Introduction to Developing a PHP Based Rapid Development Framework

[JRSofty]

So I decided that I would describe my attempts at developing my own Rapid Development Framework, here on DaniWeb since they are so nice to give people free blog space.

So many of you are probably asking, "What exactly is a Rapid Development Framework?"

A Rapid Development Framework (I'll just call it a RDF from here out), is a collection of scripts that make it easier and faster to build applications. There are lots of different RDFs out there already, CodeIgniter is one I can think of off the top of my head as well as RADICORE.

So now your question is probably, "If there are already a bunch of these out there why build your own?"

The answer to this is simple. To gain the experience from actually building something from scratch. Also many of these don't really have the features that I want or handle them in a way that I don't care for, so what better way to get what I want than to build it myself.

So what features does my framework have? Well, the list isn't complete yet but I'll give you the low down on what I'm planning.

1. Object Oriented Programming (OOP). I'm intending on making my framework completely class oriented. Why? Because OOP is the way of the future my friend. Using classes for all my function needs allows people (and myself) to extend the framework without too much modifying of the original files.
2. Session Handling. A standard in most frameworks, mine allows for database handled or as flat file where YOU control where the file is stored.
3. Cookie Handling. A way to handle your cookies, you can actually have them serialized and store only one cookie on the browser as well.
4. Dynamic SQL. To help make the handling of SQL statements safer and easier I'm going to use Dynamic SQL to assist.
5. Segment based URLs. Instead of using the typical GET type urls (i.e. http://www.somesite.com/index.php?id=10&f=20), my framework will work on segments and look like a normal flat file URL. This is to make the Search Engine Optimization that much easier.
6. To Be Determined. As I said this is a work in progress and I've got a lot to do still. For example how am I going to handle templates and output to the browser and other important items such as this. So This is only a short list of what is available.

So this is the basics so far about my development. In later posts I plan on describing more about what I'm doing for each class and the overall structure of the framework.