Re: Ruby on Rails

Daniel O'Connor wrote:

Hi Guys, Recently I had a play with Ruby on Rails. I think I fell off my chair with the ease that I got through developing a simple web application. If you haven't already, go have a play with "Rolling with Ruby on Rails": http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html Now, all night I've been thinking as to why this isn't possible with PHP. I couldn't think of a reason. We've got: Templating/facetting (Smarty, or plain ole PHP+HTML) Database Abstraction Layers (ADODB, PEAR::DB) Base classes by the dozen (PEAR! Horde!) A package manager (PEAR again!) But I still find doing a prototype application is godawfully slow. Could PEAR itself benefit from some application 'helpers', similar to what Ruby On Rails has... something to build web applications (or any other concievable application) really quickly, then focus on implementing functionality rather than doing dirty work. Call it PHP in Pails if you need to :P Questions: 1) What have I missed from Rails that we already have in the PHP world... 2) Like it, hate it, let me know what you think... I've a developing itch to scratch :)

Oddly enough, I've been thinking about this also :) I have a designer friend (who is also quite profeccient in PHP) who is a Smarty nut, and has for quite some time been pushing me to learn it - just recently she found RoR and has denounced the glory that is PHP in favour of it. I personally think its (mostly) hype. I don't like MVC, its far too much for web work, I do however like the standard application folders hierarchy (I use one myself which has worked pretty well for a number of years now, I just create it by hand) and I like their idea of minimal configuration. To this end, I'm writing Crtx_DB_DataObject which uses their Inflection method of pluralizing and singularizing the Class/Table names to see what to use, as well as the Primary Key/Foreign Key standards. I have everything except for Aggregation working so far, and its pretty minimal code. I actually chose to extend the PDO internal classes to provide just enough abstraction for this to work whilst still being extremely speedy. I fucked up in my implementation of Aggregation but I know where so it won't take me long to re-write it. I am now thinking that Cerebral Cortex could easily include shell/batch scripts (I'm thinking on the same lines of the PEAR cmd for cross-platform-ness, simple sh/bat file that runs PHP :) to setup a standard folder hierarchy. I'll see what else works nicely, I already have a Crtx_DB_DataObject/Crtx_Form bridge in mind. - Davey P.S. I thought up the name PHP in Pails before you, so :P