Are you guys always this friendly to new folks, outsiders?
Cause I feel like I am talking into the either without the slightest
aknowledgement (at least that I can see but I may have missed an email
in the deluge of email I get) of any of the several comments-thoughts-
reasouces-events I have shared.
You are building a social application right?
Can you be anti-social and do that?
-kaliya
Kaliya
www.identitywoman.net
On Mar 28, 2010, at 7:42 AM, Henry Litwhiler <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 3/28/10 7:27 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
2010/3/24 Matt Lee <[email protected]>
I'd like to see a discussion on which PHP framework we should be
using,
if any.
Symfony 2.0 -- http://symfony-reloaded.org/ is one that has already
been
mentioned.
I did some more research on this over the weekend, and here is a
summary of some of the things I came accross:
Background
==========
This is a poll that probably covers most of the different framework
options:
PEAR [ 2% (24 votes) ]
CakePHP [ 11% (136 votes) ]
CodeIgniter [ 12% (147 votes) ]
eZ Components [ 1% (17 votes) ]
I use my own framework [ 12% (146 votes) ]
Flow3 [ 2% (23 votes) ]
Fusebox
Prado [ 1% (6 votes) ]
Seagull
Symfony [ 10% (125 votes) ]
Zend Framework [ 33% (399 votes) ]
Other [ 15% (177 votes) ]
http://blog.thinkphp.de/archives/459-Which-Open-Source-PHP-framework-do-you-use.html
...
Also a basic post on stack overflow, with feedback:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2648/what-php-framework-would-you-choose-for-a-new-application-and-why
Combing Frameworks
==================
Also I think a valuable blogpost from Matthew Weier O'Phinney
(Zend) On Symfony/Zend integration, and on thinking beyond the
framework.
http://weierophinney.net/matthew/archives/232-Symfony-Live-2010.html
PHPBB4
=======
An interesting discussion on a candidate framework for PHPBB4* took
place here: (I have read a claim that they will adopt symfony 2)
http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=32433
Of particular interest is the open letter to phpbb (page 2)
http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=32433&start=10#p205215
*About phpBB
phpBB™ ("PHP Bulletin Board") is the world's leading Open Source f
orum software. Distributed under the GNU General Public License, p
hpBB is free software, developed by volunteers from around the wor
ld. phpBB is used on over 2.4 million commercial, non-profit, soci
al networking and community websites in over sixty languages. For
more information and to learn how you can contribute, please visit http://www.phpbb.com
Conclusion
==========
I'm not normally a huge fan of 'framework' concept, as my fear is
that you get tied in to a certain paradigm, however in some cases
the benefits outweigh the potential investment, and I can certainly
see the advantages in not reinventing this part of the wheel, in
GNU Social. A framework would provide a certain degree of
scaffold, which would allow developers to concentrate on the core
functionality of social networking and federation, potentially
shortening the release cycle. There seem to be a large number of
frameworks out there, with each offering different advantages, and
having different followings.
If a framework is selected, an important aspect is to think outside
the paradigm, and use the best tool for each job, so some elements
of Zend could be used with a Symfony 2 backbone (symfony uses some
zend classes already), with a sprinking of PEAR and PHPUnit for
testing.
Overall from some extended research, looking at many comparisons,
and talking to people who've actually used frameworks, I think
symfony 2 would probably be the framework I would lean towards
recommending. It is known to scale well, powering several large
sites such as yahoo, dailymotion, and in future, possibly phpbb.
From what I've heard the company that backs symfony2 (senslo labs),
is serious about security, enterprise deployment, clean and modern
code, which would likely be beneficial to the overall project.
Happy to hear the thoughts of others.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again: PHP is a valid frontend
option for GNU Social, but I would strongly question it's
suitability for the backbone of a project such as this. A small,
fast, desktop application that users run to change settings, and
serve out data to other users could be written in something like
Python.
How about such an application runs in the background on all GNU
Social computers (or, because it's been suggested, ARM-based power-
outlet-sized computers) at all times, receiving new posts (if it
gets turned off, it will load everything it's missed from the
network) and sending out data. Rather than having everyone running
their own server, with their own GNU Social PHP install serving data
to everyone, we could use the PHP install as a private GUI - users
point their browser to 127.0.0.1, and load up a Facebook-like
application with all their friends' latest posts, images, videos, etc.
This particular itch (the need for an easy, extensible GUI) is
certainly best scratched by PHP. But to make PHP the backbone of GNU
Social would be a gross misuse of PHP - it simply isn't designed for
(nor is it best for) such a task, whereas something like Python is.
The Python application wouldn't display things to the browser, and
I'm not saying that we use Python to replace PHP's role as our web
application language - instead, we can use it to manage the backend
communications between GNU Social users.
--
Henry L.
