Nick Oostveen wrote:
As PHP becomes more accepted in the corporate world, it is only logical that larger and more complex applications are going to be developed using it. While there is an abundance of information out there about making specific things work, there seems to be a shortage regarding the big picture.Hello Mr. Oostveen:
As such, my question is this: What methods and techniques can be used to help design and build complex, medium to large PHP applications that are not only scalable, but maintainable and extensible? I'm looking for online references, personal experience and opinion and even examples of open source code which you think demonstrate the above criteria on this one. I think an extended discussion on this topic could be of great benefit to everyone.
Obviously separating application and business logic from interface code is a given, but what about other things? Are the object orientated facilities of PHP currently worth really trying to take advantage of? If so, what are you doing to take advantage of them? Are design concepts such as design patterns relevant at this level? What frameworks, if any, currently exist to assist in rapid, structured development, and what specific benefits do they bring to the table?
These are just some of the questions that I'd like to see expanded upon, I'm sure there are others out there who can add more to the list.
Nick Oostveen
Is that the same hpmarketing.com that had someone named 'jozef' at it?
The domain name looks familiar - like I've seen it in online chats before.
Anywho...
Are you only looking for 'open source' (GPL/BSD/etc) frameworks? If not, I'd encourage you to take a look at
http://www.logicreate.com/index.php/html/main/developer1.html
for a quick overview of our product - feel free to email back or
call if you've any questions.
Now, in general, yes, it's certainly worth thinking about
design patterns at this level (whatever 'this' is). There's
very few situations where thinking like that *isn't* helpful.
Preplanning code projects, coming up with a structure, and
other 'niceties' become essential as projects grow and mature
to help manage the inevitable complexities which arise. These
complexities stem not just from the management of the code itself,
but from the growing number of contributors and/or end users
whc will be affected by the project as it becomes larger and/or
more important.
There's some discussion about topics of scalability, design patterns,
and other similar topics on many websites, but not much on the group here itself. I'd suggest having a look at http://www.phppatterns.com
for a start.
Interesting related tools I came across recently: Umbrello and Microgold.com's UML program. Umbrello (uml.sourceforge.net) is a KDE app, and microgold is a windows app. The microgold, while about $200
(I think ) has the added ability to take preexisting classes and
attempt to reverse them into UML diagrams, suitable for giving newcomers to a project a good starting point for understanding a project. Of course, UML is just one facet of a project's development, which isn't even that widely embraced in most circles, but it's becoming quite common in other circles.
Hope that helps some.
Michael Kimsal
http://www.phpappserver.com
734-480-9961
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