ocaddons / buckyball

Buckyball framework: PHP is fun again

Buckyball PHP Framework

Main goals

• PHP is fun again.
• Complication of implementation should be proportional to complexity of specification.
• Decoupling everything that should not be coupled.
• Providing more flexibility than Magento framework, but much more efficiently.
• In development mode logging which module/file changes what.
• On frontend access info about and enable/disable modules.
• Everything non essential is a module, and can be disabled.
• Module files are confined to one folder.
• Keep folder structure and number of files as minimal as possible.
• Module requires only bootstrap callback. Everything else is up to the developer.
• Bootstrap callback only injects module's callbacks into request.
• Do not force to use classes.
• IDE friendly (autocomplete, phpdoc, etc)
• Developer friendly (different file names in IDE tabs)
• Debug friendly (concise print_r, debugbacktrace, debug augmentation GUI on frontend)
• Versioning system friendly (module confined to 1 folder)
• Do not fight or stronghand with the developer, do not try to force, limit, etc.
• Developer will find ways to work around or use undocumented API.
• Conserve memory by not storing unnecessary data or configuration more than needed.
• Minimize framework overhead (~3ms on slow server)

Q&A

• Q: Why yet another PHP framework?
• A: Competition is good, it drives innovation and prevents stagnation. Also, I enjoy doing it.

Performance

• Server: Intel(R) Core (TM) 2 CPU E7400 @ 2.80GHz
• Framework overhead:
  • Without idiorm/paris and phpQuery: 3.6ms, 786,432 B
  • Without phpQuery plugin: 6ms, 1.310 MB peak, 1.048 MB after dispatch
  • With phpQuery plugin, without pq usage: 18ms, 2.883 MB
  • With phpQuery plugin, with pq minimal usage: 23ms, 2.883 MB

Installation

This framework was just released and I'm not sure if it deserves even to be called alpha. So, yada yada.

• cd public_html/dev/
• git clone git://github.com/unirgy/buckyball.git
• cp index.php.dist index.php
• cp storage/private/config/local.json.dist storage/private/config/local.json
• vi storage/private/config/local.json
• chmod 777 storage
• Browse to http://server.com/buckyball/

Wiki

(http://unirgy.com/wiki/buckyball)

Concepts

Application

• Application can run within few modes:
  • "Development": everything is loaded dynamically, without caching/real-time optimizations, errors are displayed
  • "Staging": Caching/real-time optimizations manually enabled/disabled, errors are displayed/sent/logged
  • "Production": Caching/real-time optimiations are enabled, errors are logged/sent to admin

Modules

• Module is a distinct set of functionality with a well defined feature set
• All module's files and folders should be within the same folder.
• Inner file/folder structure within the module folder is up to the developer.
• Module can be easily disabled, resulting in disabling all functionality defined in the module.
• Module can depend on other modules, optionally limited by version range.
• Dependent modules will be loaded after module they depend on.
• Circular dependency is not allowed.
• Missing or out of range version dependency can be handled in few ways:
  • "error": throw error on load and stop execution (dev mode)
  • "silent": do not throw error, do not load dependent module
  • "ignore": load dependent module, used to define module loading sort order
• Module is declared by manifest.json file, which contains:
  • name
  • version
  • bootstrap: file and callback
  • dependencies
• Module bootstrap callback will be ran during application initialization, and should contain reference to all functionality within Buckyball framework.
• Only manifest.json and bootstrap file are required for Bucky module. Existing applications/libraries can be easily made as modules, by adding bootstrap wrapper.

Services

• Service is a globally accessible singletons that contains distinct functionality.
• Services can be overridden by extending original class, but this is discouraged.

Debugging

• All the declarations and actions should be logged in dev mode, to be analyzed if needed.
• All the errors should be logged and/or sent in staging or production modes.

3rd Party Libraries

• Already implemented:
  • Idiorm & Paris
  • phpQuery

Application Demo

For demo please see /blog

Make sure to edit protected/config.json to set your own environment details, and run protected/blog.sql on your DB to create tables.

Walkthrough

By widely accepted tradition we start with Hello, World!

helloworld.php

Hello, World!

Seriously, if all you need is to output "Hello, World!" you don't really need more than that. BuckyBall framework is build with this concept in mind: Complication of implementation should be proportional to complexity of specification.

route('GET /', function() { echo 'Hello, World!'; }); route('GET /', 'DemoController.index') ->route('GET /test1/:param', 'DemoController.test1') ->route('GET /test2/*param', 'DemoController.anything') ->route('GET /crud/.action/:param', 'DemoController') ; class DemoController extends BActionController { public function afterDispatch() { BResponse::i()->render(); } public function action_index() { BResponse::i()->set('Hello, World!'); } public function action_test1() { BResponse::i()->set('Hello, '.BRequest::i()->params('param')); } public function action_test2() { BResponse::i()->set('Hello, '.BRequest::i()->params('param')); } public function action_crud() { } }