So I’ve been asked several times about the move I made for PHPDeveloper.org from the Zend Framework over to Solar with the main question being “why?”

Well, I hate to break it to any of the framework zealots out there but the only real reason I had for doing it was the old “try something new” idea that floats around every so often. Yes, I know the site was working just fine under the old Zend Framework code (and yes, I do mean old – I think it was a few versions before 1.0 even) but I get the itch to do something new every once and a while. Some people redesign – I’ve done that too – and others rewrite things from scratch.

I took the opportunity to really look at the core of the site, stripping out all of the extra little “goodies” that I’d hacked in to the ZF version to get various things working. I came back to the primary focus of the site – to provide the latest news information quickly and easily – and made sure that all new code pointed toward that goal. The overall concept is a simple one really: it’s essentailly a blog whos topic just happens to be the goings-on of the PHP community as a whole. All it really needed to do was show the news items, serve up a feed and provide an administrative way for me to add new posts to the system.

I developed the Zend Framework version many moons ago and I almost don’t remember how it was all set up. It took me a bit to get back into it to see how things were structured, but in the end, most of that was tossed and replaced wth some sleek Solar code.

One of the biggest things that I was happy with in the new rewrite was the way that the news information is fetched from a the database. There’s no longer function calls like “getMainNews()” or “getNewsDetail()”. Instead they were replaced by a fetch function that takes in parameters on the object (sort of like the Command design pattern) and applies them to the current query.

For example, I make a call to the “setProperties” function of the NewsAPI object to tell it that I want a type of “where” with a value of “ID=1234”. The fetch function then looks through the properties and applies the operation to the query. The result is a function that can be called the same way every time with the same sort of output. The only difference is in how much/what kind of output there is.

I was concerned about some of the performance issues I was seeing on my server when I made the switch. Some of it was my own fault – forgetting to cache the feed instead of geenrating it, not adding the spam/IP filtering to ward off some of the spammers – but there was still a slow down when the load started to get high. I knew Solar could handle it (it had done it wonderfully on the dev server) so it had to be something else. The dedicated machine I’d been using was nice, but was showing some of its age. I decided to buy a slice from Slicehost and set up shop over there with only PHPDev running on it. Turns out that it wasn’t the new Solar version that was the issue, it was the server. In fact, I’d almost be willing to not cache the feed anymore – the performance is that good.

My last little part of the transition is writing the backend command-line scripts that I use to do some automatic things and the site will be back and complete and 100% Solar-ized.

I know there’s some things I didn’t cover here, so if you have any questions, leave a comment or drop me a line: enygma at phpdeveloper dot org. I’m more than happy to talk Solar with you. And if you’re interested and want to chat with other Solar folks (including some of the main developers behind it), come over to the freenode network – irc.freenode.net – and pop in to #solarphp and say “hi”.

SolarPHP.com

So, after getting started with the Solar framework, I figured that I’d keep going and try to really work up an application with it and get familiar with the framework. A next obvious step (well, to me it’s obvious) is to dive into using the form functionality that comes with it. I started small, but eventually worked into a standard part of just about any application these days.

Like learning anything, there were some growing pains as I figured out how to work with it (many thanks to the guys in #solarphp on Freenode) and how to get the following code up and working. The Solar_Auth component makes it simple to drop on top of whatever kind of authentication system (LDAP, ini files, htpasswd) but the method I chose is one of the most common I’ve seen – authentication from a database table. The Solar_Auth_Adapter_Sql handles most of the work and makes defining the table a snap.

Let’s start with the entire code for the controller, User.php:

[php]

class MySite_App_User extends MySite_App_Base {

protected $_layout = ‘default’;
protected $_action_default = ‘index’;
protected $_view=”;

public function actionIndex(){ }
public function actionLogin(){

$sql=Solar::factory(‘Solar_Sql’);
$config=array(
‘adapter’=>’Solar_Auth_Adapter_Sql’,
‘config’=>array(
‘sql’ =>$sql,
‘table’ =>’users’,
‘handle_col’=>’username’,
‘passwd_col’=>’password’,
‘uid_col’ =>’ID’,
‘process_login’=>’submit login’
)
);
$auth = Solar::factory(‘Solar_Auth’,$config);
$auth->start();

