We have narrow down our search between Silex and Slim PHP frameworks for routing our REST APIs on our Apache/PHP/MySQL Server.
Both seem to have good reviews. Silex has probably a bigger community because it came from Symfony. But the documentation seems to be better in Slim.
What do you guys suggests? Any real world experience from production environments?
Sathish
I had the same choice to make, and I choose Silex, here is why :
Silex seems to have a bigger community than Slim, maybe it's just my point of view
It's based on Symfony components, so with a bit of reflection, you can use tips and workarounds which work for Symfony and apply them to Silex.
As it's based on Symfony it has a better integration with other bundle (for example Twig, which is for me necessary)
This Symfony base also garanty that it will be more "Long Term Support" that Slim, which is independent.
To conclude, the main argument is that is based on Symfony which has many advantage.
The Symfony Debug tools are the best thing on earth !!
Now I have two sites made with Twig and I'm really happy !
You can also see that, it's a technical comparison of these both frameworks :
https://michalzuber.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/silex-vs-slim-php-microframework-comparison/
Slim 3 is very light weight and well suited to APIs.
You can optionally inject a container (Pimple by default but any Container-Interop will work) when constructing your Slim app. The Silex app extends Pimple so is a container.
Require slim/twig-view if you need Twig.
Slim's Request and Response support PSR-7 HTTP message implementation.
On January 12th 2018, Fabien Potencier, main author of this micro-framework, wrote that Sensiolabs stops supporting Silex.
https://symfony.com/blog/the-end-of-silex
Quote from Silex official site:
Silex is in maintenance mode. Ends of life is set to June 2018. Use Symfony 4 instead. Read more on Symfony's blog.
Slim is better if you want to create apis as its light and fast. Hence slim provides you the DI and routes it is much more flexible to use your own libraries or plugins from laravel or symfony or any third party.
For example you can use sentinel from laravel for auth
TL;DR Choose Slim 4. "At its core, Slim is a dispatcher that receives an HTTP request, invokes an appropriate callback routine, and returns an HTTP response. That’s it.". That should be it.
Late to the party but nonetheless here's my 2 cents(!) on the topic especially for future-googlers about this topic (even though Silex has reached end of life); I'd go for Slim. Which I already did on my previous 2 projects and it never let me down. Before the "here's why" part I'd like to share my background in a nutshell; I've worked with CakePHP and Laravel (especially >=5.4, <5.8) (and also with Lumen) years and years ago, right before I introduced myself with Node.js. Since then almost all my work runs on Node.js in the cloud. Now there's Golang on the table... but that's another story. Due to the requirements (or I should say constraints) of the aforementioned 2 projects, I have to write PHP. Since all those years past with Node.js I suddenly realized that I've forgotten about PHP almost completely. But there were 2 things I remember crystal clear; I've suffered. A lot. Because of those frameworks.
Don't get me wrong former is the eldest one and the latter is the hipster of the pack, I respect them, their authors and their community. Everything has a reason to exist. But one is behemoth and the other one is magical (both not in a good way - I mean did you ever try to debug the Laravel with those facades and static methods and stuff?). OK I hear you, they are frameworks and they should do things for you (have you heard of Hollywood Principle), not everything for you. What this does mean to me is that they always whispering to your ear "our way or highway" (sometimes even yells). "Surely you can do this (say push a job to a queue, query your database, send email, etc.) but first do this, and then that" (maybe couple of more steps but this is not that bad). The bad thing about this is (not accusing anyone) I don't know what do they mean to the framework. They must do something meaningful, obviously though, I don't know what it is. Should I know? Yes, of course. I'm writing this application with that framework for God sake, I should know what it does. Version X was easy to grasp, but what about version Y, Z, T... Have you seen the version dropdown on the Laravel's documentation site? I took those steps because I've been told so. Again that's OK, fair is fair, those steps makes me achieve something far greater. But gradually I'm in their (respective authors') control. After that, even small change takes lots of searches on SO, GitHub issues, Google... Sometimes ends up with a success and most of the times don't. Either way the war against the framework must be declared.
