I want to choose ATK (http://agiletoolkit.org) as my framework for easily build the admin part, I have 2 questions.
In their site, I see that the last blog post was a year a go.
Is this project continuing?
Should I use this framework in the site AND the admin? I am a bit confused about using it in the site side? Or maybe I should use another framework (which will create an overhead)..
Edit
I am a developer that is coming from JAVA and .net mostly.
I am a freak of service reuse because I have an experience on a large scale projects.
I see that ATK4 is not a classic REST based.
Lets examine this situation if I may:
Just as an example, I have a registration form that has a very complex logic in pre-insert and post-insert.
So it means that I need to create a REST api for registration (with all the complex pre-post logic).
BUT! the crud operation will not be arware for this complex logic in it, so I am creating some sort of a pit-fall when I cant re-use CRUD operation from the site and vice versa.
I am use to create single service that is suitable with admin CRUD and site operation, this way you wont have duplicate invocations, and each operation is aware to the permissions you have.
Thanks
Site is now in the process of complete rewrite. Their blog never was active enough.
BUT this project is very alive and very active. For all news you should check these resources:
GitHub repository - https://github.com/atk4/atk4. As you can see there are new commits almost every day.
Google groups for discusions - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/agile-toolkit-devel Same story - new posts every day.
IRC - #atk4 at freenode
Stackoverflow - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/atk4
YouTube - video tutorials
some more resources for addons etc.
You can use ATK4 for whatever type of site you want. I guess it better suits for admin (backoffice) side, but can be used equally well in frontend too. It's just - learning curve can sometimes be not so short. On the other hand - when you get used to ATK4 style of coding, then it definitely sucks you in :))
Update on Agile Toolkit as of 2017:
In order to keep the best parts of ATK4 framework alive, I have started 2 open-source projects following best practices:
https://github.com/atk4/data - Agile Data - Refactor for models
https://github.com/atk4/ui - Agile UI - Refactor for UI
Additional resources (forum, blog, etc) can be found at http://agiletookit.org/.
Related
I have little by little built a website over the course of the past year and am now at a stage where the whole thing can go commercial, which means that I will face some tough questions regarding security, privacy, etc.
Since this is a situation where a hobby turned into a possible professional product, I am now rethinking how far I have to take this in order to really provide a product that is considered "safe" and stable.
The website was put together based on a Bootstrap 3 theme design, runs mostly on HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP with Mysqli interactions and naturally has a SSL certificate. About a dozen plugins from various websites such as datatables, PHPmailer, jQuery-bootstrap-upload, blueimp gallery, etc. do the things I need them to do and I have always paid attention to properly mysqli_real_escape input values and write error handlers for all interactions. In short, there is no real framework here, things are more thrown together.
I am now being challenged that this is not considered a safe/stable solution and instead should recreate the whole website based on the CakePHP framework, which is something I am not familiar with and will take a fair amount of time to get used to and will definitely screw up my timeline.
So in short what I am asking is this: How important is it for a small and relatively simple website (i really dont do any complex code here...) to be built on a framework such as CakePHP in order to be perceived as safe and secure?
I understand there is no real answer to this, but I was just wondering whether building on an established framework like CakePHP is considered the only way to go or if a custom made framework is acceptable.
Thanks for the advice.
I was in your situation a couple years ago. I had started a site that, in the first year had about ~50 unique visitors. The second year I had about ~1500 unique visitors. What does this mean to a developer.
Optimize the response time - caching.
You need to optimize how you fetch data. Can you cache some queries? - CakePHP comes with caching Redis, Memcached etc.
Multiple Datasources - ElasticSearch, Mysql, Redis
Now that my website is huge, visitors might start to demand more functionality from the website. How do i deal with multiple datasources? CakePHP offers ways to interact with multiple datasources like ElasticSearch, Mysql, Redis
Code maintenance - Raw code vs a Framework
Do I need to google, and stackoverflow to reinvent the wheel? CakePHP comes with the best templating system and helpers.
Cutting down on development time.
If I am coding everything myself - I will spend more time developing. Using CakePHP I spend more time improving my website's data.
Decoupling
Does my data need to be managed by Cakephp, can I use Django, REST APIs etc. In the end I decoupled my website. I use Django to manage data entry, and CakePHP to present the data to visitors using Django REST framework.
No one can tell you definitely use CakePHP. However CakePHP3 , in my professional opinion, has a short learning curve. Using namespaces you can still use your current code in CakePHP and transition slowly into using CakePHP fully. CakePHP documentation is very good. You should be able to get a basic site wrkoing within an hour.