$form = Solar::factory(‘Solar_Form’);
$form->setElements(array(
‘handle’=>array(
‘type’=>’text’,
‘label’=>’username:’,
‘require’=>true,
‘valid’=>array(
array(‘notBlank’,’Please enter a username!’)
)
),
‘passwd’=>array(
‘type’=>’password’,
‘label’=>’password:’,
‘require’=>true,
‘valid’=>array(
array(‘notBlank’,’Please enter a password!’)
)
),
‘process’=>array(
‘type’=>’submit’,
‘value’=>’submit login’
)
));
$request = Solar::factory(‘Solar_Request’);
$process = $request->post(‘process’);
if($process==’submit login’){
$auth->processLogin();
$form->populate();
if($form->validate() && $auth->isValid()){
$this->output.=’logging in…’;
}else{
$this->output.=’Invalid login!’;
}
}
$form->feedback=NULL;
$this->forms[‘test_form’]=$form;
}
}

[/php]

Now, let’s go through this piece by piece and make it a bit more clear for the non-Solar using crowd (of which I used to belong to).

We’ve defined the controller’s class as extending the MySite_App_Base (see the previous article as to how this is for templating the site) and define some basic properties for the layout/template to use, the default action, and the view to use by default. Below that, there’s two other properties – forms and output. The second is just a general output value that’s used in the /User/View/login.php file as a message. The first, however, is a special container for our form. Later on, you’ll see where the Solar_Form instance is appended to this property and how it’s executed in the view.

Since we’re only really worried about the login form, it’s the only action that’s built out. The function starts by defining the configuration for the Solar_Auth object we’re going to create. The “adapter” setting tells it we want to use the SQL functionality and the “config” array gives the details. The only tricky parts about these values is in the process_login settings. This will need to correspond to the value of your submit button to make things work correctly.

The next two big parts of the action are the creation of the Solar_Auth object (with our $config options) and the Solar_Form object. The first is what handles all of the validation and authentication functionality and the second is the object around which we build our form. That’s what the setElements function is for…

The setElements function is flexible, but I used it to contain a series of arrays that each represent an element in the form. The keys are the element names – “handle”, “passwd” and “process” – and each is a subarray with several settings defined inside. Things like the type of element, the text to have before it (Solar_Form does a basic layout), if the field is required, and how to validate it. On both the username (handle) and password (passwd) fields, I added a simple notBlank with a message to ensure that there’s something in the field. The last item, “process”, is the simplest.

Now the real fun begins – we have our form defined and the $auth object made so we can validate the username and password that’s entered, now we just need to grab the results of the form’s submission and perform the check. We can do this by creating a Solar_Request instance with direct access to the HTTP request. The value we need to watch for on the submit (the value of the “process” form element) is pulled into the $process variable via a call to post() on the request object. The “if” statement then checks for the value of it and, if it’s set, tries to perform the validation.

The processLogin() method called on the $auth object is what does the work here. It runs the check and then, if everything’s okay, sets the status property of the $auth object to “VALID”. The populate() function just repopulates the form’s values back into it (just in case it fails) and the validate() that’s called checked our form’s validation (like the notBlanks we added earlier). The isValid method called on the $auth object checks to see if the status property has been set to “VALID” indicating that the authentication was a success.

The next part is simple – if it’s a success, it outputs a success message and if not, tells the user that it was an “invalid login”. Right below the if statement is a handy little setting that I like because I want to control things in my form – the feedback setting. If set to false, it can silence the feedback that Solar automatically gives.

Remember how I said that the $forms property would come in handy later on? Well, the last part of this script is where it’s at. The Solar_Form object is appended to the $forms array, a value passed out into the view.

Speaking of the view, let’s see how this is all outputted:

[php]

echo $this->escape($this->output);
echo $this->form($this->forms[‘test_form’]);

[/php]

Is this a great framework or what? That’s all it takes to fire off the form in your View and the rest is handled behind the scenes in the controller. There was also someone mentioning the other day (in #solarphp on Freenode – I just can’t promote them enough!) that was talking about using the Solar_User class to do much of the same thing. I opted for Solar_Auth mainly because there were just more docs for it on the Solar website, making it easier to get into. Might have to try that one next though….

In an effort to get to know as much of the technology out there, I wanted to branch out in my framework knowledge and try something I hadn’t looked much into yet – the Solar framework (PHP5). I’ve worked with both the Zend Framework and CakePHP on previous sites, so I wanted to see how they compared. The Solar framework, worked up by Paul Jones and team, provides much of the same functionality as the other two frameworks and is even based around the same structure – Model/View/Controller – to get the job done.

