iFrame - My PHP Framework

I have created a number of Web Applications - Nexty and Jus5 are just a few examples. I used a common code base when creating these sites - but I did not consider it a full fledged framework. However, now the code base has evolved enough to be called a framework. So, I called it a framework - the iFrame framework. I know, lame joke - geek humor

Before moving further, a word of warning - Do not use this framework for your project. There are plenty of great PHP frameworks out there - use one of those. For example…

• CakePHP
• CodeIgniter
• Symfony
• ZendPHP

These are professional, enterprise level frameworks. They are secure, well designed and documented. Use any of those when creating your site - do not use mine. There are no legal restrictions - the code for iFrame is under BSD License. These are the reasons why you should not use my framework…

Disadvantages

Documentation

Many Users of frameworks complain that there is not enough documentation. My framework has no such problems - it has no documentation whatsoever . They only way to find what a function is supposed to do, is to read the code.

Bugs

This system is developed, used and tested by just one person - me. So, there are many yet undiscovered bugs.

No ORM

Those who are in love with ORM will be disappointed when using iFrame - I have not implemented ORM.

Currently, only MySQL is supported

There is a database abstraction layer - but as of yet, only MySQL is supported.

And a lot more other reasons

The reasons why you should not use this framework is too numerous to list here.

Advantages

Despite all the given disadvantages, I will use this framework - these are the reasons for that…

Lightweight

This is the most lightweight framework that I have ever seen.

Helpful functions that reduce coding time

All my PHP functions are available in the framework - If you know how to use them, these functions save a lot of time. For example…

• upload()
• dump()
• xml2array()
• array2json()
• And more…

Encourages clean code

iFrame is an MVC framework(although the ‘Model’ is a bit limited for now). By default, each controller has its own folder and each action has its own file. This will greatly increase the number of files - but will reduce the number of lines in each file. Some might find it hard to use - but I find it more manageable this way.

A lot of cool features

I will talk about these ‘cool features’ in the next post.

Code

What good is a framework without the code…

View the iFrame code online

You can get the code from my subversion server - use this command…

svn checkout http://www.bin-co.com/php/scripts/iframe/code/ iframe

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 2:05 pm and is filed under PHP, Scripts, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.