Streamlining Your
Applications with Web
Frameworks
Kings of Code ~ May 27th, 2008

What is a Web
Framework?
• “...software framework that is designed to
support the development of dynamic
websites, Web applications and Web
services.”
- Wikipedia

What is a Web
Framework?
• A set of tools and a way to organize them
• NOT an application
• An abstract base from which to build
• NOT a CMS

What is a Web
Framework?
• Provide libraries for common tasks
• Provide structure and convention for your
application code
• Promote best practices in application
design/architecture

Continuum of Structure
CakePHP CodeIgniter Zend Framework
More Less

Why Use a Framework?
• Lets you focus on what’s important
• The hard problems have already been
solved by people smarter than you
• Benefits of community
• You (and your requirements) are not
special
• Chances are, you already do

Why Cake?
• For a lot of people and a lot of reasons,
Rails = FAIL
• Difficult and expensive to deploy
• Ahem! scaling...
• Programmer availability
• PHP is still by far the #1 web language

Why Cake?
• “Oh Rasmus, why do you engage in this
‘virtual crap-flinging’? Can’t you lead by
example like David Heinemeier Hansson?
That guy is the height of maturity and an
expert scalability guy.”
“...look at the top 100 websites on the
internet: about 40% of them are written in
PHP and 0% of them are written in Rails.”
- Terry Chay

Why Cake?
• Other PHP frameworks
• Zend Framework
• Symfony
• PHP on Trax
• CodeIgniter

An MVC Quickie
Dispatcher The Dispatcher requests the
appropriate Controller/action,
which interacts with the
Model
Controller Model
The Controller then sends the
results of its operations to the
View
view, where it is rendered

An MVC Quickie
• Primary: separation between Controller
and View, to partition business logic and
presentation
• Secondary: separation between data
(Model) and Controller

An MVC Quickie
A simple example
/* models/post.php */
class Post extends AppModel { }
/* controllers/posts_controller.php */
class PostsController extends AppController {
function index() {
// Get the data from the Model
$posts = $this->paginate();
// Send the data to the view
$this->set(compact(‘posts’));
}
}

<div class=\"posts index\">
<h2>Posts</h2>
<p><?=$paginator->counter(); ?></p>
<table cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\">
<tr>
<th><?=$paginator->sort('id'); ?></th>
<th><?=$paginator->sort('title'); ?></th>
<th><?=$paginator->sort('body'); ?></th>
...
<th class=\"actions\">Actions</th>
</tr>
<? foreach ($posts as $post) { ?>
<tr>
<td><?=$post->id; ?></td>
<td><?=$post->title; ?></td>
<td><?=$post->body; ?></td>
....
<td class=\"actions\">...</td>
</tr>
<? } ?>
</table>
<div class=\"paging\">
<?=$paginator->prev('<< previous', array(), null, array('class' => 'disabled')); ?> |
<?=$paginator->numbers(); ?>
<?=$paginator->next('next >>', array(), null, array('class' => 'disabled')); ?>
</div>

An MVC Quickie

The Fun Stuff

Ajax!
• Normal Link:
$html->link(‘Add Post’, ‘/posts/add’);
• Ajax Link:
$ajax->link(‘Add Post’, ‘/posts/add’, array(
‘update’ => ‘addPostDiv’,
‘complete’ => ‘Effect.SlideDown(“addPostDiv”)’
));

REST & Resources!
• // config/routes.php
Router::mapResources(“posts”);
Router::parseExtensions(“rss”, “js”);
• // app_controller.php
var $components = array(“RequestHandler”);

REST & Resources!
// views/posts/xml/index.ctp
<posts>
<?php echo $xml->serialize($posts); ?>
</posts>
// views/posts/xml/view.ctp
<?php echo $xml->serialize($posts); ?>

REST & Resources!
// views/widgets/js/index.ctp
<?php echo $javascript->object($posts); ?>
// views/widgets/js/view.ctp
<?php echo $javascript->object($posts); ?>

REST & Resources!
GET /posts.xml HTTP/1.1
PostsController::index()
GET /posts/1.xml HTTP/1.1
PostsController::view(1)
POST /posts.xml HTTP/1.1
PostsController::add()
PUT /posts/1.xml HTTP/1.1
PostsController::edit(1)
DELETE /posts/1.xml HTTP/1.1
PostsController::delete(1)

REST & Resources!
POST /posts.xml HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.org
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 67
<?xml version=“1.0”?>
<post title=“XML” body=“New Post from XML” />

The Future...