[Solar-talk] Okay Quick Framework 'Shift' Question

[Paul M Jones]

Hey Kilbride,

> What does it take to shift from Zend Framework to Solar?  
> Technically I'm sure you can have both around and all but what are  
> the primary differences in your code if all you are using is the  
> view and controller structure? Structurally speaking, what's  
> different from Solar to Zend?

That is an *excellent* question.  I wish I had a short answer for  
you.  :-(

The good news is that Zend and Solar spring from similar backgrounds  
(PEAR standards, and I wrote some of the Zend components, so the  
changeover should "feel" familiar).

The bad news is that the controller structures are quite different.   
The Zend front/router/page/action controller system is more complex.

In it's simpler usage, it is similar to Solar, but Zend has this  
weird (sorry Matthew) plugin system for views and layouts.  With  
Solar, we use extension and hook-methods (like _preRun() and  
_postAction()) instead of controller plugins.

In Solar, the basic page-controller dir structure looks like this ...

Vendor/
   App/
     Foo.php         # page-controller
     Foo/
       Helper/       # view helpers
       Layout/       # layouts to wrap views
       Locale/       # l10n files
       View/         # views
         browse.php  # Bar::actionBrowse() view
     Bar.php         # page-controller
     Bar/
       Helper/       # view helpers
       Layout/       # layouts to wrap views
       Locale/       # l10n files
       View/         # views
         browse.php  # Bar::actionBrowse() view

... vice the structure from Zend:

application/
     controllers/
         FooController.php    # page-controller
         BarController.php    # page-controller
     views/
         scripts/             # all view scripts
             foo/             # Foo views
                 index.phtml  # Foo::actionIndex() view
             bar/             # Bar views
                 index.phtml  # Bar::actionIndex() view
         helpers/             # view helpers


As you can see, Zend takes more heavily from Rails than Solar does.   
Solar tries to compartmentalize the apps more than Zend does.

Because we use extension for our apps, if App_Bar extends App_Foo,  
then App_Bar automatically has access to all the helpers, layouts,  
locales, and views from App_Foo, and falls back to them when they  
don't exist in App_Bar.  That means it's relatively easy to set up  
common views and layouts in a base application, and extend other  
applications from it.

Solar page-controllers can recognize the "format" of the request.   
Say you have actionBrowse(); normally, the URI "controller/page/ 
browse" would render the "View/browse.php" script there.  With Solar,  
if the URI has a format extension, like "controller/page/browse.rss",  
the page-controller is smart enough to look for "View/browse.rss.php"  
instead, while using exactly the same actionBrowse() method.  That  
is, you can have multiple view formats for the same action, without  
having to change any of the action code.

The Solar view helpers are (I think) more mature than the ones in  
Zend.  Solar helpers are more "federated" than Zend ones (even though  
they come from the same origin project, Savant3).  The last time I  
checked, with Zend, if you write a custom helper, it has to be called  
Zend_View_Helper_Something. In Solar, you can have your own helpers  
in the App directory named for that app, e.g.  
"Vendor_App_Foo_Helper_Something" and Solar will find it  
automatically when your view script calls $this->something().

I'm sure there's a lot more to it, but that's all I can think of off  
hand.

Maybe if you send some snippets of code as examples, we can try to  
work through them?

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>

Join the Solar community wiki!  <http://solarphp.org>

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