Web App Development

MVC, Zend, Yii, and beyond

Web Apps Team

  • Ken
  • Jeff *
  • Jim *
  • Tom
  • Rodney
  • Mia

Number of Apps in our dev queue?

18

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What are our needs

  • Rapid development
  • Train team members new to PHP & frameworks
  • Standardize code and apps

Rapid Development

Rapid application development (RAD) is a software development methodology that uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping.

How do we achieve this?

  1. Choose a MVC web framework to develop in
  2. Develop a base application, and not start every project from scratch

What is a MVC framework

Model–View–Controller (MVC) is a software design pattern that separates the presentation layer from the logic layer.

What is a base application?

A base application is a pre-built application that is used as a starting point for new application development.

Train team members

Aside from taping them to their seats... how do we train our team?

  1. Choose a MVC framework with strict coding standards (to promote good coding practice and to keep all apps familiar)
  2. Train team in the structure of our base application
  3. Let their skills develop as they work

Standardize

When anything is possible, it's easy to become overwhelmed.

So, how do we prepose to standardize the app dev process?

By creating starting points, not boundaries

This gives the project team a place to start, not a place to finish.

Key components of our base application

  • familiar coding environment
  • branded html/css themes
  • shibboleth / login built in
  • file upload
  • WSYIWYG editors
  • API / web service
  • ajax tables
  • ability to add more features over time

MVC web frameworks

Model-View-Controller

Buster.JS

MVC web frameworks: History

This style of programming became popularized in early 2000's with Ruby on Rails. Since then every web language has tried to mimic the use of MVC development.

MVC web frameworks: PHP

  • CodeIgniter
  • Zend Framework
  • CakePHP
  • Symfony
  • Yii
  • FuelPHP
  • and the list goes into the thousands

MVC web frameworks: PHP

Why not just write our own?

  1. Because we don't want to put the team's productivity on the shoulders of any one person.
  2. We can also utilize open source libraries and classes that other users of the framework wrote, so every new feature doesn't have to be written from scratch.
  3. Being a part of a community allows us to stay aware of the latest coding standards and practices.

MVC web frameworks: PHP

Since there are thousands, which do we choose?

  • Lightweight with a small code base
  • Fast (development & performance)
  • Strict coding standards
  • Active healthy community
  • Good documentation

Zend Framework

ZF is a MVC PHP framework that is developed by the company that invented PHP.

Upon choosing ZF, UCSC developers thought...

  • ZF is made by the inventors of PHP
  • ZF is flexible
  • ZF is easy to piecemeal into an existing application

After using ZF, UCSC developers commented...

  • The flexibility means more low-level tasks = more coding
  • The learning curve was longer than expected
  • Poor documentation

UCSC Developers aren't alone, research shows ZF to have...

  • Large code base
  • Sluggish performance
  • Loose coding standards
  • Poor documentation

    • What we need is:

  • Lightweight with a small code base
  • Fast (development & performance)
  • Strict coding standards
  • Active healthy community
  • Good documentation

    • This led us to the Yii Framework

    Yii Framework

    Yii is community developed and was created out of the need for a high-performance PHP framework best for developing Web 2.0 applications.

    Yii features:

    • Lightweight with a small code base
    • Fast (development & performance)
    • Strict coding standards
    • Active healthy community
    • Good documentation

    Yii demos