Archive for the ‘PHP’ Category

Yii Framework Rebranding Underway

I am very proud to announce that my design proposals are chosen for the rebranding of Yii Framework.

If you don’t already know, Yii is a high-performance component-based PHP framework best for developing large-scale Web applications. Yii comes with a full stack of features, including MVC, DAO/ActiveRecord, I18N/L10N, caching, jQuery-based AJAX support, authentication and role-based access control, scaffolding, input validation, widgets, events, theming, Web services, and so on. Written in strict OOP, Yii is easy to use and is extremely flexible and extensible.

Click here to view the design drafts. Constructive criticisms are welcomed! :)

Yii Framework

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Yii Kohana Bridge updated: full Kohana flavour now added!

I have just pushed some updates to the Git repository.

The entire Kohana distribution is now included. The bridging class is now renamed to ‘Kbridge’.

Not all helpers and libraries will work at the moment, especially the ones that reference Kohana core classes. I am however planning to bridge the core classes and configuration files for tighter integration.

If you have any suggestions please let me know. :)

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Release: [Yii Extension] Yii Kohana Bridge, use Kohana helpers in Yii!

Yii is an excellent PHP framework, but it lacks some helpers for performing common tasks.

Since I am so used to using Kohana helpers, hey, why don’t we bring these helpers into Yii? :)

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Choosing a PHP Framework Round 2: Yii vs Kohana vs CodeIgniter

It was over a year ago that I wrote the article that compares CodeIgniter and Kohana. Since then both CodeIgniter and Kohana have seen major progress with the release of CodeIgniter 1.7.0 and Kohana 2.3.

In December 2008, a new PHP framework called Yii has been released to the public with a stable 1.0. There were a lot of new PHP framework released in 2008, but Yii was one of the more recognised ones because:

Before I start this round of comparison, let me briefly list my experience with these frameworks, so you may interpret this article with your own judgement.

CodeIgniter: I started using CodeIgniter since its version 1.2.x from a few years ago. During the past few years I have worked on projects mainly using version 1.5.x and 1.6.x. I have now stopped using CodeIgniter in favour of using other PHP 5 only frameworks.

Kohana: I first started using Kohana when it was called BlueFlame back when it was first forked out of CodeIgniter. Since then I have lurked and participated in the Kohana community. All of my recent projects are done in Kohana.

Yii: The 1.0 release of Yii had my attention, but I didn’t really dive into it until about now. However, most of my impressions on Yii are based on its documentation and this article by Daniel.

Let’s see how they compare with each other.

Same notes as before: Grading scale: Limited < Fair < Good < Excellent. If a feature is not available in the distributed package, but is available via 3rd party libraries, I will state that in the comparison. If a feature is available both in the distributed package and via 3rd party libraries, only the official one will get assessed.

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CodeIgniter – Loading Models and Database in One Hit

Most models I create need to access the database. You can easily have CI automatically load the database class by setting a 3rd parameter to true when loading your model:

$this->load->model('your_model', '', true);

The 2nd parameter, which in this case was left blank, is used if you want to assign a different object name to the model – something that I have never used.

Has anyone ever actually used a different object name? The reason I ask is because it’s so easy to forget about the 2nd parameter, and sometimes I try to put the true parameter to auto-load the database in the 2nd slot like this:

$this->load->model('my_model', true); // WRONG!

Of course, the easiest solution is to autoload the database through the config, but that can be a little inefficient for apps that don’t use the DB on every page.

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Release: [Kohana Module] Authlite, for User Authentication

Latest release: v1.2.3

Initially I was going to wait for my Layerful Framework (a transparent layering framework for Kohana) to mature before releasing its bundled modules. However, since this Authlite module can be used independently to Layerful, I am releasing it now.

What is Authlite

Authlite is a user authentication module for Kohana.

What’s the difference between Authlite and Auth?

Kohana comes with an official Auth module which does exactly what was described in the last paragraph, so why another module then?

It is because Authlite offers greater flexibilty. Please read the features outlined below to find more.

Features

  • Legacy database compatibility
  • Configurable database columns
  • Multiple instances of Authlite
  • Does not enforce user roles
  • Auth-like syntax and usage
  • Lightweight

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