Kill your index.php

http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/Kill_your_index.php

by dools • 12 years ago

23 35 12 years ago

workingsoftware.com.au

fleitz3• 12 years ago

PHP is the framework because it's also the runtime, the language, the VM, the std library and the template language.

Yet another, it's not a framework, it a mess, just copy some files, edit them, whatever, the framework is your application. So zen.

Imagine what a disaster it would be if every rails app had it's own slightly modified version of rails.

vezzy-fnord2• 12 years ago

Imagine what a disaster it would be if every rails app had it's own slightly modified version of rails.

I don't know how extensible of a language Ruby is (certainly nowhere near as much as Forth and Lisp, though probably more than most other mainstream languages), but couldn't one argue that if you're building an app on top of Rails as your framework... you are, in fact, making a slightly modified version of Rails?

This is pure semantics, I know. But on the other hand, would such a thing really be bad? A Lisp web framework would be all about that, for instance.

I'm by no means a fan of PHP, but the author does have a point that it's essentially an ad-hoc templating system which lets you glue your own framework on the spot. Obviously it becomes a mess eventually, but it may be useful for small projects where you want to develop rapidly with minimal dependencies, or as a sort of Mozart coding philosophy.

I actually think it'd be very refreshing if we got more frameworks that aren't based on MVC, which instead simply give you some APIs and let you use them as you see fit. I know there are some, but they're not widespread. Although you could essentially just grab a bunch of libraries and that'd be equivalent.

dools7• 12 years ago

You'd be surprised how un-messy it can be if you remove any arbitrary directory structures and arcane framework code.

A big part of making this work for me has been the adoption of "Template Animation"[1] (or DOM templating whatever you'd like to call it) which does away with the need for the server side code to "build" the interface.

Once you get rid of that, and provide an easy way for things to be split up and organised into classes, and if you avoid anything too far removed from "pure" PHP, it's really quite easy for anyone to come along and see what's going on.

Of course it gets messy if you let it get messy, though ;)

That's basically where I landed. My applications now are a bit of boilerplate configuration and a bunch of folders with class files in them, that I either write or get from somewhere else. Because the interfaces are built completely in static HTML anyway you don't get all this mess to do with where to store your "assets" and how to structure your views/templates.

[1]http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/Your_templating_engin...

fleitz3• 12 years ago

PHP is an amazing tool for quick 50 line webpages.

The problem with non-MVC frameworks is that generally most programmers won't go through the hassle of making MVC style classes. MVC cuts across so many domains that there have to be some really compelling reasons to abandon it. I'm interested though, what do you like to use as an architecture alternative to MVC?

dools7• 12 years ago

Imagine what a disaster it would be if every rails app had it's own slightly modified version of rails.

I think a more appropriate analogy would be: what if there were 20 or 30 popular frameworks for building apps on Rails?

The bits that provide the consistency between Rails apps (ie. how requests get mapped to controllers, how arguments get passed into the application from the query string and how a response gets to the browser) are there in PHP already. You don't need a framework to know how PHP does those things.

It's quite painful to come across a PHP application which does these things using some sort of PHP framework you've never heard of. Even though you know how simple what's really going on is (ie. some web request is being processed, a response written and optionally some data loaded from a database or other source in between) you have to trawl through reams of documentation to find out what little spin this framework has put onto it.

talles• 12 years ago

Theres a lot going on in the article that I simply have no idea whats about (sorry, php is not my stack).

Probably unrelated to article, but indeed to the title: make your index.php a index.html. No, not completely static, make your application generate one. Most of your traffic hits is at your index (kinda obvious right). If you have a super dynamic index makes more sense generate a static html file with the new content, let's say, every 3 minutes, rather than generate the thing for everybody that hits your website root.

It's not exactly a secret, but sometimes people forgets completely about this. Not that useful for all scenarios though.

fleitz3• 12 years ago

Or instead of doing that add some cache headers... and have nginx cache the page instead of reinventing your own cache.

TuxLyn• 12 years ago

I can still see > http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/index.php Do as I say, not as I do :-)

astrodust2• 12 years ago

That and index.htm are so shamefully bad.

dools7• 12 years ago

Most web applications will still have an index.php, what I'm saying is that it shouldn't be part of the core framework in a PHP application.

secstate• 12 years ago

I'm pretty sure Rails, et al, use a single point of contact because that's kinda what web servers do.

I actually shivered a little bit thinking about an app where each url was in a new file somewhere. I mean, ack is only going to take you so far when you're trying to find out where something was implemented.

And that's to say nothing of URL passing between different URL paths.

Honestly, Django doesn't have an index.py file anywhere. Rather it has a urls.py and apart from some really gnarly projects, if you wanna know where something is implemented, you open the root urls.py file and follow the chain down to the app where your URL is being generated. That points you at a view and usually the form or model that's causing issues.

astrodust2• 12 years ago

Rails, NodeJS, Django, they all do it with one entry point. That gives you maximum flexibility to decide what to do with a request once you've received it rather than already being locked into some particular approach based on path.

This is done in the "Routing" layer which also helps provide diagnostics when it comes to seeing which bit of code was engaged.

