Re: [Semanticscuttle-devel] Is there a future for using a framework?

[Christian W. <cw...@cw...>]

Hi Mark,


> On my sleepless nights, I've been reviewing some of the various PHP
> frameworks.  I've played with Zend, CodeIgniter, a little CakePHP,
> and some others who have less of a following.  Wanted to see if this
> was something that might be entertained in the future or is it simply
> too much overhead? What brought it on was looking at options to
> resolve some of the URL issues.  I was looking at creating a simple
> routing class that allowed everything to flow through index.php, but
> kept getting drawn toward the use of a framework to do the routing.
> There are a number of benefits, but does also include some drawbacks.
> 
> Thoughts?

I personally think that full-blown frameworks like Zend work for small
projects only. Once the project gets big enough, they restrict you too
much and you have to work around things that they do not want you to
do. In the end, it's better to write the 3 things you need from it
yourself. Note that I'm talking about helpers like their routers.

What I like to use and favor is libraries that help you accomplish
certain tasks, i.e. generating and validating HTML forms, generating
feeds, communicating with some web service.
The prime examples for such libraries are PEAR and Zeta Components.
They are loosely coupled and each lib can be used standalone.
Zend on the other hand doesn't even offer the download of single
components, much less a pear channel server that lets you pick them.
You always have to get their whole 200 pound package.

SemanticScuttle is currently a bit less than 500kiB; adding ZF would
move that up to 2.5MiB at least. That's no option for me.
So, using libraries: Yes, absolutely. We already use PEAR's Auth
package, and I began the quickform branch that uses PEAR's
HTML_QuickForm2 for all form needs. Using a framework: No.

-- 
Regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Christian Weiske

-=≡ Geeking around in the name of science since 1982 ≡=-