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Since I’ve covered Views and Controllers in the Garden framework, it would make sense to talk about Models next. However, in order to understand how models work in Garden, you need to first understand how Garden interacts with the database. So, in this preview I’ll be talking about database related classes in Garden.

The SqlBuilder object in Vanilla 1 was a fine idea that did not function well in practice. It’s methods had far too many arguments. I, personally, could never use it without having a copy of the class open and scrolling through to examine and re-examine what each argument in each method did. I almost never had a query run properly without tweaking it a few times. So, when I began doing research for Garden, the first thing I did was examine other frameworks to see how they interacted with the database.

I was delighted to discover a myriad of different approaches to database access in various frameworks. Some of them seemed to fall into the same pitfalls as Vanilla, others were impeccably programmed and impossible to use, and others still were simply a pleasure to use. One database layer that I really admired was . I decided to take the principles of the CodeIgniter database layer and put my stamp on it, and I must give them credit for being the direct inspiration for my database layer, as well as providing chunks of code in my database layer.

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The database files are located in /GardenRoot/library/database, and are as follows:

buy cialis generic: The main database file that is included by the Garden bootstrapper.

buy cialis generic: A supplemental implementation of the database class specific to altering table (and view) structure in the database. This file is included on-demand.

buy cialis generic: The dataset class allows you to traverse, manipulate, and return data objects or arrays.

buy cialis generic: An abstract implementation of all properties and methods used to build and execute database queries.

buy cialis generic: An abstract implementation of all properties and methods used to build and execute database queries specific to altering database (and view) structure.

buy cialis generic: A MySQL-specific implementation of the class.generic.driver.php abstract class. This class overrides the generic class where necessary in order to perform functions specific to MySQL.

buy cialis generic: A MySQL-specific implementation of the class.generic.structure.php abstract class. This class overrides the generic class where necessary in order to perform functions related to altering database (and view) structure specific to MySQL.

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As you can likely imagine, the MySQL-specific files are just one implementation of the generic driver and structure. Theoretically I could create other database-specific files and use those instead. When I first started working on the classes, for example, I created two other implementations: SQLite and . MySQL is the only implementation planned for launch, but others may come afterwards. With this in mind, the class.database.php file contains the following:

// Include the base/generic driver and dataset classes
include(PATH_LIBRARY . DS . 'database' . DS . 'class.generic.driver.php');
include(PATH_LIBRARY . DS . 'database' . DS . 'class.dataset.php');

// Include the selected driver class
$DatabaseEngine = $Config->Get('Database.Engine');
include(PATH_LIBRARY . DS . 'database' . DS . 'class.'.strtolower($DatabaseEngine).'.driver.php');

// Create a standard database class extended from the selected driver.
eval('class Database extends '.$DatabaseEngine.'Driver {}');

So, as you can see, the first thing I do is include the generic driver and the dataset classes. These are required in order to perform any database requests. Next up I grab the defined database engine from the configuration (in it’s current state: MySQL), and include the driver for that class.

Finally, I create a class simply called “Database” that extends the driver-specific class. So, no matter what driver is implemented, you can always get at your database class by instantiating a new Database();

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The database class allows you to do everything from querying with a straight SQL string, to building a sql string and executing it with various Database methods, to one-line convenience methods that return a dataset with a single line of code. My main goal was to add flexibility. Let’s start with an example of building a simple select statement. Imagine you wanted to use the database class to query the following information:

select Name
   ,Color
   ,MaxSpeed
from Car
where MaxSpeed > 80;

In it’s most simple form, the Database class could be used to retrieve this information by placing that SQL into a $Sql variable and calling the following:

$DataSet = $Database->Query($Sql);

However, this is not really the preferred method. After all, what happens down the road when we implement a new database class with a different driver that doesn’t support the exact same syntax as MySQL? So, let’s build the same query using the Database class’ various query building methods:

$Database->Select('Name, Color, MaxSpeed');
$Database->From('Car');
$Database->Where('MaxSpeed >', '80');
$DataSet = $Database->Get();

Fairly simple, but the Database query building methods also implement chaining. So, this query could have just as easily been written in the following manner:

$DataSet = $Database->Select('Name, Color, MaxSpeed')->From('Car')->Where('MaxSpeed >', '80')->Get();

