FuelPHP

When I move to the new job I have started using FuelPHP framework for new project. We have to decide which framework we will use in development: Kohana, Zend, FuelPHP or something else available in the community. We choose FuelPHP because it has all great and sexy stuff and it was built for php 5.3 only. At that moment FuelPHP was first framework which used namespaces and was production ready at the same time. Small footprint, flexibility, namespaces, modularity and other gears make this framework great for building web applications. Let’s talk about FuelPHP history.

First steps

FuelPHP was rolled up by Dan Horigan. Phil Sturgeon joined him when he realized Codeigniter is stuck in php 5.2 without abstract classes, interfaces, autoloading and other things that makes developer happy. Phil wanted a real change. Other great people joined core team: Harro Verton aka WanWizard, Jelmer Schreuder and at the end Frank de Jonge.

I started building web applications in version 1.1, and at this moment 1.4 is latest production ready version. So I wasn’t involved in community from the beginning.

I have started following this small community at the beginning of the 2012. This year was important for PHP community, many great things were built and many projects were created:

• PHP Framework Interoperability Group accepted PSR-0, PSR-1 and PSR-2 standards
• We get the Composer – great package repository for developers
• We have guide for developers – PHP The Right Way
• New star is born – Laravel framework
• I am sure I missed few great things too

For FuelPHP team 2012 was year with ups and downs. Dan Horigan was not available for his team members few months and no one didn’t know where he was. He show up on the twitter and then he was unreachable again. WanWizard (Harro Verton) and Jelmer Schreuder were most active at the building FuelPHP core and they done a great job.

One day Dan Horigan show up and he was active in the community again. Unfortunately he left FuelPHP team, and start to work on some other projects. Later Phil Sturgeon decided to left FuelPHP team too. Dan and Phil work on same project at this moment.

FuelPHP version two and road ahead

Jelmer Schreuder started to work on FuelPHP 2.0 version. He work hard and he build Fuel 2.0 psr-1 compliant version based on Composer. This version was build without ORM, because you can use any ORM from composer’s repository. In this version Jelmer wanted to avoid statics and use full potential from unit tests. He created IoC container in this version. Anthony Ferrara criticized this way of implementing IoC containter in his blog post “Object Scoping: A Triste Against Service Containers“.

Fuel team decided to go step by step from current version to FuelPHP 2.0, as they said – “We’re going to make changes in the next couple of version 1 releases that will bring it closer to the new architecture, so that the eventual switch to version 2 isn’t such a big hurde to take.”.

Jelmer left FuelPHP core team few days ago. His thoughts about version two: “Developing and thinking about version 2 was possibly even more of an educational experience than version 1 had been. It grew to a state close to maturity in a matter of months, enough for me to start developing on top of it. But again I realized I had made some decissions along the way I no longer felt good about, and it really needs a rewrite to overcome those.”

Jelmer is not happy with version two, and it looks like his code in version two will be just proof of concept, and outline for real version.

FuelPHP has future, but from my perspective it is not so bright I thought. Harro Verton is great developer, and current version is very solid for most web developers. When they move framework to composer, add IoC container, and remove statics, this is going to be strong and modern framework. Now in the core team left Harro and Frank.

Where to go now ?

If you want latest and greatest you should wait for Laravel 4. Phil Sturgeon said all he wanted to do in FuelPHP Laravel in version 4 already did. My next step is Laravel because it has all latest and newest bright php stuff. Laravel is supported by company UserScape, and this is important if you using framework in company. You want to make sure framework will be developed and supported in coming years.

I will use FuelPHP for my current projects, and also I will try version two when it will be ready, but from my point of view it’s time to move on. It’s time for Laravel.

Update

After talking with FuelPHP users and developers I have to make things about this framework future more visible. Users with business build on this framework can’t afford path with big changes that brakes their applications. These changes cost real money. FuelPHP’s direction is modern framework with composer support, IoC container and testable codebase. They will get there but without leaving their customers in pain from switching to latest framework version. FuelPHP way is legacy and stability, with modern features in mind. Their challenge is to find the ballance between inovation and stability. If stability is important for you and your company, this framework is good choice.

What is new ?

jQuery 1.3 supports Live Events. This means that events now can be bound to all currend and future (just created) HTML elements.

Live Events example

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    $("p").live("click", function(){
      $(this).after("<p>Another paragraph!</p>");
    });

HTML injection methods like append, prepend, before, and after has been overhauled. You can use this methonds like before, but you will see that they are much faster, about 6 times faster! Also hide() and show() methods are faster about 2.5 times. Wow speed is great reason to use this improved javascript library.

