semanticscuttle-devel

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

[Mark P. <mpe...@gm...>]

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?

Mark Pemberton

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

[Mark P. <mpe...@gm...>]

I don't claim to be an authority on this, but here's what I'm seeing on my
Godaddy account.  What I did was create a subdomain off my main account.
 And in that subdomain directory I copied the contents of Semantic Scuttle.
 Renamed the www folder to demo.  Created database and launched.  I was able
to launch the app and register an account, but as soon as I logged in, I got
the error "User with username demo was not found" so I did some
troubleshooting and found that the PATH_INFO was returning
"/demo/profile.php/markmark (where markmark is my username).  Looking into
the code it is essentially looking for PATH_INFO to return
"profile.php/markmark".  I was able to make it work by altering the line
that parses the PATH_INFO but it was a hack to see if I could get it to
work.

I also performed an install on my home machine and created an alias /sc to
the www folder and this works fine.  I haven't attempted to alter my home
machine to try and mimic my godaddy instance, but will probably do so this
weekend.

Now with that said, do I understand exactly what is causing it?  Not
completely.  However, since there have been others who've had similar
problems, I think we may benefit looking at altering the way we pull the URL
information.  I wouldn't call it simple, but it makes sense using a router
class where all activity were to be routed through index.php.  And obviously
the next logical question is do we go one step further and adopt a framework
and take advantage of some of the additional features of the typical
framework?

I know I probably didn't answer your question Chris, but I'd love to hear
your experiences.

Thanks,
Mark Pemberton


On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 11:05 PM, ch...@ch...
<ch...@ch...>wrote:

> Can someone provide a high level reason why clean URLs are so problematic
> with Scuttle? I've never encountered the like with any other software!
>
> c
>
> On Feb 18, 2011, at 6:20 PM, Mark Pemberton <mpe...@gm...> wrote:
>
> > 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?
> >
> >
>

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

[<ch...@ch...>]

Can someone provide a high level reason why clean URLs are so problematic with Scuttle? I've never encountered the like with any other software!

c

On Feb 18, 2011, at 6:20 PM, Mark Pemberton <mpe...@gm...> wrote:

> 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?
> 
> 

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 ≡=-

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

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

Hi Mark,


> PATH_INFO was returning "/demo/profile.php/markmark (where markmark
> is my username).  Looking into the code it is essentially looking for
> PATH_INFO to return "profile.php/markmark".  I was able to make it
> work by altering the line that parses the PATH_INFO but it was a hack
> to see if I could get it to work.
Yes, that is exactly the problem. I also don't like the way URLs are
handled in SemanticScuttle - that's inherited cruft from Scuttle, and
we should change that. Having a central router would be fine for me;
we'd need to go the full MVC route then with Controllers and separate
views and may be even use smarty. Let's see.

-- 
Christian Weiske

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

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

[Chris L. <ch...@ch...>]

I defer to the experts on these matters, I've just never had such
problems getting clean URLs with the wide variety of CMS, blog, wiki,
etc packages I've installed. So I was curious why Scuttle was an
outlier.

As for frameworks-- I'm only a PHP dabbler, but maybe there's a sweet
spot in size: moving to Cake PHP for some projects made my life a LOT
easier in the past. On the other hand, I don't know what you mean by
large and whether that also involves the number of developers as part
of the equation.While Cake (for example) would add considerably less
size than Zend, it still has a considerable footprint!...

c