[Webdev] Project suggestion: PHP Website Framework

[adam]

Allo again,

> I'm going to ask what may seem like silly questions in order to clarify
> things in my head:
>
Doesn't bother me, I ask 'em all the time.

> I have to say at this point I'm slightly confused by your use of the words
> frontend and backend. ... Do you mean backend for editing a site and
> frontend for viewing a site?
>
Yes. I know they're not the best descriptions, and I've never been happy
with them, but they're the best I could come up with. 'Frontend' refers to
the actual website that the end-user sees. 'Backend' refers to the
administrative interface.

> What is an Action? What does print.php do?
> ...
> Ok, an Action is an operation on a document, but why would you want to
> print a document?
>
Print isn't a current action, it's just an example. It's just a stripped
alternative to 'view', like you'd see on news sites next to "Send to a
friend". Same content, different template.

> Your gonna use frames? Nooooooooooooooooooo
>
Yes. There's nothing wrong with frames once they're done right, and there
will be no problems when we're tied to one browser. The real advantage is
that you won't have to reload the entire UI - and overcomplicate the UI -
when you move around in the "backend". It should simplify things enormously
in the long run.

> So your going to keep some kind of log of actions peformed on the staging
> tables, and replay the queries against the live tables? That would be
> neat.
>
Yeah, the log would be the queries. Every time someone performs an action,
the query would be performed on the staging tables and logged to a
phactory_queries (or somesuch) table. Nothing changes on the live site until
the user is happy with the staging site (/phactory/staging). When they are,
they hit "Sync" or "Publish" and they're done. I had a problem with this
initially, in that I was worried a user might amend a document twice, but it
doesn't really matter, it just means an extra query. The end result would be
the same.

> So is the user going to install PHP + database on his own machine?
>
The default would be to work directly on the website, but yes, I would like
to offer an option where the user could work offline; and yes, this would
mean installing Apache/PHP/MySQL on their own machine. I would hope to
bundle the three, plus Mozilla, on a distribution CD. Ultimately, I would
like these to be installed as a single package, including Phactory; but
again, that's a long term goal.

> Presumably that's where the log is kept.
>
The log is kept wherever the user happens to be working. If they're working
remotely, it's kept on the remote machine; if they're working locally it's
kept on the local machine.

> > > You might also make the "save" command implicit, and provide instead
> > > an n-level "undo" command.
...
> Well, given that you already have the log as descibed above, it wouldn't
> be too hard.
>
It wouldn't be that easy either, it would mean regenerating the queries in
reverse and/or complex rollbacks. Again, long term.

> > developer access, I'm inclined to agree with you that this kind of
> > functionality would be a very early requirement. However it would need
> > some major thought and discussion to get right.
>
> It's the kind of thing the afformentioned webdav is targeted at.
>
Indeed, and I agree that WebDAV is a good idea, but again, I would be
concerned that my ignorance of WebDAV would not enable me to integrate it
into the application at this time. At this stage, I would prefer to work
with concepts I'm comfortable with.

adam