Re: [chiPHPug-discuss] Anyone actually *using* a framework?

[Richard L. <ce...@l-...>]

On Thu, November 9, 2006 8:26 am, Nola Stowe wrote:
> I also have done some rails and it inspired my "Stupidly Easy MVC
> Framework" (links here: http://devasap.net/programming.html) ... and
> in recent weeks I have been looking more closely at Zend
> Framework.Which in itself, is more like PEAR than Rails, but looks
> like it has a nifty MVC Front Controller that works pretty well I
> think.

I tried to do an MVC thingie (not knowing it was called MVC) back in
PHP3 days...

And it just ended up having so much cruft in the Controller file, that
I abandoned it and never went back.

I don't really feel the need for a single Controller when I can
centrally locate the authentication in one include file, the db
connection in another, and pull those both in (or not, sometimes, when
appropriate) through a 'globals.inc' file that handles the masthead
and footer and site-wide layout / navigation.

Or maybe that *is* my Controller, just done with PHP includes. LOL.

One issue is that it's a lot easier to tell somebody to go to the
"foo.htm" page (which is PHP, of course) than to go to
"index.php?page=foo"

Now, of course, you can do all kinds of URL-rewriting tricks in PHP or
(shudder) mod_rewrite in Apache, but I find it easier to just have a
foo.htm page with:

<?php
  require 'globals.inc';
  head("Page Title"); //masthead, navigation, basic layout "shell"

  //page-specific business logic
?>
Page specific content and presentation logic
<?php
  foot(); //closing tags for head()
?>

The one-page logic rarely exceeds a screenful, and the HTML layout
might be 2 screens with all the tags and all that, but that's hardly
difficult

The nice thing about PHP/Ruby/Python and all that is you have a lot of
options, and can use whatever you like best.

The head() and foot() functions are before/after each other in the
globals.inc file, so the "shell" of the layout reads just like an HTML
page.

The head() function might also take an extra arg for business-logic
specific purposes, such as a flag to suppress the "usual" layout for
the homepage or perhaps a custom stylesheet to insert into the HEAD
tags for just this one page.

The head() function may also key off of $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] which has
foo.htm to put in a link to 'foo.css' if it exists, or perhaps a
foo.png image in the masthead to help them know where they are or
something like that.

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