Hey Xpats!

I have been coding in PHP for over a year now, and I have been doing things solo. I learned the hard way, doing everything from scratch. Always looking into the PHP Manual and thinking out solutions to all I had to do. Basically, this was due to two facts.

1. I was not connected to the internet and,
2. I learned PHP from a Book other than online tutorials,

This approach created a code vendetta out of me. Anyway, I beginning to get tired of reinventing the wheel all the time or using my copy_and_paste_from_previous_codes() function all the time. Now I rip into Open Source Apps trying to understand how to develop robust applications using time saving techniques or frameworks in PHP.

So far so good, I have been able to lay my hands on tits and bits. PEAR is great. Smarty is awesome. phpclasses.org too is a great resource for getting cool classes to include in your codes. However, there are certain stuffs that stil rake my mind.

FRAMEWORKS.

Can anyone dabble into Frameworks like symfony, CackPhp, Zend Framework?
Can anyone tell me how dey work practically (cos all I have been stumbling on are theoretical expositions (lol))?
I wouldn't mind a smarter way of using OS Codes.

Hey frnd, i reaaly dont know much about the issues u want answered but i salute the efforts you've made in your days of "from the Scratch". A teacher once told me in IT whats important is not "What the solution is" but "Where u can find it". So I advise the use the loads of PHP forums available on d net, I'm sure they'II be willing to help.

Yeah, you are right. Coding from scratch really helps, but when it comes to coding in a team of professionals, there are certain terms and techniques you need to understand. This are the stuffs I really need to know,

I am already into understanding Smarty deeply. PEAR works just like Java's API too,

An example of such technique or term is experts use 'Framework'. How does frameworks work?? I need to see some examples in codes.

I used a relatively light weight framework called Codeigniter from http://codeigniter.com/ to develop oroede at http://oroede.sourceforge.net/oroede/. Using the framework saves time, being like you mentioned it is a pain to reinvent the wheel everytime you have to develop an application.

Each framework has it pros and cons. I chose CodeIgniter because it was easy to learn, as seen from their introductory tutorial at http://codeigniter.com/tutorials/ , but CakePHP has been a headache to learn, but it has been around longer and has a bigger code-base with really cool integration to Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX, where CodeIgniter is just catching up.

Zend's framework is supported by the writer's of the Engine of PHP, but it is still in "Beta" development stage and woe to one who spends month developing on "Beta" platform only to find that final release breaks all your code. In the long run once stable, Zend will be the framework for me, cause those guys at Zend do great work.

I am a python freak and turbogears is off the hook, check it out, perhaps it may meet your needs and requirements turbogears.org

Otuyelu!

What is oro ede wa?! Just kidding. Thank God its Open Source. I have always dreamt of doing some techie thing in Yoruba. I thought my former HOD (Prof Sophie Oluwole) how to use Pradigm Lingua by Dr Asaolu to edit her Philosophy works in Yoruba, particularly her novel research in IFA. I study Philosphy and specialises in African (Yoruba) Philosophy, Logic and AI.

I can see the invitation for Yoruba translators. I write Yoruba as much as I write PHP! Can I join?

My Yahoo ID is naijaguru

Cheers.

Thanks for codeigniter. I am currently looking in cake, challenging, but progressing.

www.codixel.com

I use
SourceForge,
PhpClasses.org,
webedev (or so),
then planet-source-code.com (This very site, u can get complete application you can fine-tune)

all the best,


am actually a coder, but i use most of my time gathering programming resources.

There is nothing like developing web-application form the scratch, Have been developing web application for the past 8 years now and have got to learn that one can never grow form copy & paste script.

For years now i have always developed my own libraries. With the coming of PHP5 last years its now much better to develop your own set of liberties with standard API.

Smarty & PEAR is good but believe me,If you can develope applications form the scratch you would be able to develop libraries that iare 2x faster , secured and has more easy interface than what you have now.

A tipical example is when using PHP5 default SoapClient for and ASP WebService (Which Sometimes does not send Soap Fault dues to poor programming). If no soap fault are sent and an error occurs form the ASP soapServer it creates a fatal error in PHP because not SoapFault was sent.

Even is_soap_fault() does not dictected the error and even if you set error_reporting(0) or create your own Exception your application would shut down prematurely but if you write your own application you can be able to manage all this even better.



The best way to use OS code is :

Study the concept
Do some benchmark
Look for errors
Try to hack them
Now look for a way improve on then call that v1.0
then now create yours form the scratch because i want to believe that form working on the, you should have gained a lot of experience.

Framework :

Its not so hard to dabble in to Frameworks.
Each Framework has its own plugins , lib etc.

EG. You know symfony files are located :
apps/
batch/
cache/
config/
data/
doc/
lib/
log/
plugins/
test/
web/


All you need i to start form the config area and begin to study them, In less than 2 weeks dending on how good you are in programming you would score a goal.


I hope this helps , am also willing to learn more


Oleku
www.oleku.org
www.faceoffestac.net *Activated