Neat! But the Database class also has a bunch of different convenience methods. So, let’s try building the same query using Database::GetWhere():

$DataSet = $Database->GetWhere('Car', array('MaxSpeed >' => '80'));

OK, so we can retrieve data from the database in various different ways. Let’s try a more complex example with some joins. How about this:

select Car.Name
   ,Car.Color
   ,Car.MaxSpeed
   ,Brand.Name as Brand
   ,Engine.Name as Engine
from Car
inner join Brand
   on Car.BrandID = Brand.BrandID
inner join Engine
   on Car.EngineID = Engine.EngineID
where Car.MaxSpeed > 80;

Piece of cake:

$DataSet = $Database->Select('Car.Name, Car.Color, Car.MaxSpeed')
    ->Select('Brand.Name', '', 'Brand')
    ->Select('Engine.Name', '', 'Engine')
    ->From('Car')
    ->Join('Brand', 'Car.BrandID = Brand.BrandID')
    ->Join('Engine', 'Car.EngineID = Engine.EngineID')
    ->Where('Car.MaxSpeed >', '80')
    ->Get();

But that’s a bit verbose. How about if we used aliases instead, like this:

select c.Name
   ,c.Color
   ,c.MaxSpeed
   ,b.Name as Brand
   ,e.Name as Engine
from Car c
inner join Brand b
   on c.BrandID = b.BrandID
inner join Engine e
   on c.EngineID = e.EngineID
where c.MaxSpeed > 80;

Not a problem:

$DataSet = $Database->Select('c.Name, c.Color, c.MaxSpeed')
    ->Select('b.Name', '', 'Brand')
    ->Select('e.Name', '', 'Engine')
    ->From('Car c')
    ->Join('Brand b', 'c.BrandID = b.BrandID')
    ->Join('Engine e', 'c.EngineID = e.EngineID')
    ->Where('c.MaxSpeed >', '80')
    ->Get();

And how about if we added some more conditions to the where clause? You could continue to add lines to the query:

// ...
$Database->Where('c.MaxSpeed >', '80');
$Database->Where('c.Color', 'Blue');

Or you could simply manipulate your original where definition to use an associative array of conditions:

// ...
$Database->Where(array('c.MaxSpeed >' => '80', 'c.Color' => 'Blue'));

You might be wondering how the database class handles database table prefixes. For example, in Vanilla 1, all of the vanilla-related tables were prefixed with “LUM_”. So, what if our example tables had the LUM_ prefix? How would that change our Database class’ method calls?

select c.Name
   ,c.Color
   ,c.MaxSpeed
   ,b.Name as Brand
   ,e.Name as Engine
from LUM_Car c
inner join LUM_Brand b
   on c.BrandID = b.BrandID
inner join LUM_Engine e
   on c.EngineID = e.EngineID
where c.MaxSpeed > 80;

The simple answer is that it wouldn’t. You’d still specify all of the queries in the ways I’ve defined above. The database class has a “DatabasePrefix” property that is defined by the Garden bootstrapper (and can be changed at any time on the fly). You never need to concern yourself with database table prefixes. The Database class will search and prepend them where necessary as queries are built.

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One final thing to note is that the database class lazy-loads the database connection. This means that there are no connections to the database opened until you actually run a query. So, if a page doesn’t require any database access, the database class will never open a connection unnecessarily.

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In all of the examples above, the database queries have resulted in returning a variable I’ve called $DataSet. This $DataSet variable is actually an object instantiation of the DataSet class in the class.dataset.php file discussed above. The DataSet class is used to traverse the dataset that was created as a result of the query, and return the rows of data in either associative array or object format. Once again, flexibility is the purpose. Let’s see some examples of what we can do with a DataSet object:

// See how many rows were returned by the query:
$NumRows = $DataSet->NumRows();

