computers = bad, mmmkay
Having more and more trouble staying awake at work. it’s weird. not really going out, not really staying up late, but at work it’s hard to focus.
Been playing with a new PHP framework lately. It’s called Qcodo and it’s basically What I Was Looking For. I don’t believe I’ve written about what it was I was looking for, so here it is: most of my Web stuff is plug-and-chug with no real thinking or business rules or anything of that nature, so instead of spending a lot of time writing get/set methods in classes and re-implementing the same constructor over and over again, I wanted something that’d take a database definition (I wanted XML personally) and Just Deal With It and give me some classes and stuff to work with the data. Qcodo does that, but with some minor differences. The database definition is the database, so you have to have the DB created firstly. (I’d rather an XML DDL or something, just for the portability aspects of it.) Qcodo not only makes the data objects but also spits out a rough draft set of forms and such so you have an interface to work with the data Right Now. Plus, it has a templating engine thing called Qforms that encompasses things like editboxes with built-in data validation and grid views that automatically give you sorting and pagination and stuff.
It does have its niggling bits, though. The big huge one is the absolute lack of documentation. I can’t remember things so I usually have to have the PHP manual up or something when I’m starting on something new until I’ve got enough memorized to be comfortable. There’s nothing to have pulled up in Qcodo yet. The second is that I’d rather the core of the framework and stuff not be in the webroot. There’s a third too, but it’s not big - I’d like to have the Qforms controls be AJAXy but that’s coming. For something that’s still pretty early in its beta stages, though, it’s pretty impressive. I’m hoping to use it more as soon as I get more used to it.
Work needs naptime.