My first article for php|a, Introduction to Solar, is online. Give it a read, let me know what you think.
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A good start. Two comments. First, is there a way to setup the config for an object in some other manner than the single Solar.config.php file? It sure seems that file would get out of hand quickly if you’re placing default constructor values in there for every class.
Second, I know that this was an intro, but I couldn’t help but feel that at the end that not a lot happened. I know a lot of people are going to read it and want to dive in and do something with it, but the first thing they will do is look at the directory structure and stop there.
Congrats on the article and keep up the good work.
Hi RIck –
Regarding the config file — because it is a regular PHP file, you can use “include” inside it to split config storage any way you like. In one project, I use a base Solar.config.php file, then “include” a second config file inside that based on the server name. Does that help at all?
Regarding “not a lot happened” — yeah, you’re right there. I wanted to start relatively slowly with basic concepts of Solar, seeing as the following articles are going to require that you know what Solar::factory() does, where config values come from, etc.
Please let me know your other concerns/comments/criticisms, as they can only help make the next article better. Thanks for taking the time. :-)
ah, welcome to the club. My first article was published last week. It’s been fun writing it. I’ve started on my next article already. I really enjoy writing articles. :)
Well done but you spent time comparing it with Zend Framework more than the time spent on showing the power and the ease of use of Solar.
Solar seems to be good but I wonder why anyone would rely on a framework that has only one committer especially for large scale applications where sometimes it’s hard to switch to another Framework if it prove that it was wrong choice.
I don’t mean here to strike on Solar, it’s great but I hate the fact it’s one man work, for me I’d prefer to go with a less feature but community based one rather than rich and powerful but one man work.
Hi Jad –
I spent three bullet points on ZF comparisons, and then only because they have such similar structure (and because I helped build part of ZF to begin with).
Re: one committer — I know, that’s a hard one. The only thing I can say is that it’s open-source and BSD licensed, so you can do what you like with it; if you or your company wants to contribute code or other resources, I’d be happy to receive them and have you join the Solar community. :-) And certainly as people start sending major code contributions I can start adding committers.
The flip side of that coin is that there is an advantage to having a single primary architect: it contributes greatly to the singleness of vision and consistency in the codebase.
Hope this helps to salve your concerns about Solar; please let me know if it does not.
I think that Solar need more docs like this. It should help spreading nice words about Solar and attract more users and then contributors. Almost newly established frameworks such as Cake or Symphony are getting popular because they have good basic docs: tutorial/hand-on to do simple things, common things such as a blog, a simple news publishing system… and no magic ones. Passionate users will expand them. Evangelists will come after then.
OMHO, something like Cake can be so succesfully because its lead developers think in term of users, not developers. Symphony made a good start by attracting potential users to its nice user interface designed products.
Their docs can be nothing to advanced developers but with almost ones out there, their bunky documention can be a good proof-of-concept: they should work for them at least at trivial things and may be with a little more effort, they can create a much more magic things.
Congrats for a good start, Paul.
Just my 2 cents