// Get the first row in the dataset:
$FirstRow = $DataSet->FirstRow();
// And do something with it:
print_r($FirstRow);
// Would print:
stdClass Object
(
    [Name] => 'Civic'
    [Color] => 'White'
    [MaxSpeed] => '120'
    [Brand] => 'Honda'
    [Engine] => 'Sad'
)
// Or, get the first row as an associative array, instead:
$FirstRow = $DataSet->FirstRow('', DATASET_TYPE_ARRAY);
// And do something with it:
print_r($FirstRow);
// Would print:
Array
(
    [Name] => 'Civic'
    [Color] => 'White'
    [MaxSpeed] => '120'
    [Brand] => 'Honda'
    [Engine] => 'Sad'
)

And for one more example on using DataSets, here’s how one might decide to traverse a set of data:

<ul class="Cars">
<?php foreach ($DataSet->Result() as $Car) { %3F>
   <li>
      <h3><?php echo $Car->Name; %3F></h3>
      This car is <?php echo $Car->Color; %3F>,
      it has a <?php echo $Car->Engine; %3F> engine,
      and it goes <?php echo $Car->MaxSpeed; %3F>KM/h
   </li>
<?php } %3F>
</ul>

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I’ve really only touched on the surface of the capabilities of the database layer in Garden. Once the code and documentation goes public, you’ll have a much better grasp of everything that is possible with this database layer. My goals were simplicity and flexibility, and so far I’ve found the methods I’ve adopted to be very successful in both of those areas.

Next week I’ll be talking about Models, where I will go a little deeper into aspects of the database layer that tie in tightly with them.

Last week I described how requests to Garden are handled by the dispatcher. This week I’m going to explain how those requests are rendered by the requested controller.

Once a controller method is called to handle the request, how is the xhtml of the page put together? buy cialis generic.

There are two types of views in Garden: “Views” and “Master Views”. A view relates directly to the controller method that called it and handles rendering content related to that request. You can typically think of a view as the content for that page. For example, if a Vanilla->Discussion->All() method is called, the view for that method would handle rendering all of the discussions. Everything that is rendered around the discussions is handled by the Master View.

The Master View allows you to create a consistent layout for the pages in the application. A single master view defines the look and feel and standard behavior for all of the pages (or a group of pages) in the application.

Let’s go back to the filesystem so you can get a better picture. In the following example, the request in the url would have been the following:

http://myserver.com/garden/profile/index/mark

So, this means that Garden’s “Profile” controller was requested, the “index” method was requested from the profile controller, and the first argument into the index method is “mark”. In other words, the request was: $ProfileController->Index('mark');

Let’s take a look at the profile controller’s index method:

public function Index($UserReference = '') {
   $UserModel = new UserModel();
   $this->User = $UserModel->GetByReference($UserReference);
   $this->Render();
}

Simply put, the index method grabs some data that can be later used in the profile controller’s “index” view, and then calls the Render() method. The Render method is defined on the base Controller class; the class from which all controllers are extended. The Render method performs the following tasks:

1. Finds and fetches the view.
2. Finds and fetches the css for the view.
3. Finds and renders the master view.

In the most simple example, the view will be as it appears in the image above: in a “profile” folder within the “views” folder, and named after the method that was called: buy cialis generic.

By default, the controller will fetch that view from the context of the FetchView method of the base controller class. In plain-English: the view file is included within a method on the Controller class called “FetchView”. That is why I placed the user data within a $this->User property in my $ProfileController->Index() method, above; so it could be accessible from within my view file. The view file likely will contain something as simple as this:

<h3>Basic Information</h3>
<dl class="Info">
   <dt>Joined</dt>
   <dd><?php echo $this->User->DateFirstVisit; %3F></dd>
   <dt>Visits</dt>
   <dd><?php echo $this->User->CountVisits; %3F></dd>
   <dt>Last Active</dt>
   <dd><?php echo $this->User->DateLastActive; %3F></dd>
</dl>

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Once the view is fetched, it is added to an asset collection. By default it is added to the “Content” asset collection. The rest of the page (the “Frame” of the page) is handled by the master view. By default, the “default.master” master view is used unless another master view is specified. In the image above you can see that there are a few different master views available in the Garden application: default, email, error, and setup. The css files for each of those master views are named accordingly, as well. So, the default.master view has a default.screen.css file, the error.master view has an error.screen.css file, etc. Again, in the most simple of examples, the master view is located in the “view” folder of the application, and the related css files are located in the “design” folder of that application.

