Epiphany, a RESTful micro PHP framework I wrote/use for my startups | Hacker News Reader

Epiphany, a RESTful micro PHP framework I wrote/use for my startups

github.com

13 pointsjmathai28 comments

I wrote this framework 4 years ago and have been using and iterating it since. In an effort to polish it off I decided to document it and ask others to use it as well.

I'm not a fan of large frameworks that do all sorts of voodoo on my behalf. This framework is less than 1300 lines of code and includes

   * a RESTful routing module that supports regular expressions
   * a templating module
   * a session module that supports native, APC and Memcached
   * a caching module that supports APC and Memcached
   * a config module that supports overloading of multiple config files
   * a database module that supports PDO MySql and prepared statements

I've used it on publicitweet.com (sold), textbookrevolt.com and thescholarapp.com. It's got some good usage but I'd like to iron out bugs I haven't come across and let others use it if they'd like.

That was a lot of work!

I went down much the same route (though by the looks of it you've done a better job) and recently have decided to scrap the whole thing in favor of Yii, which I really hope is a good long term decision (always dicey).

What are your long term plans, is this a fire-and-forget thing or are you going to continue to maintain it and accept patches and so on ?

Is there a roadmap where you want to go with this ?

It was a lot of work :). I knew making it usable by others would be as much work as writing it in the first place.

It's definitely not fire and forget. I've been using it for over 4 years so I don't have any plans on ditching it. The main point of documenting it was so others would use it and I can improve on the library.

If you look at another one of my libraries on github (https://github.com/jmathai/twitter-async/issues) you'll see that there have been over 90 issues raised by others which I've resolved. It's what's made that library so solid - hoping for the same here.

If I can find the time (fairly big if) I promise you that I will go through your code to see if I can either see things that you might improve or spot lurking bugs.

Funny, you're jmathai, I'm jmattheij !

Much appreciated. As far as a roadmap it'll probably continue to be what it's been. The next thing on the list are unit tests but otherwise it's whatever I or others using it feel the framework is missing (but wouldn't add bloat).

I'll admit I thought you were both the same person until this comment. Thanks for pointing it out.

You won't regret going the Yii route. I'm amazed that people are still coding the basics from the ground up when there are already top-notch frameworks out there.

Yii's approach of "create db first, then we create heaps of code for you" doesn't appeal to me at all...

Out of curiousity (and not snarky at all), what other approaches are there in the PHP world?

I guess I've never been interested in a framework building out classes based on my database tables so I'm not sure what the alternative approaches are. Is that what you meant?

If you prefer than then I do think the larger frameworks are a good fit. What I'm saying is that I don't prefer that :).

I've got you, but I'm wondering what your approach is? I'm stuck in a mindset where I work from creating a database to CRUD to functional code.

I write the CRUD statements but only as I need them. For a lot of my tables I never intend on deleting records so a delete method never gets written.

If I need to do a SELECT on a specific field(s) then I write that statement. It's usually a 4 line function in a class that deals primarily with that table (but not necessarily as it may make sense in a different class).

I use static functions for that as well.

   class User {
      public static function getByEmail($email) {
         return getDatabase()->one('SELECT * FROM user WHERE email=:email',
           array(':email' => $email));
      }
   }

I don't typically end up with so many of those that it's unmanageable and writing it takes about 30 seconds.

That's my approach. What's your thought on that coming from the mindset that a lot of that is taken care of by the framework? I'm curious since that's not a mindset I've had yet.

Yii has Gii, which is a code generator that can be customized. Thus, the heaps of code can be created to your liking.

I'll check out Yii but if it does code generation on your behalf like the other commenter suggests then it's probably not going to appeal to me.

The same could be said prior to Yii regarding building from the ground up. Yii shouldn't exist based on your own argument :).

That's true I guess - it's just more of a community thing rather than build-your-own. I think I've seen three new PHP frameworks pass across the HN front page this week alone. But each to their own.

I've never been a fan of using frameworks; I prefer putting libraries together so I have the greatest control over the entire stack. However recently I've been looking into: http://symfony-reloaded.org/

I have a lot of respect for the authors considering the other work they've done. Thanks for the lead on Yii, and OP: your stuff looks pretty good too!

On man's voodoo is another man's bread and butter.

Not to downplay your work, but pretty much all frameworks are written to reduce future work and standardize things. Just like you've done.

I've definitely had that 'too much magic' feeling with frameworks, but that goes away as I learn more about how they work.

It may just be my style of coding or thinking but I can't imagine being more productive with larger frameworks (we use symfony at work).

I just want the bare essentials taken care of and I have a well established coding style that hasn't been dictated by any framework - for some reason I like that :).

This is definitely not meant to lure people away from larger frameworks but for someone like me who wants something that does less on my behalf.

I've been using nicedog for my micro-framework needs.

After looking over it, this is a really framework. There really isn't too much that I would throw out to make it smaller, except maybe the curl wrapping class.

A couple of things that would be nice are:

1) if your Controller classes had some state forcing them to be static like you do means that there could be a lot of duplicated code between similar actions

2) if you had a 'layout' template that could be set that would wrap the results of the actions. Maybe this already exists, I just couldn't find it.

Its very clear that you intend to not do any kinds of magic, so I can see why you left a lot of things out that a lot of other frameworks have. Maybe that is why you don't have a layout wrapper template.

You're right about the curl wrapper. It's actually got it's own repository https://github.com/jmathai/php-multi-curl so I should remove it from here (it's an artifact really).

1) I'm not sure exactly what you mean. I handle most of the code duplication in libraries so my static controller methods are usually really small (<15 lines). Let me know if I misunderstood your point.

2) You're right about the layout wrapper being a bit "heavy" for this framework. You can nest layouts to your heart's desire but the views are 100% decoupled from the actions. You can, in fact, use the the template module without using the route module. Not that you'd want to :).

I'm getting this error in my apache logs after installing it locally, although I have mod_rewrite turned on:

[error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does not exist: C:/Users/Peter/Documents/My Websites/epiphany/database, referer: http://epiphany.peter/examples/

Seems to be some mod_rewrite problem?

(ps: the main page at http://epiphany.peter/examples/ loads fine)

Suggestions anyone?

Feel free to open an issue in Github and I'll help get things sorted. I can't reach ephiphany.peter since that looks like a locally resolvable hostname.

First item to check is to make sure you have a .htaccess in all your examples subdirectories. It should be part of the repository.

Thanks. It seems to be looking for the "/database" file, instead of for the "/database/index.php" file, which makes me think it's a rewrite problem...

Here goes: https://github.com/jmathai/epiphany/issues/issue/28

Wondering, are there bits you've been wanting to add to it? And similarly, what are the bits that you like most?

At the moment I've added what I need so far. But the point of documenting it is so others can use it and provide input on what's missing.

The next task in my mind is to have good unit test coverage.

Documentation is really nice by the way. I also like the simplicity a lot. It feels like there's little to learn after reading through the docs quickly. Good stuff. (ps: for me personally, I don't use unit tests (yea I know, horrid), so not really needed).

Glad the docs were easy to follow. The main purpose I see for unit tests is to make sure that future changes don't change/break existing functionality.

They're a lot of work to write/maintain so I only write them when the added value exceeds the cost :).

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