php.MVC

[avlee]

Hello

I am planning in my company to move to php.MVC framework - to create
several big web applications.
What are your opinions of this framework ?
Is it the best MVC framework for PHP ?
What are the pros and cons ?

Best regards,
Michal

[Aggelos]

Re: php.MVC

I am planning in my company to move to php.MVC framework - to create

several big web applications.
What are your opinions of this framework ?
Is it the best MVC framework for PHP ?
What are the pros and cons ?

I would really like to listen what people say on that as I am having
the same question.
Well I want to write applications based on MVC, because that enables
me to manage them easier and leave the presentation to the design
experts.

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Oliver_Gr=E4tz?=]

Re: php.MVC

avlee schrieb:

I am planning in my company to move to php.MVC framework - to create
several big web applications.
What are your opinions of this framework ?
Is it the best MVC framework for PHP ?
What are the pros and cons ?

When I researched frameworks I read about php.MVC too. To mee it looks
like the framework is not very actively maintained and/or it has a very
small community. Compare this to the "big players" like the Zend
Framework or Symfony. Large communities are a big pro when it comes to
getting problems fixed.

From the MVC point of view I like Zend's RewriteRouter component
because its multi-route concept makes the Controller component very
flexible. Also, the Zend Framework does not force you to use anything
more of it than you really want. It "scales" from being an ordinary
class library to a framework, and it's not yet a final release!

OLLi

[avlee]

Re: php.MVC

Hello

avlee schrieb:

>I am planning in my company to move to php.MVC framework - to create
>several big web applications.
>What are your opinions of this framework ?
>Is it the best MVC framework for PHP ?
>What are the pros and cons ?

>
When I researched frameworks I read about php.MVC too. To mee it looks
like the framework is not very actively maintained and/or it has a very
small community. Compare this to the "big players" like the Zend
Framework or Symfony. Large communities are a big pro when it comes to
getting problems fixed.
>
From the MVC point of view I like Zend's RewriteRouter component
because its multi-route concept makes the Controller component very
flexible. Also, the Zend Framework does not force you to use anything
more of it than you really want. It "scales" from being an ordinary
class library to a framework, and it's not yet a final release!

I like Zend too very much - but is it stable ?
Is it worth moving to Zend now ?
Could it be used in big, professional solutions ?

Thanx

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Oliver_Gr=E4tz?=]

Re: php.MVC

avlee schrieb:

I like Zend too very much - but is it stable ?

The preview releases are _stable_, as opposed to some nightly builds, I
suppose. The problem might be that some of the APIs aren't _fixed_ yet.
This means that you might have to adapt your code when upgrading to a
newer version. For example, there was a methode named noRouteAction that
was removed in v0.6. Some users came up with workarounds for v0.6 and
these stopped working in v0.7. The changes you might have to make to
your code are somewhat a little annoying but they only help you in
getting to know the framework ;-)

Is it worth moving to Zend now ?

I'd say taking a look wouldn't hurt. I tend to give frameworks that pass
my "bah, that's some ugly code" filter some hours of testing and Zend
came out well.

Could it be used in big, professional solutions ?

IBM is developing a good share of the code and they're using it for they
pretty big QEDWiki project. So, yeah, should be possible. *g*


OLLi

[Henk Verhoeven]

Re: php.MVC

Hi Michal,

IMHO the Zend framework is a lot of code for the little function it
provides. It makes you depend on apache, who knows what server your next
customer will be using?

With respect to MVC and flexibility phpPeanuts does the same (decouple
the requesthandler from the request) and much more (provide flexible
(reflective) default handlers for most basic application functions)
(same concept as Ruby on Rails*). It lets you override many details
with the freedom of expression of real php code without modifying the
framework code itself. It separates layout from user interface logic. It
separates the user interface from business logic. It provides framework
based persistency with polymorphism and navigational queries. And all
that in only 808 KB (including the default user interface layout).

OK, learning how to handle so much function comes with a steep learning
curve. But there are tutorials that show how you step by step extend and
refine an application. Learning how to use it may eventually enable you
to develop real life web appplications at a staggering speed of 17.9
function points per hour** (most of the competition is still talking
about hours per function point). But why be negative about learning? In
the end the knowledge you get from it will prove a lot more valuable
then any framework can ever be (at least for your fee as a software
developer).

Is it stable? Some people may say its aproach is experimental, but in
fact it is the third generation of successive frameworks i have
developed since 1992 (no, the first generation was not in php ;-)). It
is currently in a hybrid state between php4 and php5 (it runs on both
with only a single 8Kb file that is platform specific). But software
like people: When it's really stable it's probably dead. Of course there
will be changes when it is migrated to pure php5. But i don't think
migrating a substantial (but well-written) app will take more then a few
days. But OK, if you are not willing to learn your code won't be much
good, so it could take a lot longer. In that case forget about reuse,
using third party code will not solve anything if the problems are in
your head.

Greetings,

Henk Verhoeven,
www.phpPeanuts.org.


* Both use the principle of 'default reasoning' that is founded in
Artificial Intenlligence research. In the predecessor of phpPeanuts it
was introduced in 1996 when the user interfacing layer was developed.

** Measured in the hours it would have taken to develop the same
end-user function using OOP, an IDE, an object-to-relational mapping
library, a visual GUI editor and implementing all events that need to be
handled in Smalltalk code. (Coding itself is in Smalltalk slightly more
productive then in php, i guess it's about the same as in Ruby)


Oliver Grätz wrote:

avlee schrieb:

>I am planning in my company to move to php.MVC framework - to create
>several big web applications.
>What are your opinions of this framework ?
>Is it the best MVC framework for PHP ?
>What are the pros and cons ?

>
When I researched frameworks I read about php.MVC too. To mee it looks
like the framework is not very actively maintained and/or it has a very
small community. Compare this to the "big players" like the Zend
Framework or Symfony. Large communities are a big pro when it comes to
getting problems fixed.
>
From the MVC point of view I like Zend's RewriteRouter component
because its multi-route concept makes the Controller component very
flexible. Also, the Zend Framework does not force you to use anything
more of it than you really want. It "scales" from being an ordinary
class library to a framework, and it's not yet a final release!
>
OLLi

[Sam Minnee]

Re: php.MVC

If your applications involve a lot of content - for example, websites,
wikis, e-commerce sites, intranets, discussion forums, event
registration, etc - I can recommend SilverStripe.

SilverStripe is a CMS as well as an MVC framework: we built a
framework that quite often runs in more a MV architecture than MVC -
the modell can act as a 'default controller' - and every database
object has its own URL. This is why it's well suited to "content
rich" applications.

http://www.silverstripe.com/

For a demo of the CMS, which can be pretty rapidly customised to
create administration systems for other kinds of applications, see

http://demo.silverstripe.com/