Taking the Sting Out of PHP 5 Programming

bfioca writes "Where are the all-in-one PHP frameworks that make building well-factored and maintainable applications as easy as building simple sites? O'Reilly ONLamp's recent article Simplify PHP Development with WASP shows how to make a simple database-backed site with WASP in just a few lines of code. Other PHP 5 frameworks such as symfony and PRADO have been getting a lot of recent attention as well."

Comments

Drupal?

[rjung2k]

I don't claim to be a web architecture guru, but what's wrong with Drupal? Open source, PHP 5-friendly, and does everything from vanity sites to corporate sites.

Re:Drupal?

[albalbo]

I think you have to hack it to get it to work multisite? Also, the URLs are pretty horrible.

That's not to say stuff like PRADO is any good either - I used it for a commercial site, and it's a pain to maintain. It's an ASP-style component system, and doesn't fit the web model - if you want to do 'Ajax', for example, you're screwed.

symfony looks interesting, though, and much more lightweight.

Re:Drupal?

[truthsearch]

No, it takes no hacking to work multisite. I'm running 3 sites on one code base right now. The URLs are very short. There's nothing horrible about them. And if you turn on the right module you can automatically link to /title/page+title. Learn about an app before complaining about it.

Re:Drupal?

[kbahey]

Disclaimer: I am a Drupal community member and developer.

I think you have to hack it to get it to work multisite?

Nope.

Drupal has multi site out of the box, and has been like that for years. For some 18 months, I ran 4 different domain out of the same code base and the same database even (with database prefixes).

Also, the URLs are pretty horrible.

Drupal boasts "clean URLs" out of the box as well. This means that urls do not have to be www.example.com?q=node/123 but rather www.example.com/node/123 (this requires mod_rewrite).

Moreover, Drupal has out of the box the path module which allows you to alias any page to any URL you like. There is also a contributed module (pathauto) that makes this totally automated.

Check my web site for examples (all URLs are aliased).

Bogus

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a break, depending on such things is terribly bad for maintainable code. Exactly the opposite of the billing given above. Will code written with it be compatible with PHP 6? How long after PHP 6's release will such tools be made compatible? If you need tools to simplify php coding, you might as well just forget it.

If you want a quality product, there are no shortcuts. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

A big thumbsdown on this kind of crap. "Sting" to PHP 5 programming? Get real.

Re:Bogus

[afd8856]

You are either ignorant to what a real open source framework would represent (limit code reinvention, benefit from community effort, etc) or are not in the target group of such a framework (maybe you work for a big company that has a large programming team, who knows).
Either way, I can tell you that, from my personal experience, learning and adopting a framework in your work can have a lot of benefits, for me, as a small custom business solutions provider.

I don't see the magic words MVC...

[aphexddb]

JASPF (Just another silly PHP framework)

If you are looking for quick app development and you aren't joe home user making a website you are going to need something thats based off a model -> view -> controller architecture. Symphony does this, so does the cake framework.

I should think so too.

[afernie]

Sting has had his finger in entirely too many pies since The Police broke up...

Re:I need PHP

[killjoe]

So let me get this straight. You don't know PHP, you don't want to learn PHP but you want use PHP to build some web apps. Did I get that right?

Seems like a fools errand to me. I predict you will fail miserably and your web site will be hacked within 24 hours of you putting it up.

You really should learn the language that you are trying to build web sites in.

Re:I need PHP

[Charbax]

I think I understand the fundamentals, I just don't know PHP.. I can design a database, and I can understand the kind of interaction there needs to be between the tables. Imagine a GUI, first step design a database, with tables and relations. NExt step, you can define some tables as some standard ones, like "username" or "password". Then choose the actions that the PHP pages will do and include, for example the username and password box. And then define on the "logged-in" php page what can happen from which tables. Imagine such GUI that does not create every advanced PHP system, but is advanced enough to design ones own Digg.com kind of system, own search, own custom cms, members area, digital files store and lots of stuff like that. It will generate the php pages and it will be possible to view source and edit them to cutomize them..

a framework is NOT a shortcut (or a CMS!)

[webwright]

I tear my eyes out everytime someone calls a framework a "shortcut". Usually they follow it by "There's no substitute for good coders writing good code." The business reality is that most coders are not exceptional, and some are pretty lousy. You can spend all of your budget on human resources finding epic-quality coders (and then scratch some more to come up with their epic-salaries) or you can do what the rest of the world does-- get the best programmers they can find and afford. A framework helps un-exceptional coders write better (and more consistent/maintainable) code. This arguments seems akin to saying "forget word processors! Just get someone who can make Vi or Emacs dance and turn 'em loose." It seems to me that the evolution of software is pretty much the act of layering increasingly-smart frameworks on top of machine language to allow high quality results more accessible to more people.