In my point of view this is not how an open-source framework should be. I am vendor locked-in in some sense. Maybe I want to adhere PSR (not that because I'm an advisor recommendation freak, because PHP-FIG is a well-known group with standards almost for every aspect of the language - this is important; for the language, not for any framework). Let me ask you something; do you use Composer? If so why? Because it's standard (I'm not sure if it is)? Because everyone uses it? Because the needed package of yours recommends this way of installing? Actually the answer doesn't all that matter, at the end of the day you use it. And you can use it practically for every PHP framework/project. The Composer requires you to have PHP installed on the system at bare-minimum and coincidentally it's the only requirement. This is freedom, and I want that. I want to pick and choose a router or a container for my taste. Today this package, later something else.
Slim gave me that freedom, especially on version 4. It's community is small, it's foreseeable; it does so much less than the other, full-blown frameworks. Actually it's a micro-framework (although I wrote an MVC application and REST API server with it). Other packages' communities are what matters right now. You need a container, composer require php-di/php-di. Now think about it's community, since "your" application (hence the framework) is a part of it. You have a problem? Ask for help specifically for that package. Maybe someone using another framework (or someone using no framework at all - if there's any left nowadays) might help you with your problem. So you've gone framework-agnostic thanks to your setup. Don't you like PHP DI, well find yourself another PSR-11 compliant package. Same applies for almost every part of Slim - except the router (Nikic's FastRouter should ring a bell), although it's already a foundation for other routers I see so far.
Before I finish I should say that too, Lumen and Silex has big brothers. I've been through a handful of frustration moments with Lumen; when I say "I can't do [fill here with a not-so-common problem] with Lumen version X.Y" they say "Use Laravel instead, it is really easy to upgrade". It should be for God sake! They share the same blood. I wasn't ask for that. If I were like to use Laravel I would choose it in the beginning and not use the Lumen in the first place. There were some reasons I did choose Lumen, like there were some reasons the author write it too (which I don't know why, but still...). Lumen should be a lighter weight, micro-framework alternative to Laravel, not a stepping stone.
Choosing Slim has it's disadvantages too but I think it's about the perception. I want to know what's happening on my application given the circumstances. Isn't reasoning about actually that? Even if I'm going to this rocky road at least I know at the end my application will do exactly as I commanded, nothing more nothing less.
Thank you for your time and please excuse me for formatting.
The fact that Silex didn't support PSR-7 (at the time of writing this) a huge let down. It has so many good point already mentioned above. There is a plugin/extension that let you do that, however I don't see the point in adding this overhead when you are looking for a lightweight framework
Related
I'm researching MODX as a CMS and found this interview with the creator of FoxyCart.
He really gives MODX a lot of positive comments and when asked about improving MODX he pointed out the following:
User management can be awkward, and
some things related to webusers have
never really been brought current.
(Newspublisher can’t handle TVs;
Weblogin is temperamental and not easy
to customize; Webusers need “TVs” for
additional fields.)
Can others on this site shed some light on this? What other kind of user management issues are there?
What are some areas of MODX that people think should be improved?
I'm trying to figure out whether to go with MODX or not. I've been reading a lot of positive things about it and want to make sure that I get the whole picture.
Brett (Foxycart) is talking about MODX Evolution, the older codebase, and makes reference to add-ons, which are (for the most part) independently authored - so definitely improvable. MODX Revolution is the newer version, currently at 2.1 RC3. I've worked with everything from Enterprise CRMs (Tridion, Rhythmyx, Mediasurface as was) to other FOSS systems Silverstripe, Wordpress etc, and it is by far the most intelligently put together and executed of the lot.
