Lexx.gr

Why fuelphp rocks?

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Fuelphp is a relatively new framework that claims to be based on the best ideas of other frameworks with a fresh start. I decided to rewrite my blog from scratch with fuelphp (it was on drupal). Why did I choose Fuelphp?

First of all the philosophy. Configuration over convention means easier learing curve and more flexibility. Its what made me love Codeigniter.
Its lightweight! I hate heavy stuff that I feel I have no control of. Fuel has a minimalistic and clear architecture based on php 5.3 (namespaces FTW).
The documentation is awesome. Not that rich yet but I love the structure. Makes my life so easy. It's really very important when learning a new framework to easily navigate through the documentation.

The people behind the framework are very experienced and I already like their past work. It feels like they have combined their experience until now to make the best framework for them and at the same time have a goal to make fuel a community driven framework. Community is currently small but I think that it is a matter of time to grow up.
The (H)MVC pattern is great for large application and makes DRY easier.
You do everything with classes and again the are no conventions, just a proposed way of organizing code. You don't have for example to have models in the models' folder. You just do what you like.
There are no application specific Classes. That's great because no time is wasted on non essential stuff.
Other things I really like are the ORM ~~(ported from Kohana)~~ and OIL, a command line utility. There are a lot more in this young framework and I'm looking forward to dive even more into it.

For those who have experience working with Codeigniter or Kohana, they will find many similarities and a lot of stuff will look familiar. Though, after working for a week with Fuel, Codeigniter feels so old :(

There are some stuff that I'd want to be different, like the way Asset class is working. But not anything serious.

Make sure you ll check out Fuel, it really rocks.

Update: The query builder is ported from Kohana, not the ORM tweet

Codeigniter 2.0.3 and elFinder 2.0 beta

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Using elfinder 2 with Codeigniter shouldn’t be a problem. I wouldn’t recommend elFinder 2 beta for production sites yet. But this small guide I think will apply for future 2.X versions too.

Steps

Download elFinder 2.X from elfinder.org.
Place the css and js files according to the installation instructions of the official documentation.
Copy the php directory from the archive you downloaded in step 1, to your application’s libraries directory.
Rename this folder from php to elfinder.
Create a new file in the libraries directory with the name Elfinder_lib.php. I added _lib in order to avoid conflict with elfinder’s classes.

Treat Elfinder_lib.php as an ordinary CI library and add the following code inside:

<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

include_once dirname(__FILE__).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'elfinder/elFinderConnector.class.php';
include_once dirname(__FILE__).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'elfinder/elFinder.class.php';
include_once dirname(__FILE__).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'elfinder/elFinderVolumeDriver.class.php';
include_once dirname(__FILE__).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'elfinder/elFinderVolumeLocalFileSystem.class.php';

class Elfinder_lib 
{
 public function __construct($opts) 
 {
  $connector = new elFinderConnector(new elFinder($opts));
  $connector->run();
 }
}

Now you need to create a controller method in order to call it from your javascript. This will be a method of your choice. I will name the controller ex_cont and the method elfinder_init() for this example.

Inside this method you will add part of the connectors code, and it will look like this:

function elfinder_init()
{
 $this->load->helper('path');
 $opts = array(
  // 'debug' => true, 
  'roots' => array(
   array( 
    'driver' => 'LocalFileSystem', 
    'path' => set_realpath('yourfilespath'), 
    'URL' => site_url('yourfilespath').'/', 
    'accessControl' => 'access',
   ) 
  ));
  $this->load->library('elfinder_lib', $opts);
 }

Replace “yourfilespath” with the name of your files folder.
The last step is to initialize the elFinder through javascript and add the html element. Follow the original documentation again under the Initialize file manager section. The only thing you should notice is the url option which should be something like http://yoursite/ex_cont/elfinder_init

That was it. Nothing crazy.

elFinder is an amazing browser. I am sure the the stable version will rock. By passing variables to you elfinder_init method you can achieve some great stuff like open the browser to a post’s folder or to a user’s place. Or adding multiple roots dynamically etc.

If I missed anything just post it below.

Linkinstart experiment

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0200

I couldn’t find a decent start page for my browser. I certainly never liked Google or netvibes. They have tons of widgets and capabilities but I end up having a cluttered interface and the job is not done.

I searched a lot. I found some apps that were decent or even inspired me, like start.io. In fact I used startio for quite a while. It had a great feel. But I needed something different.

So, past summer I started building what I believe is the best startpage application in the universe. I know that it is not the best in the universe. It’s far from that. Maybe the best on this earth, or maybe not even that. But it has a philosophy, some fans and a huge list of future features!

When I began, I thought that this would be a trivial side_project… Well, let me laugh at my arrogance. As always, problems from nowhere were sucking me in during the weekends. Anyway, linkinstart.com is minimalistic, in early stage and I would recommend you to use it in one year from now. Why? Because I don’t want you to register, get disappointed and never come back.

Last week I learned about the unhosted movement. It’s a simple but brilliant idea. I am considering making linkinstart unhosted in the future.

Check out unhosted, you need it ;)