Thread

Read an article about how to be a better php developer and found a link to a website I’ve never heard of. It’s phpframeworks.com, and I was kinda surprised and very happy to see CodeIgniter is ranked second, right behind Symphony, although I’m not sure what this represents, but CI is on the right track to dominate for sure! 😊

kind of interesting to see that CI does not have some of the features listed yet is second.
just goes to show really that most of the features, like ORM, Ajax, Auth Module and Modules are just so much eye candy that do not really make the framework better, and in some cases like Ajax, Auth Module and Modules it limits you because it forces you to do things in a certain way, which as a developer, you might not like.

While a lot of people like ORM I find it is too resource intensive so I am glad CI does not have it, and I assume if it is someday added it will optional like active record currently is.

[...] CodeIgniter is ranked second, right behind Symphony, although I’m not sure what this represents, but CI is on the right track to dominate for sure! 😊

Symfony takes advantage of PHP5. I understand the reasons why CI hasn’t drop PHP4 support yet, but when it does, it will be even more kick ass!

One of the main reasons I settled with CI is that it does (and will for quite a while) support PHP4.

Symfony takes advantage of PHP5. I understand the reasons why CI hasn’t drop PHP4 support yet, but when it does, it will be even more kick ass!

In what way? What does PHP 5 offer it that makes it faster than PHP 4? There is of course method chaining which reduces the line count by a fraction, and a few built improvements, but CI takes full advantage of those by having two seperate base files (Base4.php and Base5.php). Its been said many times - and I fully agree - that dropping PHP4 support would not benefit CI in the slightest.

Another thing I disagree with is that modules are just eye candy. Matchbox - or Modular Seperation as it was previously named - is one of the most useful additions to CI I have seen. Being able to store all files required for one “part” of the site, within a single folder is ridiculously time saving. It still follows MVC, does not impose any special requirements and means all your files are exactly where you expect them to be. Its a pain in the rump having to switch between Controllers, Models and Views with a subfolder in each one for a site “part” when you could have it in one place…

Why isnt Matchbox or something similar included in the core?!

Number 7 on the list has one star.  😛 I don’t think this is a very good sample.  The more links the better though.

In what way? What does PHP 5 offer it that makes it faster than PHP 4? There is of course method chaining which reduces the line count by a fraction, and a few built improvements, but CI takes full advantage of those by having two seperate base files (Base4.php and Base5.php). Its been said many times - and I fully agree - that dropping PHP4 support would not benefit CI in the slightest.

I think more than anything PHP5 would benefit the developers working on CI.

URLs are already long enough. Matchbox adds an extra segment that isn’t really needed for the URL.

E.g. news/comments/1 vs news/news/comments/1

I suppose you could use routing but I don’t think you should have to.

I’ve only read over Matchbox quickly and noticed that, hence why I don’t use it. It would be useful for developers who sell/use their code over and over but when your concentrating on one or two projects it’s not really worth it.

..just goes to show really that most of the features, like ORM, Ajax, Auth Module and Modules are just so much eye candy that do not really make the framework better, and in some cases like Ajax, Auth Module and Modules it limits you because it forces you to do things in a certain way, which as a developer, you might not like…

I don’t think Ajax type functionality can be pigeonholed as eye-candy anymore. Web applications are moving away from pages that need complete reloads all the time which means that Ajax type stuff will be an ever increasing integral part of any framework.

I’m just getting into Codeigniter and am so far very impressed with it, and this Ajax issue is something I am looking forward to exploring.

I think it’s the second part of tonan’s sentence that needs highlighting, not the first.  CodeIgniter doesn’t limit you in any way - you can do ajax and do it any way you want.  In the same way that it doesn’t force user authentication on you.  Simplicity and flexibility is what brought me to CI and I would hate to see that go.
I would say the ranking makes it obvious that I’m not alone.

php5 would be a big improvement actually, destructors, set and get methods, exception handling, better overall OOP support etc etc

php5 would be a big improvement actually, destructors, set and get methods, exception handling, better overall OOP support etc etc

I’d like to add __autoload() to that list. If CI were php 5, then $this->load->some_class(); wouldn’t be necessary. Instead, using __autoload() and class naming conventions you could write: $some_library = new Some_Library();. The __autoload() function could do everything that the loader does including maintaining singleton instances for libraries.

URLs are already long enough. Matchbox adds an extra segment that isn’t really needed for the URL.

E.g. news/comments/1 vs news/news/comments/1

In that case, Matchbox does not add an extra segment. When your controller is named the same as the module, the modulename can be omitted (this can be learned on the introduction page for matchbox). 😊

In what way? What does PHP 5 offer it that makes it faster than PHP 4? There is of course method chaining which reduces the line count by a fraction, and a few built improvements, but CI takes full advantage of those by having two seperate base files (Base4.php and Base5.php). Its been said many times - and I fully agree - that dropping PHP4 support would not benefit CI in the slightest.

I assure you that if you used PHP5 regularly (maybe you do?) it would be quite clear why it’s in the best interest of framework to only support it. Not even the PHP Group supports PHP4, and I’m sure you know why—it’s dated. Of course, the reason why CI supports it is to attract more users. I suspect there are no other reasons.

Aside from speed increases (bytecode), PHP5 has a lot of other functionality that makes it comparable to other languages. For something as simple as declaring a method/variable visibility, it introduces a level of a maturity not seen in PHP4. The reasons to switch are obvious—and I think I had this discussion four years ago!

It’s more than just popularity. The adoption rate of PHP5 has been very slow, and the PHP developers’ efforts to push that adoption has been fairly ineffectual.

Derek Allard speaks