It has some niggles - the permissions system is overly abstract and complex, it lacks some plug-and-play features, fine-tuning performance is a bit of a black art, and it doesn't have the ecosystem support of bigger players like Drupal or Joomla (or even WP). But the peer support is fantastic, the core team are committed and talented, and with a modicum of php and willingness to RTFM you can make it do almost anything with MODX.
Strongly recommended.
Everything can be improved, Wordpress or Drupal included, thats generalizing the topic. MODx is awesome piece of 0's and 1's which will cut your development time so much that your head will spin. Its easy to use and develop with and its fast. As far as im concerned, its web designers dream to work with. I sat give it a local spin and try playing for a day and decide afterwards.
Here are some of tuts i compiled in URL list for easy learning:
http://urli.st/3Tg
Also, Twitter #modx is also great resource to be in sync with the matter.
Hope you'll find it good!
good luck!
I've used several Content Management Platforms, and ultimately the experience has always been similar. While I can put up a site lickety-split, I have often wanted to override functionality or its output and couldn't do so without wading through large amounts of PHP files. This has always resulted in a large unsatisfactory result, because I am not lazy, unless I have to wade through others code.
When I started ModX, one week ago, the learning curve hit me like a brick. Mostly this was because it was so simple and I had been trained to deal with CMSes in complex manners. It is much more like a true Object Oriented platform (to me), and as I am an OO programmer, this fit the bill once I realized it was not as complex as I was making it out to be.
Now, in less than a week I have two nearly complete websites (a corporate software development with a shopping cart and a development blog) in less than 1/4 of the time it took me to make my original Corporate website. I'm at the tweaking style and adding content more quickly and easily than I have ever done with a CMS. I did all of the work as well. Injecting my own PHP, HTML, and CSS was amazingly easy, and I did not have to search and rely on hacky plugins to get the job done.
That being said, there are a number of ways in which ModX could be improved. The Manager uses Ajax, but most of the time it is used way too often on a full page refresh anyway. This does slow things down. The User Management is awkward, at first, and honestly should be revisited as time and community allows. The tutorials are improving, but are weak without the videos to accompany them (in my opinion). And there is a lack of variety of useful plugins, but the plugins they have are extremely useful and can be tailored for nearly any solution.
As a final note: the most useful feature is the abstraction of the properties and property sets. This allows you to override your overall site settings, for things as simple as a template or page.
FuzzicalLogic
Putting up a simple photo gallery can be a nightmare.
There is a plug in component that is very obtuse and cumbersome to implement. This is a glaring weakness when you are comparing to, say, WordPress, who are very much MODx's competition for the hearts and minds of developers.
My 5 minutes experience with Modx (2.1.3-pl)
installed the latest (stable) version then try to run the site.
1) Error 503, site unavailable.
okay, it should show a link to the setup page but a quick search in internet showed how to open the setup manually.
2) PDO is required... well, it is starting to stink. PDO is slow
them i activated PDO in my PHP, restart apache and entered the "Connection Information" form and clicked in "Test database server connection and view collations." and
3) "Test database server connection and view collations." javascript error.. i tried with other browser and it is the same.
nuff said.
I'm planning on starting a new project, and am evaluating various web frameworks. There is one that I'm seriously considering, but I worry about its lasting power.
When choosing a web framework, what should I look for when deciding what to go with?
Here's what I have noticed with the framework I'm looking at:
Small community. There are only a few messages on the users list each day
No news on the "news" page since the previous release, over 6 months ago
No svn commits in the last 30 days
Good documentation, but wiki not updated since previous release
Most recent release still not in a maven repository
It is not the officially sanctioned Java EE framework, but I've seen several people mention it as a good solution in answers to various questions on Stack Overflow.
I'm not going to say which framework I'm looking at, because I don't want this to get into a framework war. I want to know what other aspects of the project I should look at in my evaluation of risk. This should apply to other areas besides just Java EE web, like ORM, etc.