Since there’s no time like the present and no better way to learn how to use a tool than to just jump right in and get started, I looked up the great Getting Started section of the Solar manual to get on my way. It’s a great little section jam-packed with all the info that you’ll need to get started. I do want to, however, go back over my experience with it all as another example of how I set it up and got it working for my little application.

First of, obviously, you’ll need the latest version of the framework on your machine to get started. Unzip it in a place outside of the document root for where you’ll be building your application. This makes it easier if there’s others developers on the box that want to use it later on. Then, when you update the library, you don’t have to do it in ten different locations.

First off, you’ll need to set up your configuration file – you can put this just about anywhere really, but outside the document root is suggested since it could contain username/password information for your application. My document root is: /home/website_htdocs/sampleApp and my config file, Solar.config.php is located in /home/website_htdocs. Here’s the contents:

[php]
$config=array();

//Base action href
$config[‘Solar_Uri_Action’][‘path’]=’/’;

//Base public directory href
$config[‘Solar_Uri_Public’][‘path’]=’/public’;
$config[‘Solar_Controller_Front’][‘default’]=’index’;
$config[‘Solar_Controller_Front’][‘classes’]=array(
‘Solar_App’,
‘SampleApp_App’
);
$config[‘Solar_Sql’]=array(
‘adapter’ => ‘Solar_Sql_Adapter_Mysql’,
‘host’ => ‘localhost’,
‘user’ => ‘dbuser’,
‘pass’ => ‘dbpass’,
‘name’ => ‘sampleDB’
);

//Done!
return $config;
[/php]

The file is made up of the $config array with various values – among them the Solar_Uri_Action (the base action location) and the Solar_Uri_Public (the base for the public directory). That first option (Uri_Action) can be thought of the more “external” of the two. It tells the framework which URL the site will be using as a base. In my examples, I’m using mod_rewrite to handle the redirect of everything back down to the Front Controller (an index.php file that handles the routing), so I have it set to the root or “/”. Now, the Uri_Public setting is a little different story. This one is more “internal”, a setting that’s used to point the framework at the location of a public directory it can use to store things like CSS or Javascript files (and where anyone using Solar on the site) can use it too. I have it set to “/public” to point to a symlink that’s in my document root. Since Solar is installed to /home/website_htdocs/Solar, I made the link like this:

[php]
ln -s /home/website_htdocs/Solar/Solar/App/Public public
[/php]

This points a symlink of “public” to the Public directory over in the Solar installation. This is handy for working with shared files and provides us a location so we’re not polluting the views and all with unneeded code.

With the config file and symlink in place, the next step is the Front Controller. This is a PHP file that Solar uses to define a few more things and start up the framework to handle the requests coming in. Here’s what mine looks like:

[php]
set_include_path(‘/home/website_htdocs/Solar:/home/website_htdocs/SampleApp’);

require_once(‘Solar.php’);
Solar::start(‘/home/website_htdocs/Solar.config.php’);

$front=Solar::factory(‘Solar_Controller_Front’);
$front->display();

Solar::stop();
[/php]

There’s two main things set here – the include path (to define where our Solar and application directories are) and the start() call with the path to the config file created earlier.

You notice the “sampleApp” in the examples above – that’s the name of the example application I’ve worked up. It’s nothing special, but it does follow with the structure they suggest for using Solar. To contain all of the files, we’ll make a SampleApp directory in the document root of our site with a few files and directories under it:

App
  /Base
  /Base.php
  /Base/Helper
  /Base/Layout
  /Base/Locale
  /Base/Model
  /Base/View
  /Index
  /Index.php
  /Index/Helper
  /Index/Layout
  /Index/Locale
  /Index/Model
  /Index/View

I know that looks like a lot of stuff, but most of those directories won’t even be touched. We’re only really worried about a few things. First off, let’s look what this all means. Each of the controllers have a PHP file in the App directory. In our case, we have a Base.php and Index.php file for those two controllers. Base is a special example that allows for cross-controller file use and communication. So for our example, the only thing in here is:

[php]
class SampleApp_App_Base extends Solar_Controller_Page {
// nothing really needed here, unless you want
// shared methods and properties too
}
[/php]

This just makes the controller and extends the regular Solar controller. We’ll come back to the Base stuff in a second – for now, lets talk about the Index.php file:

[php]
Solar::loadClass(‘Solar_Controller_Page’);
class MySite_App_Index extends SampleApp_App_Base {

protected $_layout = ‘default’;
protected $_action_default = ‘index’;
protected $_view=”;
var $res;

public $output = ”;

function _setup(){
Solar::register(‘sql’, ‘Solar_Sql’);
}

public function actionIndex() {
$select=Solar::factory(‘Solar_Sql_Select’);
$select->from(‘test_tbl’,array(‘*’));
$res=$select->fetch(‘all’);
$this->res=$res;
$this->output = ‘this isdsds my example’;
}

}
[/php]

This is where the action happens in our little application. The best part of it all is that, way back in the configuration file (remember Solar.config.php?) we set up a default controller to run when one’s not specified – “index”. That means that, when people just hit the domain (like http://www.foo.com versus http://www.foo.com/pageName) they’ll get what’s in our Index controller.

So, what is in there? Well, lets look at the different parts. Our class extends the Base class instead of the normal Solar_Controller_Page so that we can use the things in the Base directories without any other special code. Because of this, we can use the layout defined in $_layout. Layouts allow for things like site templates without having to add the header/footer to each of the views for all of the controllers. The value, “default” corresponds to a PHP file, default.php, that’s located in /App/Base/Layout. Here’s what it contains:

[php]

imsothere.net
script(‘scripts/jquery/jquery.js’); ?>

layout_content;
?>

$(‘#mine’).append(‘

test

‘);

[/php]

This is pulled almost directly from their example with a few slight adjustments. One of the things that I wanted to do with my application was to use jQuery to handle some of the advanced Javascript. Because of this, I needed to include it in all of my pages. Naturally, in the layout is the perfect place. So I went to the jQuery site and grabbed the latest copy of their library. Now, remember that symlink we made a little while back – well, we’re going to go into that directory (you should see other directories inside it like scripts, images and styles) and inside of the scripts directory, make a jquery directory and put the file in there. That’ll match up with our example HTML, but you can always move it around to fit your needs. In our layout file above, you can see where it’s calling the script() function to grab that library and output an HTML tag for it.

The other missing piece to this puzzle is the view for the Index controller itself. The framework knows enough to apply the default template because of the value in $_layout, but it sill needs the value for layout_content to put in there. That’s why we need to make a view in /App/Index/View called index.php with the following content:

[php]
echo $this->escape($this->output);
echo “

"; print_r($this->res); echo "

“;
[/php]

You can match up the “output” and “res” properties from our actionIndex in the controller above. This is all packaged up and pushed into the layout and outputted. The script block at the bottom of the layout is just some Javascript using jQuery that adds a row to the table above it (I wanted a simple test to check if it was included and working correctly).

Finally, we get to the last piece of this mini application – the database connection. Now, you’ll remember way back in the config file, we defined some parameters:

[php]
$config[‘Solar_Sql’]=array(
‘adapter’ => ‘Solar_Sql_Adapter_Mysql’,
‘host’ => ‘localhost’,
‘user’ => ‘dbuser’,
‘pass’ => ‘dbpass’,
‘name’ => ‘sampleDB’
);
[/php]

Aren’t you glad that this isn’t in the document root? So, these set the different values your script will need to access your database – in this case, a local MySQL one. Setting all of this up here frees you up to only have to work with the objects in your controller:

[php]
$select=Solar::factory(‘Solar_Sql_Select’);
$select->from(‘test_tbl’,array(‘*’));
$res=$select->fetch(‘all’);
$this->res=$res;
[/php]

This example pulls the data from a test table named, creatively, test_tbl and pulls it into an array. This array is then pulled into the “res” property and added to the output of the view (as located in the View for Index).

So, there it is – that’s my experience so far with the Solar framework. It’s a little different than the other two frameworks, but I think so far, I like it a little more. It has a little lighter feel to it and doesn’t seem so much like someone dumped a toolbox over your head and told you to make sense of it all. Unfortunately, there’s still some of a learning curve to Solar. Once you get outside of the API docs on the site, there’s not a whole lot in the way of documentation. Thankfully, there’s always the guys in #solarphp on the Freenode IRC network to run to with questions.

Oh, and did I mention that the time from downloading the framework and getting all of this up and working was about 4-5 hours? Definitely works for me 🙂