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PHP London PubCon
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 8:01 pm
by Ollie Saunders
I was at the PHP London PubCon today. Basically 30 geeks packed into a room in a small pub talking about PHP.
I met this one particular guy Richard. He was talking about a framework he had written that used PDO as a database abstraction layer.
He could create entire forms by creating a very short (20 line class) extending upon lets say class A. Class A (calling upon lots of other stuff) would be able to query metadata from a table (using SHOW FULL COLUMNS) and generate applicable forms from them using the SQL COMMENTs as form labels. It would recognise foreign keys to other tables and then generate AJAX code that would allow fields to be created where the user can pick a value from another table. I think it automated quite a lot of validation too.
There was loads of other stuff he was talking about too, really impressive.
Just thought I'd share.
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 8:35 pm
by feyd
Why is this in Theory?
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 8:39 pm
by Ollie Saunders
Where should I put it?
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 8:43 pm
by feyd
Unless you have a real reason for it being in Theory, I will move it to General Discussion.
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 8:48 pm
by Ollie Saunders
Well its about a framework design.
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 9:00 pm
by Todd_Z
Try to recruit him to phpDN! That is exactly the kind of system that I'm looking to create.
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 9:10 pm
by Ollie Saunders
Yeah, this guy earns way too much money to care about dev net and its a private system and he wouldn't listen to me.
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 9:18 pm
by alex.barylski
That would be a sad attitude...
Regardless of income or importqance in programming circles...even the most experienced and advanced developer can learn something from a online community like this...
IMHO anyways...
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:30 pm
by d3ad1ysp0rk
Hockey wrote:That would be a sad attitude...
Regardless of income or importqance in programming circles...even the most experienced and advanced developer can learn something from a online community like this...
IMHO anyways...
Besides, that's like geo metro owners putting down others because their metro is faster.
I mean.. we're programmers..
we're the ones who are supposed to be getting put down by others, not each other!

Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:09 am
by m3mn0n
lol
nice analogy
Re: PHP London PubCon
Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:19 am
by Benjamin
ole wrote:He could create entire forms by creating a very short (20 line class) extending upon lets say class A. Class A (calling upon lots of other stuff) would be able to query metadata from a table (using SHOW FULL COLUMNS) and generate applicable forms from them using the SQL COMMENTs as form labels. It would recognise foreign keys to other tables and then generate AJAX code that would allow fields to be created where the user can pick a value from another table. I think it automated quite a lot of validation too.
That sounds really nice because it would create a robust way to quickly build forms and it would speed up development. I've been thinking about building something like this for some time. I'm going to start on it pretty soon. I'm not sure I blame him for not sharing. That is a pretty powerfull bit of code he's got there. It makes him very valuable when he can build something 5-10 times faster than other developers and do a better job at the same time.
Re: PHP London PubCon
Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:48 am
by GM
ole wrote:I was at the PHP London PubCon today. Basically 30 geeks packed into a room in a small pub talking about PHP.
I met this one particular guy Richard. He was talking about a framework he had written that used PDO as a database abstraction layer.
He could create entire forms by creating a very short (20 line class) extending upon lets say class A. Class A (calling upon lots of other stuff) would be able to query metadata from a table (using SHOW FULL COLUMNS) and generate applicable forms from them using the SQL COMMENTs as form labels. It would recognise foreign keys to other tables and then generate AJAX code that would allow fields to be created where the user can pick a value from another table. I think it automated quite a lot of validation too.
There was loads of other stuff he was talking about too, really impressive.
Just thought I'd share.
Mine does something similar to that (apart from the AJAX bit, which mine doesn't do - I pass the sql fragments in the field constructor), and it writes Javascript form validation too, based on the metadata from the tables. It's also used as the first line back-end validation.
Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 3:35 am
by panic!
Sounds very much like Ruby on Rails' Scaffolding feature to me, not that that's a bad thing!
Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 6:59 am
by Ollie Saunders
GM wrote:Sounds very much like Ruby on Rails' Scaffolding feature to me, not that that's a bad thing!
Reminded me of Access actually (if any of you have had the misfortune of using that).
Hockey wrote:Regardless of income or importqance in programming circles...even the most experienced and advanced developer can learn something from a online community like this...
Well that's a nice thought. Not sure if its true. I know Richard wouldn't think so.
astions wrote:That sounds really nice because it would create a robust way to quickly build forms and it would speed up development.
Yes it does speed up development up by a smurf loads. I forgot to ask him about performance because if you have to get a load of meta data from the database for each request its going to slow stuff down quite a bit. UNLESS, he's implemented some kind of cacheing mechanism which I think would be essenuial.
Also what is happening here is really only a generified (is that a word?) solution to a technical problem, i.e. a lot of abstract code has been given all the power to manage every single aspect of a form, presentation, validation, db insertion etc. So unless it has be designed in a way where by everything can be overloaded and tweaked in a more manual fashion you aren't going to achieve a great deal o fuser friendlyness. Someone who programs a form themselves by hand will be able to get be really specific about all the minor details and create something with absolute suitability.
Anyway he works for what seems like a great company called
The Mind Gym and I think I found
one of the forms in question.
Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 8:52 am
by Grim...
Erm... Excuse me?
Why wasn't I invited?