I'll say that so-called "dead" projects are not that great a danger as long as the project itself is solid and you like it. The thing is that if the library or framework already does everything you can think you want, then it's not such a big deal. If you get a stable project up and running then you should be done thinking about the framework (done!) and focus only on your webapp. You shouldn't be required to update the framework itself with the latest release every month.
Personally, I think the most important point is that you find one that is intuitive to your project. What makes the most sense? MVC? Should each element in the URL be a separate object? How would interactivity (AJAX) work? It makes no sense to pick something just because it's an "industry standard" or because it's used by a lot of big-name sites. Maybe they chose it for needs entirely different from yours. Read the tutorials for each framework and be critical. If it doesn't gel with your way of thinking, or you have seen it done more elegantly, then move on. What you are considering here is the design and good design is tantamount for staying flexible and scalable. There's hundreds of web frameworks out there, old and new, in every language. You're bound to find half a dozen that works just the way you want to think in your project.
Points I consider mandatory:
Extensible through plug-ins: check if there's already plug-ins for various middleware tasks such as memcache, gzip, OpenID, AJAX goodness, etc.
Simplicity and modularity: the more complex, the steeper the learning curve and the less you can trust its stability; the more "locked" to specific technologies, the higher the chances that you'll end up with a chain around your ankle.
Database agnostic: can you use sqlite3 for development and then switch to your production DB by changing a single line of code or configuration?
Platform agnostic: can you run it on Apache, lighttpd, etc.? Could you port it to run in a cloud?
Template agnostic: can you switch out the template system? Let's say you hire dedicated designers and they really want to go with something else.
Documentation: I am not that strict if it's open-source, but there would need to be enough official documentation to enable me to fully understand how to write my own plug-ins, for example. Also look to see if there's source code of working sites using the same framework.
License and source code: do you have access to the source code and are you allowed to modify it? Consider if you can use it commercially! (Even if you have no current plans to do that currently.)
All in all: flexibility. If I am satisfied with all four points, I'm pretty much done. Notice how I didn't have anything about "deadness" in there? If the core design is good and there's easily installable plug-ins for doing every web-dev 3.0-beta buzzword thing you want to do, then I don't care if the last SVN commit was in 2006.
Here are the things I look for in a framework before I decide to use it for a production environment project:
Plenty of well laid out and written documentation. Bad documentation just means I'm wasting time trying to find how everything works. This is OK if I am playing around with some cool new micro framework or something else, but not when it's for a client.
A decently sized community so that you can ask questions, etc. A fun and active IRC channel is a big plus.
Constant iteration of the product. Are bugs being closed or opened on a daily/weekly basis? Probably a good sign.
I can go through the code of the framework and understand what's going on. Good framework code means that the projects longterm life has a better chance of success.
I enjoy working with it. If I play with it for a few hours and it's the worst time of my life, I sure as hell won't be using it for a client.
I can go on, but those are some primary ones off the top of my head.
Besides looking at the framework, you also need to consider a lot of things about yourself (and any other team members) when evaluating the risks:
If the framework is a new, immature, "bleeding-edge" framework, are you going to be willing and able to debug it and fix or work around whatever problems you encounter?
If there is a small community, you'll have to do a lot of this debugging and diagnosis yourself. Will you have time to do that and still meet whatever deadlines you may have?
Have you looked at the framework yourself to determine how good it is, or are you willing to rely on what others say about it? Why do you trust their judgment?
Why do you want to use this rather than the "officially sanctioned Java EE framework"? Is it a pragmatic reason, or just a desire to try something new?
If problems with the framework cause you to miss deadlines or deliver a poor product, how will you talk about it with your boss or customer?
All the signs you've cited could be bad news for your framework choice.
Another thing that I look for are books available at Amazon and such. If there's good documentation available, it means that authors believe it has traction and you'll be able to find users that know it.
