PHP in my opinion. I coded with PHP for almost 10 years before really getting into JS. I would say PHP is the food and JS is the spice.
In order to create AJAX web apps Javascript AND a server-side language is required.
No, you can't. PHP only works on the server side. Once you've delivered content to the client, PHP can't do anything until the page reloads or the user loads a new page. If you want to do anything client-side in between, you need JavaScript (this includes loading content in real-time, doing a lot of modern UI stuff, etc).
Either learn both PHP and JS or use a blogging CMS and use a minimal amount of both.
If you put enough effort into it, you can do almost anything server-side using lots and lots of page reloads. You can also generate arbitrarily complex dynamic content using Javascript.
But it's a lot easier to do minor changes to a page's content from Javascript, it's only possible to do animations and effects from Javascript. It's also much easier to directly access the database from server-side code – there might be pure-javascript drivers for SQL databases, and you could use a NoSQL databases that's accessed using web services, but both are relatively uncommon techniques.
I have a thought regarding your original question/situation. I know this is about four years tardy, but I thought I should throw in my two cents for people who are looking back on this conversation as a reference from Google like I am. In your situation, because you are a blogger who is trying to save time when it comes to programming, I would recommend looking into WordPress (the .org version, not the .com). It is a sort of marriage of WYSIWYG blogging/website creation and programming. It takes care a lot of the back end stuff (including Javascript, PHP, and more), but also leaves it open for you to edit if you so desire. You probably could get away with using Wordpress as a total non-coder, but with HTML and CSS, you're already off to a great start. WordPress is super simple to learn and amazingly powerful. If you do take this route, I would suggest learning PHP as an asset because that is the language that WordPress runs off of. If you know PHP and are using WordPress, you have vast potential, not to mention that speedy blogging is a snap. If you don't feel the need to have whipped everything up from scratch and want to work faster, give WP & PHP a try. They'll take you a long ways.
I'm developing a web application and I'm using PHP and Javascript. Today, I'm starting to draw all the design class diagrams, but I don't know exactly how to mix both technologies.
I think that something like the following should be good:
But, really, I'm not sure if typing the .php extension in the class name is sufficiently clear, or what I need is to separate diagrams in two: one for Javascript classes and another one for PHP classes.
I'm using CodeIgniter (MVC pattern) and Javascript. Any suggestion will be really appreciated.
Thanks!
Usually, you don't want to do this. It's a problem of latency when viewing the web page in a browser. Each separate javascript file defeats caching and requires additional transfer time before a page can load. It's commonly advised to combine JS files wherever possible and practical to better take advantage of browser caching. So my first suggestion is to not arbitrarily split up your JS for architectural reasons...
Now, with that said, to answer you question in entirety, I think it depends on how you view JS. If you're looking at it form the perspective that it enhances your PHP application, then dividing it up along side your views is not bad (the above suggestion not withstanding).
However, I usually see JS as a separate application layer on top of the PHP application. The JS interacts with the PHP layer through defined APIs. So it's basically just a full blown GUI application that just so happens to use the API defined by the PHP application. So with that in mind, I usually build the JS application with its own architecture that's more dependent on itself then the PHP application. So in other words, just because a piece of the JS application interacts with PHP doesn't mean that the piece of code belongs with the PHP application.
Does that make sense?
Trying to put all your classes (even within one application - you have two: a PHP applicatoin and a JS application) on one UML diagram is pretty much a way to waste a lot of time and gain nothing.
Use UML to show dependecies within a package or a group of classes working together, but don't try to do it for a whole app.
I don't know the way you do things usually but in my projects, I tend to separate PHP and JS. First of all, its easier to develop and debug if you go that way, secondly, if you treat javascript as a second layer instead of being on the same level of programming as PHP you will get a working fallback in the case that your JS doesn't work, or the user of your web app have javascript disabled.
I tend to make everything work in PHP and later on I override some actions with javascript to get them working through ajax instead of the traditionnal way of working in old school Web.
--- Revision following first comment ---
Then, you might want to treat the PHP and the Javascript part as separates applications. The first system (PHP) generate the initial state. Upon user action the second system (JS) makes a query to the first one and wait for the answer, this way, you will setup some sort of API that will standardise your transactions.
I used to work with design information specialists and they often refer to Jesse James Garrett as a "Guru" in that field of expertise, you might want to check his site (there are premade stencils for omnigraffle, visio and few others).