Here is what the default.master view looks like:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en-ca">
<head>
	<?php $this->RenderAsset('Head'); %3F>
</head>
<body<?php echo Attribute(array('id' => $BodyIdentifier, 'class' => $this->CssClass)); %3F>>
   <div id="Frame">
      <div id="Title"><a href="<?php Link('garden/user/browse'); %3F>"><span><?php echo $this->Head->TitlePrefix; %3F></span></a></div>
      <?php $this->RenderAsset('Menu'); %3F>
      <div id="Content"><?php $this->RenderAsset('Content'); %3F></div>
      <div id="Foot"><?php $this->RenderAsset('Foot'); %3F></div>
   </div>
</body>
</html>

As you can see, the master view handles the basic structure of a page. As I mentioned above, by default the view that is fetched by the controller is added to an asset collection called “Content”, and that asset collection is rendered in this master view when the $this->RenderAsset('Content') method is called – right there in the middle of the master view.

As you can see in the master view above, there are a number of different asset collections available for application and plugin authors (Head, Menu, Content, and Foot). An application author has the ability to add as many of these as he/she desires and add to them as necessary. The idea behind these asset collections is that while the basic request can be handled and placed into the “Content” asset (ie. the profile information being displayed from the example above), there are still a lot of other elements a person may want on a page. Plugin authors may want to add assets to the head, menu, or foot. They may even want to add assets to the content collection. Garden itself has other UI components that get rendered in the head and menu asset collections (which will be discussed in a later preview).

So, in the most basic example, the “index” view is requested from it’s controller’s view folder, the default.screen.css file is requested from the application’s design folder, and the master view is requested from the root of the application’s “view” folder. What other ways could the views and css have been retrieved?

The controller uses Garden’s FileSystem object to search the application for the appropriate file to handle the request. Whatever the filesystem object finds first, it will use.

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ie. a plugin’s custom view location
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ie. /path/to/garden/themes/theme_name/app_name/views/controller_name/view.php
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ie. /path/to/garden/themes/theme_name/views/controller_name/view.php
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ie. /path/to/garden/applications/app_name/views/controller_name/view.php

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ie. /path/to/garden/themes/theme_name/app_name/views/default.master
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ie. /path/to/garden/themes/theme_name/views/default.master
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ie. /path/to/garden/applications/app_name/views/default.master
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ie. /path/to/garden/applications/garden/views/default.master

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ie. /path/to/garden/themes/theme_name/app_name/design/default.screen.css
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ie. /path/to/garden/applications/app_name/design/default.screen.css
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ie. /path/to/garden/applications/garden/design/default.screen.css

You might be wondering things like: can I change the view or master view that handles my request on the fly? Of course you can! Everything in Garden was written so that you have total control over what comes out on the other end. In my example above, I could change my views on the fly with something like this:

public function Index($UserReference = '') {
   $UserModel = new UserModel();
   $this->User = $UserModel->GetByReference($UserReference);
   $this->View = "somethingelse"; buy cialis generic
   $this->View = "/some/other/view.php"; buy cialis generic
   $this->MasterView = "setup"; buy cialis generic
   $this->Render();
}

Views are a lot to take in, and they certainly might be daunting upon first read. But I can guarantee that I have found them to be utterly simple and flexible to use. Think of the possibilities you can accomplish with views! You could create a master view that handles rendering of RSS feeds. You could port your request method to use your RSS master and render all of your contents with a custom RSS view. You could grab the email master view and send out your content to some email address(es) before rendering. You could bypass the rendering altogether and deliver json data. The possibilities are endless, and that is the real power of views.

mod_rewrite was an afterthought in Vanilla 1. As a result, I’ve always felt that the mod_rewrite mappings were sloppy and really just didn’t make much sense. In Garden, the way pages are accessed is completely different, and definitely deserves explaining. Let’s start by looking at a typical url request in Garden buy cialis generic mod_rewrite enabled:

http://localhost/garden/default.php/garden/settings/configure

Let’s look closer at each part of the request:

buy cialis generic: On my development server, I’ve created a folder called garden, and placed all of the garden files I discussed in last week’s preview in it. As you can see, the default.php file that handles all requests is sitting within that folder’s root.

buy cialis generic: The next part of the url is the application that is being requested. In this case, we are requesting the “garden” application within the garden framework’s application folder.

buy cialis generic: The next part of the url is the controller that is being requested within the garden application. In this example, we are requesting a controller called “Settings”.

buy cialis generic: the final part of the url in this example is the method within the “Settings” controller that we are calling. In this example, we are calling $SettingsController->Configure();.