The only saving grace I can think of is relative maturity. If the framework or open source component is mature, there's a chance that it does the job as written and doesn't require further extension.
There should still be a bug tracker with some evidence of activity, because no software is without bugs (except for mine). But it need not be a gusher of requests in that case.
I am a newbie of Zend Framework.
I downloaded the Zend Framework and then followed the official quickstart tutorial to build a very simple registration form. But after that, I find very hard to learn different elements of Zend Framework.
Many tutorials mention frontController and registerAutoload() in the bootstrap file. However, it seems that I can't see it again in the code in version 1.8 (both in the official quickstart tutorial and Getting Started with Zend Framework 1.8). Many tutorials contain the old version of code and it seems very different in v1.8.
I start with writing registration form with password confirmation. I read the official document and find the custom validator for password confirmation. It just puts the class there and doesn't mention how I can use it. I don't know where I should put this file and I can't find any hints in Google. The "class not found" error always makes me sick (I've tried addPrefixElement, set_include_path but they don't work).
User registration, email activation, login, access control are very common tasks. But I don't even find a piece of sample code in v1.8 that I can run in my machine. I am very frustrated about Zend Framework.
Does anyone give me some advices?
I have also just started learning the zend framework. I also find alot of old tutorials that make learning confusing and hard,
but there are some resources that I find help in learning the zend framework:
http://www.zendcasts.com/ - they have tutorials on ZF1.8 already, like Bootstrapping using Zend_Application, etc.
Some useful blogs that might help:
http://weierophinney.net/matthew/
http://www.thomasweidner.com/flatpress/index.php
http://smartycode.com/zf/
http://codeutopia.net/blog/
Forums to ask your questions:
http://www.nabble.com/Zend-Framework-Community-f16154.html - alot of ZF developers seem to be here to answer your questions :) much more than the official Zend Forums below ...
http://forums.zend.com/viewforum.php?f=69
As to class not found, I think you didn't autoload?
http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.loader.autoloader-resource.html
Parts of Zend Framework have changed slightly in the 1.8 release but everything should be backwards compatible so all code example written using the 1.* release series should still work with little or no modification. The main areas that are different are
Zend Loader (related to register_autoload) which now has several improvements related to performance and some slight differences in its API (with a PHP warning if you use the old way). I wouldn't worry about this too much as a beginner - just follow the tutorial or continue to use include/require statements until you become annoyed with adding them all the time!
Zend Application which basically allows you to create your set-up and initialisation code with less fuss. Again, you don't have to use it and you can happily write a manual bootstrap class to get you used to how the framework is put together.
With regards to getting started I would highly recommend getting your head around the Zend Controller component, particularly the front controller part and this diagram.
For authentication look at Zend Auth, for e-mail see Zend Mail, for access control see Zend Acl and for forms and validation see Zend Form, Zend Validate and Zend Filter. The form and validation components will explain about paths and adding your own custom validators and form elements.
The other area of importance is Zend Db which allows you to persist your data to a database. There is also Zend View which represents the view layer in the MVC stack. In my opinion these are the key components of a basic ZF application. From there you can explore the other components as and when you need them.
Don't forget that the Zend Framework is specifically designed to be loosely coupled and it is very easy to use a different component from another project for a particular task. Sometimes it is necessary to write your own components too. If there is a component you would prefer to use over the Zend component then go ahead and do so.
Honestly, the documentation is very good although it is hard to navigate for beginners. Once you get your head around the core components everything will become a lot clearer.
Also try following this tutorial. It will help explain a lot of the basics.
I recommend these video tutorials pu up by a guy called Alex, he keeps them up to date and releases new ones all the time,they are all relevant to ZF 1.8 and 1.9.
