[Solar-talk] Solar_View questions

[Paul M Jones]

Hi Rodrigo,

> I'm Rodrigo, from Brazil. I'm a big fan of Savant, admire and learn
> very much with Paul's coding style, and this is why I am here. :)

You're very kind to say.  :-)  I know you from the Zend Framework  
list as well.


> - Why Solar_View::addTemplatePath() doesn't accept full paths? I took
> me a while to understand why a triple checked path wasn't found. Then
> I saw the include_path part in Solar::fileExists(). Isn't it a bit
> counter-intuitive to rely on the include_path, or perhaps am I missing
> something?

I wouldn't say you're "missing" anything, other than that Solar is  
somewhat more framework-ish than Zend is, and much more so than  
Savant is.  Solar expects that you organize your code in a certain  
way, the same way a PEAR library is organized.

Solar figures that have your own top-level "Vendor" directory  
namespace (maybe in the PEAR directory), and subdirectories with  
classes and files.

Solar also expects that you'll want to install that directory on  
different servers, possibly with different paths.

So from that perspective, using absolute paths isn't really part of  
what Solar thinks you ought to be doing.  Does that make sense at all?


> Am I right to think that Solar_View development is more active or  
> this is because
> Savant is perhaps more mature?

I am continuing development on Savant as bugfix feature requests come  
in, but there aren't many; it seems to "just work."  Honestly,  
Solar_View development (especially on the helpers) is more active  
these days.  This is because Solar in general is my most active  
project.  But of course Solar_View is pretty closely tied to Solar,  
so it'd be harder to use it in a non-Solar-based project.


> I would like to know more about their
> differences and plans for the future, and if Savant would be a good
> choice in the long-term, even because I intend to use other Solar
> parts.

If you intend to use Solar as the basis for your projects, I have to  
recommend using Solar_View over Savant, simply because it's better  
integrated with the rest of Solar.

<promotion class="shameless self">Solar has a lot more of what you  
need to get off the ground in a web app than Zend does at this point:  
authentication, roles, access control, form builder, etc.  The  
Solar_View form helper, for example, lets you take a Solar_Form  
object and output a form in one step:  echo $this->form 
($solar_form_object). The integration of the classes helps with this  
a great deal.</promotion>

> Sorry about the cross-project (and not-very-objective) discussion. :)

Not at all.  :-)

I hope this helps, please let me know if it does not.


--

Paul M. Jones  <http://paul-m-jones.com>

Solar: Simple Object Library and Application Repository
for PHP5.   <http://solarphp.com>

Savant: The simple, elegant, and powerful solution for
templates in PHP.   <http://phpsavant.com>