Framework...ya
Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 3:15 am
I know this question has been asked a million times but please, hear me out for a minute.
I started at my company and the website they had up was a complete piece of junk. So I go about rebuilding it. I have a quite simple framework that I have been using for just about every website I have made in the past few years and it has been running perfectly. It's simple, easy to use, and it makes my life 1234234 times easier. So I make a complete new website with this framework so the site will not suck so hard and that when I need to make a change in anything I can easily do it.
Now walk in the Finns. I don't know if any of you have ever had to deal with Finnish people but they are so afraid of change is insane. It requires 10 of them a few months to decided the smallest thing. Then comes in the fact that, even though I am the only IT person that works directly for my boss, he does not listen to a word I say. So now I have this shiny new perfect website ready to launch and they are like 'does it support <buzzword />?' I try and I try to explain that we should not bloat something that does not need bloated but like I said the Finns don't listen to me.
So the Finns conclusion is that we need to run our site on a huge already tested framework. Now ok whatever but after looking at all the big frameworks out there its crap. I need flexability, I need to use my templating engine (PHPTAL), I just want my framework to make writing code chunks easier and make code execution faster. The rest I want left up to me for maximum flexability because I have to integrate into other random things (such as vBulletin).
So the frameworks I have tried and the problems I found:
Zend Framework Problems:
-Documentation was lacking even basic stuff (how do I run a query for christ sakes!? and how do I only select 2 fields from a table instead of all fields!?)
-Integrating PHPTAL was hackish and even though there was a view script someone wrote to do this there was no documentation on it so I had no idea what to do with it
Symphony Problems:
-I could not even get a hello world page going. It was the most complicated thing I have ever seen and there was no true documentation on it.
-The download package for each tutorial was different so which one did they even want me to use? Each tutorial on their own site had a different framework package so I had no idea where to even start
-No way in hell would I use something so complicated
Zoop Problems:
-No documentation at all
-Crappy code
-No
Seagull Problems:
-I want a framework, not a CMS
-Super integration of smarty when I really hate smarty.
So I am nearly at my wits end. There is no way to convince my boss that his Finnish counterparts are just being idiots and trying to overgeneralize a framework based on the argument "we don't know what we will need in the future" and "can you promise your framework will work perfectly with 1million users?". No no no! We have 5000 users, if we have changed nothing by the 1million marker then you have obviously fired me and not hired a replacement for like 2 years.
So my question is, does anyone know how to solve the problems that these frameworks pose or maybe have another framework that could fulfill my needs? My needs are:
1)Using PHPTAL as the templating engine
2)Multiple languages (right now I have a text file for each page for each language. If you go to the home page and you are browsing in French then the french text file is loaded and then put into constants then the constants are set to PHPTAL variables to be displayed)
3)Not having the template be the view class. I want a real view class for each page. This way you can set your variables for the template in the view class and when it comes to processing forms you use the controller class. Every framework wants to put processing forms and the setting variables in the same function, this just makes things more cluttered and files much much much longer. Why not separate them into different classes easy breazy style?
4)Easily extendable. I don't want restrictions. I need to be flexable. The only reason I am doing this in the first place is because the Finns want a brand name instead of what they actually need.
So if one of those frameworks can meet my requirments somehow please let me know. Otherwise, if you know another framework that can meet those requirments let me know of that too. Thanks.
I started at my company and the website they had up was a complete piece of junk. So I go about rebuilding it. I have a quite simple framework that I have been using for just about every website I have made in the past few years and it has been running perfectly. It's simple, easy to use, and it makes my life 1234234 times easier. So I make a complete new website with this framework so the site will not suck so hard and that when I need to make a change in anything I can easily do it.
Now walk in the Finns. I don't know if any of you have ever had to deal with Finnish people but they are so afraid of change is insane. It requires 10 of them a few months to decided the smallest thing. Then comes in the fact that, even though I am the only IT person that works directly for my boss, he does not listen to a word I say. So now I have this shiny new perfect website ready to launch and they are like 'does it support <buzzword />?' I try and I try to explain that we should not bloat something that does not need bloated but like I said the Finns don't listen to me.
So the Finns conclusion is that we need to run our site on a huge already tested framework. Now ok whatever but after looking at all the big frameworks out there its crap. I need flexability, I need to use my templating engine (PHPTAL), I just want my framework to make writing code chunks easier and make code execution faster. The rest I want left up to me for maximum flexability because I have to integrate into other random things (such as vBulletin).
So the frameworks I have tried and the problems I found:
Zend Framework Problems:
-Documentation was lacking even basic stuff (how do I run a query for christ sakes!? and how do I only select 2 fields from a table instead of all fields!?)
-Integrating PHPTAL was hackish and even though there was a view script someone wrote to do this there was no documentation on it so I had no idea what to do with it
Symphony Problems:
-I could not even get a hello world page going. It was the most complicated thing I have ever seen and there was no true documentation on it.
-The download package for each tutorial was different so which one did they even want me to use? Each tutorial on their own site had a different framework package so I had no idea where to even start
-No way in hell would I use something so complicated
Zoop Problems:
-No documentation at all
-Crappy code
-No
Seagull Problems:
-I want a framework, not a CMS
-Super integration of smarty when I really hate smarty.
So I am nearly at my wits end. There is no way to convince my boss that his Finnish counterparts are just being idiots and trying to overgeneralize a framework based on the argument "we don't know what we will need in the future" and "can you promise your framework will work perfectly with 1million users?". No no no! We have 5000 users, if we have changed nothing by the 1million marker then you have obviously fired me and not hired a replacement for like 2 years.
So my question is, does anyone know how to solve the problems that these frameworks pose or maybe have another framework that could fulfill my needs? My needs are:
1)Using PHPTAL as the templating engine
2)Multiple languages (right now I have a text file for each page for each language. If you go to the home page and you are browsing in French then the french text file is loaded and then put into constants then the constants are set to PHPTAL variables to be displayed)
3)Not having the template be the view class. I want a real view class for each page. This way you can set your variables for the template in the view class and when it comes to processing forms you use the controller class. Every framework wants to put processing forms and the setting variables in the same function, this just makes things more cluttered and files much much much longer. Why not separate them into different classes easy breazy style?
4)Easily extendable. I don't want restrictions. I need to be flexable. The only reason I am doing this in the first place is because the Finns want a brand name instead of what they actually need.
So if one of those frameworks can meet my requirments somehow please let me know. Otherwise, if you know another framework that can meet those requirments let me know of that too. Thanks.