He has even a detailed video tutorial covering ACL, login forms etc. (my first steps with Zend were easier thanks to him!)
http://alex-tech-adventures.com/development/zend-framework.html?start=15
- his site is a bit comfusing but worth the time in figuring it out :)
Cheers
Roman
Some tips:
Here is a nice diagram of the Dispatch process
http://nethands.de/download/zenddispatch_en.pdf
It is much easier to understand ZF if you are experienced in OOP / OOP Design Patterns
When I first stumbled across ZF I had little knowledge of OOP. ZF prompted me to learn OOP which was a very good thing.
Distinguish between the 'magic' of ZF and the actual ZF Architecture
Although I have a good understanding of ZF Classes I still get confused when ZF adds its 'magic' to the mix.
When I say 'magic' I am referring to things like
the default objects loaded and used if none specified, and
url-controllername-filepath-filename inflections / naming conventions.
config settings-to-class-instantiation mappings
ZF is a bit like a crack-dealer in the sense that the 'Getting Started Tutorials' get you hooked straight away. They perform so much magic that it makes you think
.oO(Wow - how simple was that! This framework is cool!)
Then as soon as you start to try to do your own thing - the magic starts to get really confusing.
So - my tactic is to remove as much ZF magic as possible. If you have the option to specify a class to use, or a router to use, then specify it. Don't let Zend do it for you.
Then when something weird is happening you can find the bugs more easily.
Also, if you specify the locations of classes/ paths as (opposed to letting ZF magically inflect paths and find scripts), then you do not have to worry about questions of 'where to put this? , where to put that?' - you just put things where you want them to be and explicitly point ZF to them.
As you get more familiar with ZF you might then want to let it take over and do some magic for you. Only then can you really understand why that magic is convenient.
As Tim Wardle said in another answer - favour require statements over zend loader until you really need it.
If you are a PHP design house that churns out 10 website projects a week, then ZF Magic can be really useful. If you are designing your first ZF app - then 'reducing complexity' is a more important design goal than 're-usability'.
Browse the code
It might seem obvious but one of the best ways to learn about the ZF is to look at the code.
Again the ZF magic can get in the way - I often want to look at a method's arguments to discover what i need to pass in only to discover that it expects an ambiguous 'options array' (not exactly helpful). After a while, though, you start to notice the conventions used in how an 'option key' marries up to a getter/setter method. So, keep looking at the code and familiarising yourself with the 'ZF way'.
I 'ope that 'elps.
The Front Range PHP Users Group website has some presentations on Zend Framework which may be of use.
I have so much sympathy with you Billy. I am a newbie and the confusion between the old way and the new way is almost just too much to handle. Also see here for someone who points out some of the main differences:
http://crossfunctional.wordpress.com/2009/05/
All documentation, particularly Zend's documentation is absolutely horrible. It all assumes that you "know" where to put the snippets they are referring to and how they work together. If I already knew those things, I wouldn't need the documentation. No full example applications with authentication etc. that you can download and modify. I'm seriously regretting putting any time into trying to learning this framework. All examples that I can find are apparently for older versions. I followed one for authentication on youtube that was designed for 1.8 to the letter. It fails to work in 1.9.x. Can't get it to work for the life of me. Completely frustrated with Zend Framework!
Zend Framework has shifted from being a relatively accessible and simple system to a more complex entity. It has gone through a number of rapid developments over the past couple of years which have left a lot of older documentation around.
We have projects that are stuck on Version 1.7.x because the differences between that and the latest version are too great which makes the dev and testing time too expensive.
I like Zend Framework because it has so much depth to it but it is definitely a two edged sword for beginners.
I'd certainly recommend making use of the expertise of other users and search out some simple framework examples. ZF is highly adaptable but you need to try and work from the simplest case possible for your needs.
I think Matthew Weier o'Phinney, (search for 'Phly, boy, phly') is one of the more approachable members of the dev team and has loads of examples and ideas on his website.
Good luck!
If you were going to start building web sites as a consulting business on the side -- keeping your day job -- and you also had a toddler and a wife, what frameworks/tools would you pick to save you typing?
Any language.
