Mathias Bank

Es ist soweit, Drupal gibt es jetzt in der Version 6.0. Bin gespannt, wie das neue System aussieht. Hab bisher sehr gute Erfahrung mit dem System gemacht, es gehört sicher zu den besten Frameworks, die es gibt und die große Anzahl an verfügbaren Modulen macht die Erstellung von vielen unterschiedlichen Webseiten recht schön.

Der Grund, warum ich trotzdem lieber ein eigenes Framework verwende, lag bisher an der schlechten Objektorientierung von Drupal. Ich weiß, dass sich darüber die Geister scheiden, ich bin aber einfach ein großer Fan von sauberer Objektprogrammierung. Nichtsdestotrotz hat Drupal sehr viele interessante Eigenschaften. Und in der neuen Version kommen einige neue Punkte hinzu. Wie zu sehen ist, finde ich folgende Eigenschaften aus Programmiersicht sehr interessant:

• OpenID-Unterstützung im Core
• verbesserte Sicherheit durch Integration des PHP Filters
• Rollenbasierte Nutzerverwaltung

Ich denke, das System ist auf jeden Fall wieder ein Blick wert und wird sicher im einen oder anderen Projekt eingesetzt. Ob es jedoch mein eigenes Framework für mich ersetzen kann, ist die Frage. Die eigenen Kinder sind einfach mal die schönsten .

During the last months, I have created a new shop software. I think, that was really necessary. There are many shop systems, of course, but they are really terrible to use. So I have focused to create a shop system, which

• … completely realizes the MVC model: the data structure (database handling) is completely separated from the shop logic, which is separated from the templates and of course the behaviour (JavaScript) and the page design (CSS) is also separated.
• … is based on modules: I want to reuse my software wherever it is possible. There are three basic modules: UserManagement, UserAddressManagement and ShopManagement.
• … can be extended by writing new modules: The system uses an event handling structure. New modules can interact with current modules without changing current code.
• … uses current techniques: The shop uses PHP 5 which enables a really good object oriented way to code.
• … always checks user inputs: the system realizes a security class, which always checks user data. No database entry will be created unless the data is checked, the programmer does not need to do this manually.

I wanted a software, which is able to be customizable and which – of course – creates valid xhtml pages. The templates should be as powerful as possible to create every possible design but they also should be separated from logic to enable designers to write their own templates. So I have used basic PHP statements to realize these approaches:

<ul>
<? foreach ($data["objects"] as $object): ?>
<li>print an object.</li>
<? endforeach; ?>

Yesterday, the shop was published: Wolf-Terrararien – Shop. I had to use current page design and to import old data.

The shop is able

• to create static links
• to manage user accounts (incl. order management)
• to manage user addresses
• to interact with editland

I think, Mr. Wolf is very happy with his new shop and I’m sure, there will be interesting improvements and perhaps some new moduls.

There are a lot of HTML and XHTML courses online. Even CSS is reported and discussed at many websites. But what’s about PHP? I have just entered some search expressions in google to look for a good PHP course for a friend of mine. But unfortunatelly, I cannot find any.

So, I have decided to write a course in this blog. I think it’s a good possibility to show why PHP is my language of choice and to what a programmer has to look for.

The course will be written in this blog. (Nearly) Every day, I want to post some aspects of programming in PHP. It should be possible for everyone to learn PHP in this way. At each end, there will be some exercises to train, what we have learned.

[Update]

At php-q.net there seems to be a good tutorial, so I have not to do this again.