Through his writing and example you might be able to find the right symbols and elements to represent your system.
Jesse James Garrett's website
My question is in bold (see below) but I hope to provide some insight into my issues just in case it helps anyone who could answer my question.
I'm not sure which framework or language is the best for this job but I'd like to make an app that has two or three independently scrollable areas, similar to a 2 column template, that are all dynamically updated. Users can populate each list separately as they go and yah know ... I really don't want the app to move slowly in any way. It needs to be jerky with almost knee-jerk reactions to input.
I've read some interesting things about speeds for each language that I'm considering (php and python - possibly java or ruby) and well, I can't really decide for myself since I don't yet know what's going on to create any slowdowns.
The app would be very simple requiring basic information on a user and letting the user basically grow their own database of lists themselves. Some fancy things would happen on the site per the users input or list updates like color changes or pictures and numbers that change .. maybe a graph or something.
All that said, I hope my question(s) is simple and answerable:
What is a useful programming language and/or framework for making and handling user created hierarchical lists that would ultimately grow in complexity? And how does the language differ from the others for tasks like ones as described in this post?
Just trying to find the right/best/effective tool for this particular job.
By the way, I'm new to programming but have covered the basic tutorials for python (plus some django) and php via youtube mostly - I've got a few books in the queue. be gentle
I don't think you will conclusively be able to decide on a language for your task based on clear evidence of it outperforming others for similar task.
There's too many variables to factor in.
My take is, a well built app, whatever the technology would perform as well as the other one with different technologies, but built well. The difference wouldn't be much to make a fuss over.
Some things that are of note:
The client side code, HTML, CSS and Javascript would need to be top notch. You need to
Combine that with a good host, a nicely constructed and tuned database, a good lean method of communication back and forth between client and server.
Use gzip, caching, minifying and combining scripts, stylesheets, make fewer http requestes,
Architect the application with performance in mind from the get go.
If you are new to programming then the language/framework will be the least of your problems. You tried a little Python and some PHP. Which language did you find easier to grasp? Whichever one that was, pick it and just start writing.
As you work on your project and become a better programmer you can revisit the language/framework debate (although, to be honest, the programmer influences the site performance more than the framework).
I am currently working on a project / website and I will need to make it available in several languages. The site was done with PHP / mysql and a lot of javascript (jQuery). I have no idea where to start and I was hoping somebody could give me some hints. I would like to know opinions about what is the best approach to take, if there are some good tools for such a php site, what to do with the existing scripts, or better, with the text inside of the scripts that need to be translated as well. Does anybody had to do something like this before that could guide me through the right path :) ??
thanks
There are a number of ways of tackling this. None of them "the best way" and all of them with problems in the short term or the long term. The very first thing to say is that multi lingual sites are not easy, translators and lovely people but hard to work with and most programmers see the problem as a technical one only. There is also another dimension, outside the scope of this answer, as to whether you are translating or localising. This involves looking at the target audiences cultural mores and then tailoring language, style, layout, colour, typeface etc., to that culture. Finally do not use MT, Machine Translation, for anything serious or if it needs to be accurate and when acquiring translators ensure that they are translating from a foreign language into their native language which means that they understand all the nuances of the target language.
Right. Solutions. On the basis that you do not want to rewrite the site then simply clone the site you have and translate the copies to the target language. Assuming the code base is stable you can use a VCS to manage any code changes. You can tweak individual parts of the site to fit the target language, for example French text is on average 30% larger than the equivalent English text so using one site to deliver this means you may (will) have formatting problems and need to swap a different css file in and out depending on the language. It might seem a clunky way to do it but then how long are the sites going to exist? The management overhead of doing it this way may well be less than other options.
Second way without rebuilding. Replace all content in the current site with tags and then put the different language in file or db tables, sniff the users desired language (do you have registered users who can make a preference or do you want to get the browser language tag, or is it going to be URL dot-com dot-fr, dot-de that make the choice) and then replace the tags with the target language. Then you need to address the sizing issues and the image issues separately. This solution is in effect when frameworks like Symfony and Zend do to implement l10n.
Then you could rebuild with a framework or with gettext and and possibly have a cleaner solution but remember frameworks were designed to solve other problems, not translation and the translation component has come into the framework as partial solution not the full one.
The big problem with all the solutions is ongoing maintenance. Because not not only do you have a code base but also multiple language bases to maintain. Unless you all in one solution is really clever and effective then to ongoing task will be difficult.