Plugins for php frameworks

A week or so ago I came across django-monetize. It’s a plugin for the django python framework which makes it quick and easy to display adverts on a site. As far as I can see there is nothing stunningly new about it but at the same time I can see how it would speed up development. It’s a good simple wheel that should save you from reinventing a wheel for each project you work on. This got me thinking about php frameworks.

I’m most familiar with Zend framework (ZF), so if I’ve missed something interesting in one of the other frameworks please let me know in the comments, but ZF doesn’t seem to have anything like this. Going off at a tangent for a moment if you consider yourself a baker or would like to learn more about baking stick around (or skip) to the end where there is something you may be interested in. Also, I have to say I find the idea of “baking a CakePHP app” very satisfying. Solar developers produce solar systems which sounds equally exciting. What’s up with ZF? Anyway, back to the point . . .

The Magento eCommerce system could be considered to be a “plugin” for ZF and wildflower is a timely example of a CMS system based on CakePHP and I'm sure there are dozens of other blogs, CMSs, forums and wiki's based on other frameworks but these aren't really what I'm thinking about. There are a variety of different tasks, smaller tasks, in any moderately complex project which could be handled by 'plugins'. An emailing system with double opt-in, templating, tracking, unsubscribe and bounce handling might be a possibility. Site registration with signup, sign-in, signout, recover password and email confirmation might also be a possible though this might be reaching the point where the difficulty in customising reaches the difficulty in setting a system up from scratch.

I do think that Magento and similar projects is stretching beyond breaking the idea of a plugin but there may be instances where it makes sense. One of the issues I've had with projects like phpBB and wordpress is that they only play nicely with other projects if they're in charge. Being able to take eCommerce, forum and blog projects and slap them all on top of one framework, all working from one authentication layer with similar templating systems could be a refreshing change.

This post has been little more than a brain dump but I think it presents an interesting possibility. I'm going to continue thinking about which bits of functionality can be sensibly forked off into a separate system. If you have any ideas I would love to read them in the comments.

Baking

Earlier on I said there would be something for bakers and/or those wanting to learn to bake. At the tail end of last month (where has September gone?!) I was approached by the folks over at packt publishing about reviewing “CakePHP Application Development”. Unfortunately I didn’t feel I had the time to do it justice so I had to pass. If this sounds like a book you may be interested in you have a couple of options for finding out more. There is a chapter[pdf] available for free online and Jonathan Snook has a review up..