I'm trying to develop a hybrid app which will deliver a range of simple teaching material to the user. I am planning on using Telerik App Builder in conjunction with Cordoba 3 to create the app. What I cannot decide is how best to package the actual content into the application. I'd like to achieve a separation of the content from the code, and just combine the two when building the delivery packages. (The content is being prepared by a subject matter expert.)
Is there a way I can use Cordova or Telerik AppBuilder to pre-populate a SQLite database as part of the app install process? Or am going about this in completely the wrong way? I have been researching this in the Telerik documentation but without success so far. If someone could point me towards a suitable example or even the correct places in the Telerik or Cordova docs I'd be very grateful!
I recently ran a techie webinar on the topic. The main idea is that you need a centralized system to host this content and this system needs to expose some kind of a service layer that will feed content to your app. To me this seems like a very growing market opportunity, but feels kinda the same as the web 1.0 days where all of us were trying to figure out how to feed cotnent to websites and everybody was building their own CMS in a way.
Telerik Backend Services provides an editing interface, so it can fit some requirements, but it's not a publishing system, plus you may not want to pay developer licenses to your back-end users or provide them with access. The premise of the webinar I am talking about was that we discussed how to integrate with another telerik product - Sitefinity to do this job for you instead. The first 20-25 minutes are an overview of the platfrom, so if you have seen it already, you can certainly jump to ~;0:25 to see the rest
http://www.sitefinity.com/campaigns/webinars/build-content-driven-mobile-apps
Now certainly it doesn't have to be Sitefinity or CMS for that matter, Sitefinity provides a bunch of App Builder related features that are handy, but you technically have a few options:
- Build your own applicaiton and back-end.
- Use any type of CMS or platform that will give your SMEs the back-end interface to publish and the service layer to expose to the app. In the webinar I also go through some neat tricks such as using push notifications upon publishing.
This way you get a clear separation of content and code - you can even get a separation of content structure and code, which is an idea i talk about in greater detail.
I hope this helps!
Svetla
My employer runs a website with a homebrewed CMS that it has outgrown. I would prefer to use Django, but since everything is already in PHP, and I know the Cakephp framework, I'm going to just rebuild it in Cake. I've already done the gap analysis between the current site and the Cake version and it looks doable.
However, I need the site to have a CMS and don't want to put one together myself. I'd rather not reinvent the wheel. Croogo seems like the most actively developed and positively reviewed Cake CMS, so I'm leaning in that direction.
The trouble is I can't find any detailed documentation of how Croogo handles the database relative to Cake. I understand there is a direct link between the two, but is that enough for me to just trust that I can easily take an existing Cake site and magically integrate that with Croogo? I have a strong feeling that it won't be that simple.
I plan on to creating a fake croogo site to try to look behind the curtain, but I'd rather not have to reverse engineer the whole thing. So, does anyway know a bit about my scenario or have a resource they can point me to?
I doubt I'm the only one who wants to migrate an existing site to Croogo.
It really isn’t that difficult to build something in CakePHP. As long as your database is normalised, and you have your models set up correctly, you can easily “bake” something specific to your needs. User authentication with bcrypt-hashed password is easy to add, as is authentication and ACL.
I have a starting point that covers the above that I use for each CakePHP project, and can quickly build bespoke websites in CakePHP with little effort, without having to shoe-horn it into a CMS or plugin. Once you go down that road and start working around a particular CMS or plugin, you’ll find yourself quickly in the same position (outgrowing your chosen CMS/plugin’s capabilities) as opposed to building something that’s fit for purpose.
I have only very basic experience with HTML/CSS and have quite a bit of experience with testing software and web apps from a consumer perspective. I'd love to launch a web application that plays nicely with Google services, similar to some of the apps you'd find on the Google Apps Marketplace, such as ManyMoon, time to note, Socialwok, etc. I'm a huge Google fan and would like to build something that's well integrated with other Google services.
If you were a total beginner and wanted to build a complex app like one of examples above (project management, CRM, etc), where would you start?
If you worked your ass off 18 hours a day, 24/7, how fast could you do it?
I've dabbled into various languages and development frameworks, and read about which apps are using what languages but it's hard to figure out what would be most beneficial to jump into. Ruby on Rails, PHP, Google Web Toolkit, AppEngine. The list goes on and on. I want to be able to build and launch my own scalable web app.
Thanks.
One bit of advice: There is no shortcut for proper experience. It took me 4 years to come to a point where I can build enterprise level web apps - even though I had the dream of building one immediately, right from the beginning. Start small and build your way up.
Even though I did hate this advice when I was receiving it... Don't try to build the next Facebook platform right now.
Now, to answer your question:
Skills:
You must be absolutely clear about server-client interaction with respect to HTTP. You will never understand AJAX fully without understanding HTTP and behind the scenes of browsers. Note: being clear and knowing everything are two different things. Be clear about HTTP.
