php.MVC Web Application Framework 1.0 review

php.MVC implements the Model-View-Controller design pattern, and encourages application design based on the Model 2 paradigm

License: LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License) File size: 454K Developer: John Wildenauer

0

php.MVC implements the Model-View-Controller design pattern, and encourages application design based on the Model 2 paradigm. This design model allows the Web page or other contents (View) to be mostly separated from the internal application code (Controller/Model), making it easier for designers and programmers to focus on their respective areas of expertise.

The framework provides a single entry point Controller. The Controller is responsible for allocating HTTP requests to the appropriate Action handler (Model) based on configuration mappings.

The Model contains the business logic for the application. The Controller then forwards the request to the appropriate View component, which is usually implemented using a combination of HTML with PHP tags in the form of templates. The resulting contents are returned to the client browser, or via another protocol such as SMTP.

php.MVC is a PHP port of Jakarta Struts. It currently supports many features of Struts, including declarative application configuration via the XML digester. For example, mappings from the various Action business logic components to appropriate results pages can be specified declaratively in the XML configuration file.

Here are some key features of "php MVC Web Application Framework":
Free OpenSource software: This gives users full control of the software, and the able to modify the source code to suit specific needs.
Security: php.MVC applications have only one entry point (per application). This makes it easy to protect sensitive application code and data.
Flexible Installation: Individual php.MVC applications can be installed outside of the main php.MVC library directory tree.
Multi-applications: There is no limit to the number of applications per php.MVC installation.
Object Oriented design (OOD). The php.MVC framework is based on OOD principles, making it more extendable and maintainable.
Database integration: The php.MVC framework ships with the Pear::DB Database Abstraction Layer, and a driver for the MySQL relational database manager (RDBM) is provided.
Action Chaining: php.MVC allows for passing control to other Actions. This makes it easy to process a sequence of Actions (business logic classes) and static resources (pages).
XML configuration: php.MVC uses declarative application configurations using Extensible Markup Language (XML) files. Each application has its own XML configuration file.
MVC Model 2 design: php.MVC implements the Model-View-Controller (MVC) Model 2 design pattern. The Model 2 paradigm allows the separation of the application presentation from the business logic, making it easier for designers and programmers to focus on their respective areas of expertise.
Form button mapping: php.MVC implements the LookupDispatchAction class to enable HTML form buttons to be mapped to particular business logic methods. For example, a form submit button called "Add to Cart" could be mapped to an Action class method called MyCartAction->addToCart(...).
Message Resources: php.MVC provides a PropertyMessageResources class that handles messages in text string properties files with parametric replacement. This can provide Locale-sensitive messages for internationalized applications.
The php.MVC framework is based on Jakarta Struts application framework design. Struts has proven to be reliable, extendable and well supported.

What's New in This Release:
This development release adds bugfixes and enhancements to the framework, a compressed performance version for use in more demanding hosting environments, and an example application to demonstrate the use of both versions.