Configuration Principles in symfony

For many symfony configuration files, the same setting can be defined at different levels:

• The default configuration is located in the framework
• The global configuration for the project (in config/)
• The local configuration for an application (in apps/APP/config/)
• The local configuration restricted to a module (in apps/APP/modules/MODULE/config/)

Yes, three levels of config folders on top of the default (which is hidden deep inside of /lib where it belongs). That’s a good thing in that it allows for a lot of modularity and module-specific behaviors. But it’s a bad thing when you edit the file at the wrong place in the hierarchy as I did today. SVN helped me bail out of that particular fuck up.

I like the CoC approach – not being a trained programmer I do things intuitively and defining conventions is a very intuitive approach. Just takes a little pattern recognition to see what’s going on. Humans are good at that. The flip side is that convention over configuration is a my way or the highway proposition. If you don’t like it you may want to keep hacking your own code or maybe use Zend Framework which is not convention-driven.

So, I’m hanging in there with symfony after two days. It’ll probably take a month before I either jump all in or give it all up. We’ll see which.

Symfony refactor of the Zend Quick Start Tutorial

My friends & colleagues have used Zend Framework (ZF) for a while, and I do my best to avoid it and use the Symfony PHP framework. Initially I was open to learning ZF, I was just curious why people liked it. The more questions I asked, the more I realized there were no good answers other than standards for standards sake, and variations on the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

I built a site using ZF some time ago and felt guilty about how little I enjoyed it. Symfony is not as simple as CodeIgniter or even Cake. But it doesn’t feel clever for the sake of being clever. The focus on getting things done and doing them properly is pretty tight. I may never get some of the people I work with to buy into this but I can live with that. There will be plenty of opportunities for me to build some skills with this toolset.

DHTML eXtensions – professional AJAX components for advanced Web UI – in your PHP, JSP, .NET, ASP and ColdFusion applications

jQuery: The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library

jQuery Grid Plugin

Ext JS – Client-side JavaScript Framework

Prototype JavaScript framework: Easy Ajax and DOM manipulation for dynamic web applications

script.aculo.us – web 2.0 javascript – For prototype

The other approach is to have someone teach you the principles of how it works and then spend 15 or 20 minutes systematically getting your wheel true and round. I’ve tried both and I recommend doing it this way.

CSS is just like this. You can get your page to look the way you want through trial and error and piling on more classes, adding more divs, and generally making a mess of things. It’ll take a long time but in the end it might work. Or you can learn the CSS Specificity rules and the principles behind CSS selectors and get it done in a fraction of the time and with much cleaner code. Again, I’ve tried both approaches and I’d recommend the second.

This article in Smashing Magazine is a good read and a great reference. I’m going to keep it handy. I predict the process of building my next iPhone web app will take a lot less time and be a little more sane.

Taming Advanced CSS Selectors | CSS | Smashing Magazine