I'm looking for a productivity superstar stack that won't tie my hands too much when I have to update the site 6 months later, or "evolve" the data model once in production.
It needs to allow me to say "yes" to the client: community features, CMS, security, moderation, AJAX, ...
I would suggest Django. Super simple to get something up and running really quick. You are using Python which has a large library to go with it. For me Ruby on Rails would be a close second.
I'd probably look at DotNetNuke. Its easy to set up (a lot of hosts will do it for you) and easy to use and put together a custom site that business's will be able to maintain in the future.
Its fairly easy to create custom modules that are specific to a business and hundreds of modules for sale (or free) that can be integrated into DNN for special uses.
Take a look at Microsoft's Sharepoint server if you'd like a pre-made framework with many options for plugging in your own code. Sharepoint is kind of a world unto itself but it is a very powerful environment.
Update: I'm surprised to have been voted down on this one. Keep in mind that the questioner specifically requested frameworks that included a CMS. Sharepoint meets this criteria - unlike straight .NET or other web development frameworks.
If you are going to vote the entry down, I think you owe it to the person who asked the question to explain why you don't think he should not even explore it as an option. You could be right - collective wisdom is what voting on SO is all about. But without an explanation, we don't know why you think you are right.
My answers are going to revolve around the .NET stack.
Use Master pages and CSS templates. This makes it so much easier to pop in a new look and feel for your customer.
For sure I'd include the Dynamic Data framework in the .NET world.
Hosting might become an issue for your customer. Questions around managing email addresses, procedures on how to quickly update the website to include the new contact phone number (different for each customer, I'd assume) Consider getting a reseller account on your favorite webhost, and dole out webhosting accounts as appropriate. There are lots of issues around this point. It may turn out to be a nice source of recurring revenue.
Build yourself a few patterns including a database wrapper which would handle all your data calls (i.e. a dll which wraps all your data calls, sets up your ADO.NET objects, runs your sproc calls, and picks up the connstring from app.config or something similar.)
This goes a long way to maintainability as well.
I would recomend going with anything MVC in a language you can undertand! Theres a couple of CMS's in python, php and ruby using that design and well... that allows you to be ready for combat for Ajax and expanding anything very fast.
This is definitely not a question that can be answered.
I prefer asp.net webforms because I think it allows for extremely rapid web app development, but I am sure you will receive recommendations for:
asp.net mvc
Ruby on Rails
PHP and some framework
Python and some framework such as Django
I believe PHP has the most pre-built apps that you can use, though asp.net also has the things you are looking for.
All of these platforms and frameworks can do what you want.
Choose between Rails and Django. They both have different strengths. I like Rails better in general, but Django's admin interface can save you a lot of time when you need it.
There's another factor to take into consideration here: what are you the most familiar with? I believe that some studies have found upwards of a 30% loss of productivity when trying to learn a new language/framework.
Sometimes, there's nothing wrong with just sticking to what you know. But if you're interested in what languages/frameworks to learn, I'll refer you to the other posts because the above was the only thing I really have to add.
I recommend looking into Grails. It uses Groovy which is similiar to Java (so if you know this already you're good to go). Groovy runs on the JVM so you can still use all the great libraries already available for Java. Yet, since it's a dynamic language with a lot of the similar bells and whistles like Ruby you can use closures and that kind of neat stuff when you need/want to. And you're not slowed down by Java's traditonal slow compile-deploy-test development cycle.
Grails is already setup with Hibernate and Spring. You can create CRUD application in practically no-time (pretty much like Rails applications), and at the same time drill down and be able to control every little details since it's built on such proven and well-supported technologies. In addition there's literally hundreds of plugins available that helps you easily set up things like mailing lists, security, AJAX components and so on.
Otherwise, if you want to set up a community site and don't want to code a single line you could always check out ning.com.
I need to create a internal website and can't figure out if we should be writing our own, or using an existing framework.