There's a term for what an app with hundreds if not thousands of loosely defined entry points is called: A mess.

dools7• 12 years ago

That's essentially what controllers are. How a URL gets mapped to a controller is somewhat moot, in reality most "pages" equate to either a file or a class somewhere.

I'm not advocating that one shouldn't have a single entry point. I'm advocating that it shouldn't be part of a centralised framework.

oinksoft• 12 years ago

As Rasmus Lerdorf and folks like Terry Chay have been saying forever, PHP is the framework.

cookrn• 12 years ago

Like this? http://aspen.io/

clone1018• 12 years ago

Aspen makes it a feature :). The code can still be organized, you can still have models and shared code. I think (although I don't use it in production) that it's quite refreshing.

ldite• 12 years ago

Well, to be pedantic, most Django projects have a WSGI file, which is the single entry point of the application.

(The WSGI file is part of your application code, but it typically just calls django.core.wsgi.get_wsgi_application(), which returns an instance of django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler, which is the entry point into the Django routing/despatch framework)

rnovak• 12 years ago

this could well be Java's influence, which took the C language's "main" function and hid it from the developer altogether

I don't believe Java has ever hid main. Neither does JavaFX, or J2EE, from what I've gathered working in the area. I could be wrong, and if I am, someone please correct me.

dools7• 12 years ago

You're correct. What I was thinking of is actually the difference between C++ and Java. Whilst C++ has Object Orientation built into it, you still have to have a separate main function where as in Java you define a main method on at least one of your classes.

That'll teach me to write something without looking it up first :)

I'll update when I get back on a real computer (typing on the go right now), thanks.

krapp3• 12 years ago

Don't you need an index, or something approximating an index? Having an index lets you redirect requests which aren't to public resources (images, js, css) through that single point and by extension the url router. That's what it's for.

I actually don't mind an index.php with some gnarly procedural code. Sometimes code has to do what it has to do, and it doesn't always have to be pretty.

teraflop• 12 years ago

The article isn't saying you shouldn't have an index.php, it's saying that it shouldn't be part of the framework.

krapp3• 12 years ago

Alright, I clearly didn't read the article well enough.

erichurkman• 12 years ago

Access to static, public resources (images, js, css) should not be run through any dynamic language. Let the web server do what they do well: serve files. Or better yet, push that junk to a CDN.

krapp3• 12 years ago

Yeah, I wasn't clear, sorry, lack of sleep. It's usually .htaccess that either serves the static file or routes requests which don't hit a resource into index.php... but to me, that process, including .htaccess and an index file, would have to be an integral part of the framework.

awinder2• 12 years ago

The part that casually drops "PHP as a config language" is where this jumped the shark for me. I guess this isn't the worst practice I've seen in PHP, but it's definitely a notable one.

bandushrew2• 12 years ago

the author specifically mentions that this is in the context of a php application.

and in that context, it is perfectly reasonable, I think.

what issues do you have with the idea exactly?

awinder2• 12 years ago

I guess it depends on what the use case is for configuration, but I'm envisioning times you want to allow for user/developer configurability of your program, or an installation being able to write out values that your program can use in its execution. Do you really want full programming language tools in your configuration level? Do you want an installation routine writing out a php script, or should it just serialize a config object to json / yaml?

healsdata• 12 years ago

I can't read this without thinking that the author isn't paying attention to the rest of the PHP community. Every point on the checklist is what composer was built to solve and it can be used without any framework. Even in terms of package creation, PSR-4 allows the author of a package to define their own directory structure and inform the autoloader what that structure is.

It's great to revisit assumptions, like using one index.php file for a whole project, but I think that's an area where talking to lots of people leads to the best solution.

dools7• 12 years ago

I don't really like composer so I wrote my own package manager[1], but you could just as easily use composer with the cut down "framework" that RocketSled became if you preferred it. And yes, composer (and RocketPack) can be used without a framework. That's sort of the point: PHP doesn't need a "framework" as such, just various tools of choice (like composer if that's your bag).

in terms of package creation, PSR-4 allows the author of a package to define their own directory structure and inform the autoloader what that structure is

Actually, PHP allows you to do that with spl_autoload_register.

I find the "PSR-*" conversations to be pretty pointless and not very interesting. I have a basic autoloader that I wrote and I'm happy with ... BUT in PHP anyone can use any autoloading implementation that they like very simply. There doesn't need to be a standard way of doing things, so long as you provide me with something like a "bootstrap" or autoloader file that I can include in my project and have everything "Just Work(TM)".

The only time it becomes a challenge is if you're working within a framework which dictates your directory structure and/or the main entry point of the application. If I'm just creating my own index.php I can include whatever packages, autoloaders, whatever very simply.

[1] https://github.com/iaindooley/RocketPack

datahack• 12 years ago

Rails made php start using mvc? I'm not the only one thinking that's completely wrong, right? I was writing mvc based web apps in php long before rails arrived.

Misiek• 12 years ago

btw of "rise in popularity of Ruby on Rails":

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Ruby%20on%20Rails%2C%...

jbb555• 12 years ago

Perhaps look at this as "write libraries, not frameworks". And write lot of small independent ones, not one big one, as much as possible

Kill your index.php

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