If you were to map this request to the filesystem, it would be like this:

I could take the same request and add information to the end, like this:

http://localhost/garden/default.php/garden/settings/configurebuy cialis generic

And it would take any other parameters after the controller’s configure method as if they are arguments being passed into that method. In other words, the above request would be essentially the same as calling that method like so:

$SettingsController->Configure('arg1', 'arg2', 'argn');

This can get pretty handy when doing things like paging through records, or specifying which user to load in a page. For example, to edit a user, the url would be:

http://localhost/garden/default.php/garden/user/edit/mark

Which would map to:

$UserController->Edit('mark');

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All requests are handled through the Dispatcher class. The dispatcher class looks at the request (everything after default.php) and tries to figure out the best way to handle it. As far as the dispatcher is concerned, in a perfect world the request would always include the application name, the controller name, and the method name. But in reality you might not always want all three items in your url. For example, you might want your application invisible to the user – so that, for example, a request to vanilla’s discussion list goes to

http://yourwebsite.com/default.php/discussions/all

… instead of …

http://yourwebsite.com/default.php/vanilla/discussions/all

Furthermore, you might want your controller’s method hidden as well. So you could end up with something like:

http://yourwebsite.com/default.php/discussions

The dispatcher can handle all of these and a lot more. First of all, when no method is defined in the request, the dispatcher assumes that you are calling the “index” method of the controller. So, a request to:

http://yourwebsite.com/default.php/vanilla/discussions

… is the same as calling …

$DiscussionsController->Index();

Furthermore, when the dispatcher gets a request that doesn’t include the application name, it starts to look through all of the enabled applications for the requested controller name. As soon as it finds one, it records it’s mapping in the cache folder and calls it appropriately. There is the possibility that two different applications could have the same controller name, and in that case, it would return the first application’s controller that it found.

Probably the nicest thing about this method of handling requests is that a 6-line .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ default.php/$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

… allows you to remove the default.php from the url and makes all requests look like this:

http://yourdomain.com/application/controller/method

Or, in it’s simplest form:

http://yourdomain.com/controller

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In the next garden preview, I’ll be getting into how controllers work, how views are found and rendered, and how master views can let you customize layouts between applications and themes.

Whenever I start looking into how an application works, the first thing I do is browse through the files & folders to see where everything is. And, interestingly enough, where the files and folders reside in Garden have a lot to do with how Garden works.

[Edit - After some good suggestions in the comments of this post, I've made some changes to this post and updated appropriately.]

Let’s start by looking at the root folder of my development version of Garden:

Here’s a breakdown of what each root folder/file is:

buy cialis generic: The applications folder contains folders, which in turn contain all of the files specific to each application. As you can see, I’ve got four applications listed here. The “garden” application is the base application of the framework that handles signing in, user, role, permission, plugin, and application management. The “scaffolding” application is the first application that I developed with Garden, which . Sadly, after months of changing how the core Garden libraries work, the Scaffolding application is now very broken. The “skeleton” application is a set of folders and files that represents an empty application. My idea with Skeleton was to have a set of files that a developer could copy as their starting point for a new application (You could also call it an “application template”). The “vanilla” application is, of course, Vanilla!

buy cialis generic: The cache folder is *currently* used as a general purpose cache. At the time of this writing, it contains cached application settings. These are things like mappings of class names to their location on the filesystem, mappings of locale sources (ie. all “en-CA” definition files from all plugins and applications), etc. There may come a time when there are entirely cached pages or page views, but that will not be present at time of release.

buy cialis generic: Anyone familiar with Vanilla 1 knows exactly what this folder is. The conf folder contains all of your custom configuration settings in a number of different php files as associative arrays. This folder and the cache folder will need write permissions for PHP.

buy cialis generic: Obviously, like Vanilla 1, this is where all of the javascript in Garden resides. The only difference from Vanilla 1 is that there is a “library” folder within the javascript folder that contains jquery libraries – some of which I’ve written and others that come from the jquery website.

buy cialis generic: This is the core libraries for Garden (aka. “where the magic happens”).

buy cialis generic: This folder is the equivalent of the extensions folder in Vanilla 1. It contains folders which, in turn, contain all of the files for a specific plugin. I’ll be getting into Plugins in another Garden Preview.

buy cialis generic: Similar to themes in Vanilla 1, but far more flexible. I’ll be getting into themes and theming in another Garden preview.

buy cialis generic: These three files should be self explanatory.

buy cialis generic: This is the file that all requests to garden are made through.