Most of the website will essentially be a front end to a database. We need to have a number of people enter data into forms. We then want to be able to show different views of all this data -- including running small queries (e.g. how many resources do we have with attribute 'X'). As is usually the case with this, we will want to tweak the UI on a regular basis.
There actual data design is not a simple 1:1 mapping of resource to entry. For example, we might track several attributes for one item as the "base set of data" for that item. Then we could have several additional sets of data.
Imagine a recipe application. You might have a recipse for a starter. This could then be referenced by several other recipes that need that same information.
I feel like this is best suited for a general framework (Ruby on Rails, Django, etc), but I wonder if it might not be good for a "traditional" CMS platform like Drupal? I specifically mention Drupal since the people that would develop this have the most knowledge using php and MySql.
I usually lean towards wanting to use an existing platform, but am interested in other people's thoughts. To give you an idea of scope, I would imagine if we wrote this from scratch we are probably talking about 3-5 weeks of development.
Would you recommend writing our own, or using an existing framework? If you would suggest using something that exists what would you recommend?
Would you consider this to be best suited for a straight framework or a straight CMS?
Thanks!
It's possible that Drupal will be a good solution for you, though you'll probably need a few key additional modules like the "Content Creation Kit" (CCK) and "Views".
Unlike other web CMS systems (WordPress, Exponent, phpNuke), Drupal treats your entries as a "pool" of content, from which you pull various subsets for different areas of your site.
There is a lot of documentation for Drupal (almost too much), the biggest problem is finding the piece that's relevant to what you're trying to achieve. Diving on to one of the interactive IRC channels can be a good idea, as the community is quite helpful and is almost always willing to give you a pointer in the right direction.
The power, flexiblity and capability of Drupal is both its biggest strength and weakness - I know it took me a bit of effort to get my head around key concepts, and I'm far from being a Drupal Expert.
One last comment: Having written my own CMS from scratch, which I abandoned in favour of Drupal, I'd suggest your 3-5 week estimate is likely on the light side.
Stay away from Drupal for any site that requires customized functionality. I recently used Drupal for a website at work, and it was VERY difficult to figure out how to get it to do what I wanted it to do. There is a lot of documentation out there, but all of it is unhelpful -- it answers very specific questions about specific issues but does not provide any context as to how you would approach building the site as a whole. If you're a programmer, using a more general framework will probably work better, as CMS's are designed for a specific kind of site, and if you want your site to have non-standard functionality you are going to be fighting the system instead of working with it. If your developers are most experienced in PHP, try one of the PHP frameworks that mimics the architecture of Rails -- e.g. cakePHP or CodeIgniter.
CMSes usually make sense when you have a broad and potentially expanding array of different content types and modes you need to handle. Drupal has literally dozens. Given than you mentioned RoR, it sounds like what you need is more of a MVC style framework. Maybe similar to the sort of thing stackoverflow was built with. .NET an issue for you?
If you are really limited to 3-5 weeks, however, I think a Rails-based strategy makes sense so go with RoR or CodeIgniter
If Drupal can do what you need easily I would say go with Drupal. I don't know much about Drupal though.
Otherwise, what you describe sounds like a data driven web app or more like a reporting app. It sounds like you might have some very specific needs or that users might want very specific needs in the future. That is something hard to get from premade software since you have no idea what users are going to request. Since I'm a programmer I would probably want to build it myself.
Funny you should ask... I just came across this in SD Time's Linkpalooza this afternoon:
Ten free powerful content management systems…
There are at least 4 more mentioned in the comments to this post.
It seems to make little sense to develop a new one with so many from which to choose!
BTW, this is neither a recommendation nor endorsement of any particular CMS.
Treat Drupal as a framework. Core modules + CCK + Views is a good start to build on.
If you're doing something that you might want to expose to other applications, consider the Services module. A lot of interesting things have been done with flex frontends connected to drupal running services with amfphp.