There is new jQuery.Event object that is available in your event functions. Big change is there is no browser sniffing, this is not change you will see right now but is will help to jQuery last longer and without bugs.

How jQuery creators explained browser sniffing:

Browser sniffing is a technique in which you make assumptions about how a piece of code will work in the future. Generally this means making an assumption that a specific browser bug will always be there – which frequently leads to code breaking when browsers make changes and fix bugs.

There is a lot of changes, i don’t want to show all of them, i just want to tickle you. More about new jQuery 1.3 library you can find on it’s web page.

For details about this functions you can check documentation.

To use this library developers just need to add Financial.dll to project. All functions are static and they are written under System.Numeric namespace. All of them are written in F# language, so there is two library versions, one staticly links F# and there is no F# dependency, but if you have F# is is better to use assembly smaller version.

Get this financial functions library here.

Small Basic

Later people who wanted to learn programming, they start with C language, this days i heard that people choose to learn c# or Java as they firs programming language. It is brave but it can be to damn difficult. Some people gave up, because they think out they can’t be good programmers, and that programming is so hard to learn, but trust me it’s not.

Some people thing that beginners should start with KPL, Python and Ruby. Some said Alice and Scratch.

Small Basic

Vijaye Raji from Seattle, Microsoft software developer created new programming language, It’s name is Small Basic. Vijaye thinks this language will help beginners to get started with programming.

Small Basic is inspired with Basic programing language, and it is based on Microsoft .NET platform. Development environment is very modern, powered with features like Intellisense™ or Instant sensitive help.

Lets see the code !

Change the desktop wallpaper from Flickr, every minute

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While ("True")
  pic = Flickr.GetRandomPicture("fall leaves")
  Desktop.SetWallPaper(pic)
 
  Program.Delay(60 * 1000)
EndWhile

Makes a BlackBoard that allows you to scribble on a window

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GraphicsWindow.BackgroundColor = "Black"
GraphicsWindow.PenColor = "White"
GraphicsWindow.MouseDown = OnMouseDown
GraphicsWindow.MouseMove = OnMouseMove
 
Sub OnMouseDown
  prevX = GraphicsWindow.MouseX
  prevY = GraphicsWindow.MouseY
EndSub
 
Sub OnMouseMove
  x = GraphicsWindow.MouseX
  y = GraphicsWindow.MouseY
  If (Mouse.IsLeftButtonDown) then
    GraphicsWindow.DrawLine(prevX, prevY, x, y)
  endif
  prevX = x
  prevY = y
EndSub

You can download Small Basic, or view Getting Started guide.

The Project Pier is ActiveCollab successor. ActiveCollab was free for download, but when they decided to go commercial, Project Pier team take ActiveCollab’s code and now they work on its development. In core this is still old ActiveCollab, but it is quite good.

The Project Pier features:

• ProjectPier is solution you install on your own host, and you have absolutely control.
• ProjectPier is created to provide easy to use solution
• It organize dev projects into projects, milestones, Tasklist, Task and Files
• Search project by tags
• E-mail notifications for new Milestones, Messages, Tasklists, Tasks and Files.
• Unlimited number of projects, tasklist and Project members
• You can add your sponsors, stockholders into project so tehy can track project development too
• It is free and open sourced solution

In my opinion ProjetPier missing bug tracking feature. With bug tracking PP could be complete collaboration tool I need. I am very satisfied with Pier after all, e-mail notification, files and milestones are very helpful features. Milestones can force your team to finish work at the time, and when they break deadline, milestone will inform team that they are late.

Attach file to project and every team member can watch, or download it. Also team messaging is important part, but online chat would be great add on feature.

At the end i must say that ActiveCollab is very quality and great collaboration tool, with lot of features and if you need quality and you want to pay for it, this can be nice choice. I hardly suggest you to try it. The ProjectPier stays good free solution for small teams which are not so prompted about collaboration tool.

Project Pier Screenshots:

StackOverflow

I think that Stack Overflow is full with quick solutions and helpful answers, and if you need answer dev community will help you.

Stack Overflow member rate questions, and answers, that means quality will go on the top, questions are sorted by hotness, just like at the DIGG or similar services. This is web 2.0 website and it is very collaboratively. Users have own reputation, community scores them and they are very motivated to help.

Active users who ask question, and gives answer which community consider helpful can gain badges. Badges can be bestow by many criteria like:

• If user left 10 comment he is Commentator
• If user deleted own post with 3 or more upvotes he is Disciplined
• If Question is voted up more than 100 times it is Great Question
• If answered your own question with at least 3 up votes you are Fast Learner
• much more …

You can track questions and answers via RSS. I liked opportunity to take feed RSS by tags, that means you can read only PHP, or jQuery question in RSS reader, splendid. This web site is still in Beta, so you can help them to improve this service, by giving ideas and feedback. Visit Stack Overflow.