So, now that you know what the root folder looks like, let’s take a look at one of the application folders. I’ll use Skeleton since it is a basic representation of any application:

buy cialis generic: As previously mentioned, Garden is a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework. The controllers folder contains all of the controllers for this application. Controllers handle all page, partial-page, rss, or any other kind of requests, and act as an intermediary between the models and the views.

buy cialis generic: Obviously there are themes available in Garden, but each application can also have it’s own set of css and image files – those will be placed in the design folder. I’ll get into more detail on this folder when I talk about theming in another Garden preview.

buy cialis generic: Javascript files specific to this application.

buy cialis generic: Localization files for this application.

buy cialis generic: Models in garden will interact directly with your data sources (databases, flat configuration files, etc) and perform get, set, and delete operations. As previously mentioned in the first Garden preview, there is a general purpose model that Garden provides so that you don’t need to create a model class to represent every data structure. However, there are times when you need to customize a model to suit the needs of your application. When you do, this folder is where you’ll put those models.

buy cialis generic: The settings folder for each application is the equivalent of the “appg” folder in Vanilla 1. It contains the default application settings for that specific application. In Garden, it also contains the about.php file – a file which defines all of the information about this application. That information includes things like: Application name, version, author, requirements, licensing info, etc.

buy cialis generic: Of course, this folder represents the Views in the MVC pattern. This is where all of your xhtml for the pages will go, and it relates directly to the controllers that handle them.

buy cialis generic: The bootstrap file for each application is included before any of the major libraries in Garden are loaded. So far, with the three applications I’ve been working on, I haven’t needed to use it very much. But I’m keeping it there just-in-case a need arises.

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There is still a lot to explain, but I’ve given you a breakdown of where things are in Garden. In the next Garden Preview I’ll be diving further into the root default.php file, the application request dispatcher, the MVC folders, and explaining how views, master views, and page requests are handled.

Almost two years ago I started thinking about rewriting the Lussumo Framework, the framework upon which Vanilla is built. After a year of heavy contemplation, I finally started development on the new version, which I have come to call “Garden”.

My concept for the Garden framework is not to be competition for the likes of The Zend Framework, CakePHP, or even CodeIgniter (to name a few of the other great PHP frameworks), but something both a little less and a little more. My idea was to create a framework that didn’t solve buy cialis generic problem, but just most of the buy cialis generic problems we face when developing simple web applications. I wanted to build a framework that had user and permission management built right in. I wanted to build a framework with which you could easily create new applications and throw them alongside any others – and all users, roles, permissions, preferences, plugins, and themes could play nice together.

I can safely say that I have accomplished that task.

Recently I had an active member of the Lussumo Community contact me and ask if his plugins for Vanilla 1 would work with Vanilla 2. It was hard to give him the answer that, no, buy cialis generic of the (over 400) plugins for Vanilla 1 would work with Vanilla 2. I had to explain to him that developing in Garden will be easier, faster, and take far less code than it used to. His questions made me realize that I need to step up and explain Garden to all of the great Lussumo Developers out there.

In this part of the Garden preview, I am going to give a brief overview of some of the main goals of Garden. In the parts to follow, I will go into great detail of each part of the framework, explaining the theories behind them and how they can be used by developers to build new applications, plugins and themes.

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In Vanilla 1 there were a number of ways that developers could add to the application. I called these and they fell into the categories of: extensions, themes, styles, and languages.

When I started thinking about how to add to Garden, I realized that I was missing a key ingredient: applications. Vanilla is just one application, and I wanted to be able to use Garden to do more than just Vanilla. I also realized that almost no-one ever worked with themes buy cialis generic, so I’ve taken the concept of themes, simplified it and munged it together with styles. Finally, I realized that the lay-person doesn’t really know what an extension is, but everyone knows what a plugin is.

