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DiGiTSS Team's Programming experience with PHP, MySQL, Ajax, Javascript, jQuery, C# and Microsoft technologies

Posts Tagged Framework

CodeIgniter 2 is just here – about to release..!

Nov 5

Posted by Dharmavirsinh Jhala in PHP | 11 Comments

CodeIgniter - An MVC framework for PHP

CodeIgniter - An MVC framework for PHP

I have been using CodeIgniter since some time and used in couple of my projects. It's a good and easy to use PHP MVC Framework, which takes you on the road very quickly and you start developing real time application with it. For any experienced PHP Programmer it's matter of few hours to start working with CI and get started-on with production.

It's got decent documentation (User Guide, Wiki and Community support forum). No configuration and no command-lines. Last release was way back in September'09 and I heard something about v1.8 sometime after that. But now it has been more than 1 year and recently while going through news section on CI website I read a post stating that new version of framework CI2 is about to be released.

I got excited and downloaded a copy from bitbucket. I was happy to see that CodeIgniter2 will be dropping PHP4 support step by step. There are lot of new changes/additions which you might be interested in if you're day-to-day CI user. Ellislab being professional company CI2 has been already used in their newer version of ExpressionEngine.

Here are some of the changes I have grabbed from CodeIgniter2 User Guide:

  • General changes
    • PHP 4 support is deprecated. Features new to 2.0.0 may not support PHP 4, and all legacy features will no longer support PHP 4 as of 2.1.0. (Good)
    • Scaffolding, having been deprecated for a number of versions, has been removed.
    • Plugins have been removed, in favor of Helpers. The CAPTCHA plugin has been converted to a Helper and documented. The JavaScript calendar plugin was removed due to the ready availability of great JavaScript calendars, particularly with jQuery.
    • Added new special Library type: Drivers.
    • Moved the application folder outside of the system folder. (I liked this)
    • Added routing overrides to the main index.php file, enabling the normal routing to be overridden on a per "index" file basis.
    • Added the ability to set config values (or override config values) directly from data set in the main index.php file. This allows a single application to be used with multiple front controllers, each having its own config values.
    • Added $config['directory_trigger'] to the config file so that a controller sub-directory can be specified when running _GET strings instead of URI segments.
    • Added ability to set "Package" paths - specific paths where the Loader and Config classes should try to look first for a requested file. This allows distribution of sub-applications with their own libraries, models, config files, etc. in a single "package" directory. See the Loader class documentation for more details.
    • In-development code is now hosted at BitBucket. (Go grab your copy)
    • Removed the deprecated Validation Class. Read the rest of this entry »

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Smarty 3.0 is almost here..!

Oct 3

Posted by Dharmavirsinh Jhala in PHP | 4 Comments

Smarty PHP Template Engine

Smarty PHP Template Engine

There could be some or lot of us in PHP World who might have not heard about Smarty..! Yes, Smarty is the PHP Template Engine since ages. Why Ages......? some of you might ask.. but it is there since long... really long, even before we started hearing about these PHP Frameworks.

I have been using Smarty in some of my projects and as part of my daily usage component I have been following up on the Smarty Website. If you are like me you might have noticed that it has been more than one year (8 beta and 3 rc releases) that Smarty 3.0 is almost there and still there is no final release.

May be it's indication or beginning of the announcement of death of Only Template Engine PHP Frameworks or something else. Somehow community does not seems to be active or founders or whatever. Now a days many MVC frameworks are choice of developers and they either have in-built template-engine or no-template-engine or plug-in-support for template engines.

No matter what Smarty 3.0 claims to be loaded with following features: Read the rest of this entry »

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When PHP Frameworks are going to stop PHP 4 support?

Aug 15

Posted by Dharmavirsinh Jhala in PHP | 3 Comments

As of now we have many frameworks which are still supporting PHP 4.x. CakePHP and CodeIgniter are leading that troop. Now we have PHP 6 about to get ready for production and PHP 5.x is in it's mature stage since long while now with PHP 5.3 as the latest release. I am not against for support on 4.x version of PHP; may great developers/teams have developed awasom tools and application and they should be still usable without any modifications in their coding.

PHP 4.x Hosting:

So PHP 4.x support for hosting is fine and it's required to keep those applications running and being hosted without any maintenance saving efforts and time. So applications developed for PHP 4.x can run as long as they wish and till there are no equivalent forks of them available in PHP 5.x or newer version.

PHP 4.x for Development:

PHP 4.4.9 has been released as final release for PHP 4.x now and it has been announced as end of life for PHP 4.x now. So developing any project or framework by keeping PHP 4.x compatibility is not a good idea I believe. All projects or framework has to freeze their PHP 4.x versions and let only bug-fixes be made available for those versions and have new feature-set addition be on the fork which is only PHP 5.x. I think every project will have to come up with a date when they will join GoPHP5 rally. For example Symfony 1.2 and 1.3 (Symfony is a PHP 5 only MVC Framework) are specifically supporting PHP 5.2.4 or newer version only.

Basically for newer development it is better idea to use version which has longer future so that finally they don't need to write a fixes which allow those projects to continue working in both the environment. Which will save time on development, QA and maintanence all phases.

I am not against the PHP 4.x but it is a change which is eneviable and which has to happen in it's completeness sometime and change is for good. I am not sure how many of you agree with my thoughts but please share your thoughts on this subjects as comments for this post.

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Symfony 1.2 first Beta is out

Nov 6

Posted by Dharmavirsinh Jhala in PHP | 2 Comments

First beta version of new symfony version 1.2 is out now. There is a long long list of What's New in Symfony 1.2 but some of them are:

  • Doctrine to be bundled with framewok with Propel.
  • Prototype and Scriptaculous as core Javascript plugins.
  • Enhanced Web Debug Toolbar.
  • Propel 1.3 upgrade.
  • Many improvements and new features in Forms.

The list goes long and you can catch up that on Symfony website or just download and install a fresh copy of symfony 1.2 to play with.

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Top Open Source PHP Frameworks

Mar 22

Posted by Dharmavirsinh Jhala in Framework, PHP | 28 Comments

After RoR there are lot many frameworks in PHP which are either inspired by it or based on MVC pattern. Today I am throwing some light on some of it, which I came across (I mean heard) during my development experience in PHP. Here I am talking about next generation Open Source PHP frameworks which I came across.

Symfony: Now it is more then 2 year old project and seems to be quite complete in the sense of feature and documentation. Symfony has quite rich documentation and community support. Their development seems to be really active as I see many change-sets getting committed and bugs getting fixed every Monday. Today Symfony 1.0.12 is released and Symfony 1.1 is on the way to getting released. I have not tried any project with Symfony as of yet but have been keeping a close eye on their activity since long and now when 1.1 release is near thinking of start something with it. 1.1 version will come with quite a lot welcome changes and I am looking further to it. Fabien Potencier and his team gave great contribution to the PHP world by gifting Symfony framework.

Symfony is MVC architecture based PHP framework. It is more of less inspired by Majovi and Ruby on Rails. Symfony team is not trying to reinvent the wheel and framework uses many opensource components in their base. For beginners it is little difficult to begin with Symfony but great deal of documentation and 21 days of askeet tutorials will help them out really.

I believe Symfony is really enterprise level framework. It has great deal of documentation and The Book (Definitive guide to Symfony - Open source) Read the rest of this entry »

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