Learn about HTML/CSS and JavaScript standards to some extent to know that they bahave differently in different browsers. In the grand scheme of things, they are not that important if you are okay with some framework that handles these for you (I recommend JQuery and JQuery UI).
Learn a little about Linux, Apache, PHP.
How to go about it:
To develop web-apps, you could start with the LAMP stack - Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP.
First build a small web app that does something trivial - like saving and retrieving user's stuff using AJAX and a nice UI or something. I'd recommend jQuery and jQueryUI for JavaScript and UI frameworks.
Then, build a small web app that just gets data from some Google service, given a user's credentials.. I am not Google expert but I guess Google provides APIs for some services(?).
Then build an app where two people can share their data coming from a Google's service or something to that effect.
Then add your own fancy stuff.
It goes on like that.
If you are a .Net person, you could go with.. Windows + IIS + MS SQL Server + ASP.Net3.5/VB/C#. Guess what? StackOverflow is build on that stack :)
Learning about and using an MVC framework is also a good idea - ASP.Net MVC or something similar for PHP.
Minor clarification - By Google-friendly did you mean SEO-friendly? If so, Google-friendly and web-app don't go well together.
It makes sense to build a Google-friendly website not a web-app.
I would start by
brainstorming a hands-on project
identify the skills you will need to achieve it
learn them as you work through the project
set progress goals and celebrate small victories
For most people 18 hrs/day 24/7 sounds a little overly optimistic. A reasonable goal would be to form an interesting project idea and research the needed skills the first week, work through a few tutorials and maybe apply your own functionality the second week, build something 'complete' the third week, then take a step back and take another look at your original goal.
As far as choosing a project, I find a notepad helps. I'll be somewhere and think, 'wouldn't it be nice if...' and I'll go look for a solution that provides that 'what if' and find it doesn't exist. So there you go.
I would also have a look to one of the top voted questions here on Stack Overflow:
What should a developer know before building a public web site.
I was trying develop a website with Cakephp and Joomla... But lately I've been founding a lot of barriers that create difficulties implementing things that would have been a lot easier if I only developped using one of the components.
So, in your point of view (as someone with more experience than me), is it worth to integrate CakePhp with a CMS?
If yes, what do you think its the best and easier CMS to integrate with?
Or use Croogo (http://croogo.org/)
A CakePHP CMS. I like Croogo's implementation more than Wildflower and the admin UI looks a bit similar to Wordpress.
From my point of view i wouldn't try. I think there would be a lot of crossover functionality and a lot of conflict. Either use Cake and write a CMS and the other elements you want or pick a CMS and develop the other elements you want as add-ins/plugins.
Joomla, Drupal, Xaraya, Expression-engine etc are all extensible so pick the one that is the best fit and has the ability to be extended or maybe already has plugins you require.
Another option would be to use Joomla as the CMS and Cake for the other element you want, keep them as separate entities but skin then identically and make the navigation seamless. In this case about the only thing you would need to integrate would be state.
There are some out there already that are on Cake from the ground up. Wildflower for example
http://wf.klevo.sk/
I have a cakephp site that is running wordpress in it's public_html/blog folder and it is doing great.
They are basically two separate sites, with two separate backend but it is fairly easy to create a model for the wordpress database if you want to pull in any data (eg. posts, pages, comments) and use it in the cakephp site.
As far a integrating the two I don't think it is a good idea if it needs to be a seamless experience for the backend users, most frontend users won't notice the difference because you can use the same style sheet and images.
If you want any more about my experiences with the combination let me know!
Cakeui is a rip of Croogo. Infinitas CMS could be what you're looking for if you want a full blown application or check this site for a list of good CakePHP Cms
As the developer of Croogo, I will be biased and recommend you to check it out at http://croogo.org. It comes with a web based installer too and you should be up and running in minutes.
Another CakePHP based CMS is Infinitas which has more features (including shopping cart). Both are based on the latest version of the framework (1.3 at the moment) and are actively developed.
I wrote a lot of CMS type apps with Cake and was thinking along the same lines. I've tried Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress but still had a dirty feeling in my mouth that I was failing by using Cake just for the sake of it or vice versa.
The most important common denominator, in my experience, is the back-end. It is re-used most often, but gets the least input.
Now I have built my own CMS with CakePHP. The intention is to 'opensource' it, but it's not quite ready yet.
I don't think it is worth the headache trying to combine, then maintain Cake and a 3rd party CMS. Save your best modules and components and build your own. The blog tutorial will give you a good head start and you can cherrypick what you like from other sources, rewriting it to suit your ideals. The benefit is you will then know the CMS inside out and have it working just the way you want. You'll learn a lot along the way as well.