So, in Garden, add-ons will fall into the following categories: applications, plugins, and themes. If you’re wondering what happened to languages, you’ll read about that in a little bit.

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Probably the biggest criticism of Vanilla 1 was that it slows down under heavy load. I absolutely refuse to give up on object-oriented programming in PHP, so I’ve been buy cialis generic working with the latest releases of PHP; taking advantage of it’s speed with OO programming. I’ve also done a ton of research on code optimization for PHP. Rest assured, Garden is buy cialis generic fast. But application speed isn’t where the conversation should end.

I’ve also worked very hard to produce libraries that are fast and easy to work with. I wanted it to take fewer lines of code to accomplish both difficult buy cialis generic common tasks. For example, I’ve completely rewritten the database libraries so that building queries is easier, and it integrates with the MVC code so that models are instantly created simply by referring to the tables they represent. This means that data validation can be automated based on the properties of columns in database tables – just one of the many places that Garden will speed up your development time.

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When I was writing Vanilla 1, I didn’t know what an MVC pattern was. Little did I know that I was re-inventing the wheel at the time. Vanilla 1 used a bloated, red-headed step-child of the MVC design pattern. Garden is still based on the MVC design pattern, but it is done with far less code and in a much more elegant way. When I began re-thinking the page delivery model for Garden, I decided to go out there and research what the competition was doing. I read books on design patterns, read blog entries about everything under the sun by developers from all around the world. I looked into every framework I could get my hands on.

I ended up being a little wowed by the simplicity of CakePHP and CodeIgniter’s approaches to MVC. In the end I’ve borrowed ideas from both and added a few of my own. The result is views that can be delivered in-page or via ajax popups. Dynamic content delivered in a myriad of ways. Fully integrated protection from exploits and CSRF attacks. Master/container views that allow theme authors to quickly and easily put Garden applications right into their own applications. Simple models that can be generated on the fly. And custom routing so that pointing users to different parts of your applications is dead simple.

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While I had done some very different things with roles & permissions in Vanilla 1, I had also painted myself into a corner that made expansion difficult. In Garden, adding new permissions is dead easy, and users can be assigned to more than just one role. There are many different ways to set up registration and add new users. Four out-of-the box options are: simple (apply and you’re in), captcha, administrative approval, and by invitation.

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While I believe that localization was one of the things I got right in Vanilla 1, it didn’t have any follow through. The result of this lack of follow-through is that Vanilla 1 is still released with just one language available. Another problem is that whenever the application changed, or new extensions were added, there would be the need for new translations to be in place – but no way of notifying the translation authors that these translations were needed.

In Garden, the localization files are roughly the same. One difference is that the folder name for a set of localization files is based on the already known and followed internationalization codes used everywhere on the internet. So, for example, the locale folder I’ve been working with is labeled “en-CA” for “Canadian English”. The major difference is that localization will no longer be represented on the add-ons site. Instead, the Lussumo community will be in charge of localization.

One of the many applications I am building with Garden (alongside Vanilla, of course) is a localization application that monitors any translation that is made by Garden and records it in a database. Any member of the community can then work on any set of locale definitions they want to. It will be a wiki-like handling of localization. Whenever a full set of translations is finished and approved by a group of members, it will be added to the appropriate application or plugin and be included in the downloadable application package.

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With literally years of deep pontification transformed into code, there is so much to tell you. I still haven’t even touched upon Garden’s error-handling, out-of-the-box friendly urls, new licensing model (still open source and free), database engine integrations, cache management, jQuery! I haven’t even mentioned menu organization, plugin management, enforced plugin and application requirements, automated setup and installation. And I have only hinted at the other applications that are coming along with garden besides Vanilla. I never even told you about the hosted solution I’ll be offering when Garden and Vanilla are released!

The long and short of it is that the hard work is done. Aside from cleanup and debugging, the Garden framework is up and running and I am now into application, plugin, and theme development. My hope is to have an entirely new lussumo.com launched within the first quarter of the new year. In the meantime, keep checking back here for more in-depth previews of Garden.