interface preprocessor for PHP 0.2.10 review

ippfp is an easy-to-use library which provides oo-methods for creating and rendering user interfaces in PHP independently from output

License: LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: tm243

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ippfp is an easy-to-use library which provides oo-methods for creating and rendering user interfaces in PHP independently from output format. It features HTML, GTK, PDF and ncurses.

You can create input masks such as forms for databases or other user interfaces. ippfp features abstraction, elements can be accessed like data structures, they have values and various attributes.

For me ippfp is a construction kit to build software quickly.
Another purpose could be the automatically generation by software.

You can select one of these packages to display:

HTML
PDF
GTK
ncurses

Available elements:

button
checkbox
choice
fopen (file open)
grid
image
label (readonly text)
link
multiplechoice
password
radio
text
textarea
table

The library puts the elements together in a frame. For HTML a HTML page will be created which contains the elements, GTK and ncurses have appropriate windows. The data of elements will be stored in session variables.

One does not need to care for details of formats like HTML-tags or GTK-classes. For navigating within a program the button element should be used. To arrange elements the elements "grid" or rather "table" are the right choices.

Elements are created with the "create"-functions which are members of the ippfp main instance and returns objects respective to the goal. To make them visible they will be grouped in a "view" which will be given to the ippfp main instance for processing.

This is a flexible way because an existing element can be used in several views. Thus, elements will be included by reference, not by copy. The advantages are: if an element is in a state, it is independent from the current view and related informations are available globally.

For example: create a text element:

$myText = $ippfp->createText("default", 20, "my_text");
...
echo $myText->getValue();


Your code should be organised into php functions. For example if a button is used, it calls the function given as attribute. It is expedient to integrate your views into this functions.

What's New in This Release:
switched from html to xhtml, format identifier is XHTML
a simple debug function added, for internal debugging, writes messages into a file (usefull for ncurses)
pdf passes the "tabellentest", tables and grids can extend over a big number of pages, and can contain big text
some bugfixes in xhtml and pdf