What kind of hosting do you need ? You need hosting with revision control systems support. If you using Mercurial, then you need host with Mercurial installed on it, if you using Subversion you need hosting with it.

Assembla

For every workspace you will pick some package:

• Subversion Hosting with Integrated Tickets
• Trac and Subversion Hosting
• Git Hosting with Integrated Tickets
• Mercurial with Trac
• Team Collaboration and much more …

They have more packages and software for collaboration, i didn’t test all of them.

Assembla scrum

As you can see every workspace, have Trac or tickets included. Trac is issue tracking system for software development projects. They set up everything, you can use it instantly. Every workspace have it’s own access URL. Only with account name, and password you can access to repository.

On client side, you and tour team members need to install third-party clients for revision control systems you are using. For instance: for Mercurial you can install TortoiseHg, or if you using Subversion you can use TortoiseSVN.

Now your projects have revision control included, and your team can use some useful collaboration software at the Assembla.

Why do you need to use this kind of tools ?

• To track code changes for every team member
• To track code changes trough every revision
• Look differences in code since last revision
• To avoid code overlapping when two coders work on same file
• When they work on same file, just merge changes
• To roll back all code in any revision if needed
• To share code changes with your team members
• When upload on server this tools send only changed files
• this tools creates project developing history

Revision Control System

In client – server model, server holds latest software version, and it’s history. Client connect to server and read latest changes. Whole team work on this copy, and later send changes to server. Well known are : Concurrent Versions System (CVS) and Subversion (also known as svn), both are in open source.

Distributed systems works different, every developer have his own local repository, and he works on it. Developers send changes to server, which holds latest software version and history. Also every developers repository save history and code changes. Distributed systems can have many central repositories. Even if developers work on same file on they local repositories this sistems in most cases can be smart to merge changes together. Known distributed systems are: Git — Designed by Linus Torvalds and Mercurial. This software systems are also open source.

Some client server systems adding distributed features like Subversion which will add local commit in future. It is going to be hard to separate distributed and centralized (client – server) systems.

Read more about Revision Control software at the Wikipedia.

NetBeans 6.5 Beta

NetBeans is open source, free and you can download NetBeans pack you need. If you developing only php then you don’t need Java or Ruby pack. But if sometimes you want to extend NetBeans, you don’t need to download new package, just extend it with plugins. I might extend my NetBeans with UML pack, because i want to create UML diagrams when analyzing projects.

What i liked the most?
NetBeans have support for Version Control and developer collaboration. You don’t want that your team member overlap someone else codes, do you? You can choose between CVS, Subversion, or Mercurial subversion control systems, i using CVS. You can connect on CVS with pserver, ext, local and fork authentication protocols.

Line based diff viewer wil show you new, changed and removed code lines. You can compare two files, file from repository and your local file side by side.

You can see local history, and roll back into older file version any time if needed. All changes are saved into file history while you developing.

I need to try Developer collaboration plugin. It offer NetBeans project sharing over network in real time. And all parties can debug, and make remote changes on project if project owner allow them. Also all project members can chat over this plugin. I think this is very powerful, and this will be main reason to use this IDE in future, and leave Zend behind.

NetBeans 6.1 didn’t have full PHP support is was Early Access for PHP, but in 6.5 version they have full PHP support. Now we can debug php application in NetBeans IDE.

To debug PHP application in NetBeans we need:

• NetBeans 6.5 Beta with PHP pack
• PHP 5 engine
• Apache Server 2.2
• PHP debuger XDebug 2.0 or later

I must admit that for debugging code in Zend we don’t need to install additional software, but this coud be the main reason why is Zend slower one.

Conclusion:
NetBeans offers: php debugging, subversion control system support, local file history, FTP upload files when runs php app, developer collaboration support, it is free, and it’s open source.

You can add plugins such as UML pack, or Tomcat Server into NetBEans IDE. I think many developer will choose NetBeans IDE for developing, team collaboration and subversion control. I will.

The 37signals announced new open source JavaScript rich text editor based on WYSIWYG JavaScript framework called WysiHat. This is very early developer release, and it provides extensible foundation to design your own design for text editor. Witth few lines of code, we can run the WysiHat editor. The 37signas let us the customize it by our need, so this is for developers who want to develop own rich editor, and WysiHat can be groundwork.

They will continue to develop this WysiHat, and they call developers to check out the project and give the feedback to them.

Read 37signals announcement about WysiHat.