Published on 2006-03-02 00:13:38
Rasmus posted a must-read article The no-framework PHP MVC framework. Rasmus explained in detail his choice of no-framework to develop rich web application using only PHP5, Yahoo! UI Library and JSON. And I personaly agree about the usage of frameworks, since I'm using always my own ones, it's really important to know the code that you are working with. About Nothing is going to build your application for you, no matter what it promises, I have been working for years on code generators and I can confirm that yes until today nothing seems to do everything for me. There is always manual coding to do, changes in the core framework to fit some special needs ... etc.
And don't miss the point
It isn't about OOP vs. Procedural. I could just as easily have written the controller code as a series of objects. The important point is not the style of the code, the important point is that you don't have a single monolithic controller that becomes your bottleneck and forces all your controller logic into one place because it turns what is supposed to be a discrete and modular architecture into a monolithic one.
So you want to build the next fancy Web 2.0 site? You'll need some gear. Most likely in the form of a big complex MVC framework with plenty of layers that abstracts away your database, your HTML, your Javascript and in the end your application itself. If it is a really good framework it will provide a dozen things you'll never need.
I am obviously not a fan of such frameworks. I like stuff I can understand in an instant. Both because it lets me be productive right away and because 6 months from now when I come back to fix something, again I will only need an instant to figure out what is going on.
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Clean separation of your views, controller logic and backend model logic is easy to do with PHP. Using these ideas, you should be able to build a clean framework aimed specifically at your requirements instead of trying to refactor a much larger and more complex external framework.
Many frameworks may look very appealing at first glance because they seem to reduce web application development to a couple of trivial steps leading to some code generation and often automatic schema detection, but these same shortcuts are likely to be your bottlenecks as well since they achieve this simplicity by sacrifizing flexibility and performance. Nothing is going to build your application for you, no matter what it promises. You are going to have to build it yourself. Instead of starting by fixing the mistakes in some foreign framework and refactoring all the things that don't apply to your environment spend your time building a lean and reusable pattern that fits your requirements directly. In the end I think you will find that your homegrown small framework has saved you time and aggravation and you end up with a better product.
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