FoRMAiD

Active development stopped in 2012, because its roadmap was obsoleted by frameworks like Drupal and Symfony2.

Active development stopped in 2012, because its roadmap was obsoleted by frameworks like Drupal and Symfony2.

It took some time, but here it is, the first release of FoRMAiD. The last few months I've been cleaning up code, adding documentation and converting the code to apply with the PEAR coding standard. This is all finished now, so I felt that the FoRMAiD framework was ready for a first beta release.

It took some time, but here it is, the first release of FoRMAiD. The last few months I've been cleaning up code, adding documentation and converting the code to apply with the PEAR coding standard. This is all finished now, so I felt that the FoRMAiD framework was ready for a first beta release.

Preparing for a first bèta release, the code is being converted to comply with PEAR coding style. Applying correct indenting and spacing is finished now, renaming the classes, methods and variables to camelCase is ongoing. A great help in ... [More] converting to PEAR coding style and in improving the code base in general is using tools like [PHP Code Sniffer](http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_CodeSniffer/docs "PHP Code Sniffer") (detecting coding style issues) and [PHP Mess Detector](http://phpmd.org/ "PHP Mess Detector") (looking for unused vars and methods, checking for code complexity). A [Jenkins](http://jenkins-ci.org/ "Jenkins Continuous Integration Server") service, which runs these checks regularly, makes some nice graphs showing the progress and the work that's still to be done.  [PhpDocumentor](http://www.phpdoc.org/ "PhpDocumentor 2"), generating [source code documentation](http://formaid.sourceforge.net/docs) from the code, is a great help as well. In combination with Code Sniffer, you get an idea of what's documented already and what still needs some work. It also provides a nice [class diagram](http://formaid.sourceforge.net/docs/graph_class.html), showing the relation and inheritance between the different classes. While going through the code, cleaning it up, some possible improvements were spotted. Both in coding style, f.e. making if statements less complex, or class design, refactoring a few methods by moving some common functionality to a parent class or method. But also in updating the code to implement developments in PHP language, or in general software development practises. One of the things that needs some reviewing are the access levels (public, protected or private) for class methods and properties. Another example, when the first classes of this project were created way back in 2006, PHP 4.* was still current and abstract classes were not added to the language yet. Nowadays, OOP support in PHP has greatly improved, so the classes need a bit of a overhaul. Recently I learned about OOP design patterns, so a few classes will be adapted to serve as a singleton, while others already seemed to implement a few patterns in some way. As the framework is being developed more and used in some of my own applications, I notice that the framework could do with more abstraction. What started first as a small framework to generate web forms and tables will probably shift towards a data abstraction framework in the future that sits between a storage layer (in a database, an xml file, session variables, ...) and the output, being it a web page, a web form or a JSON object serving an AJAX call. So there is still some work ahead and some plans with the project, but first all hands on deck for the next milestone, a first bèta release. [Less]

Preparing for a first bèta release, the code is being converted to comply with PEAR coding style. Applying correct indenting and spacing is finished now, renaming the classes, methods and variables to camelCase is ongoing. A great help in converting ... [More] to PEAR coding style and in improving the code base in general is using tools like [PHP Code Sniffer](http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_CodeSniffer/docs "PHP Code Sniffer") (detecting coding style issues) and [PHP Mess Detector](http://phpmd.org/ "PHP Mess Detector") (looking for unused vars and methods, checking for code complexity). A [Jenkins](http://jenkins-ci.org/ "Jenkins Continuous Integration Server") service, which runs these checks regularly, makes some nice graphs showing the progress and the work that's still to be done.  [PhpDocumentor](http://www.phpdoc.org/ "PhpDocumentor 2"), generating [source code documentation](http://formaid.sourceforge.net/docs) from the code, is a great help as well. In combination with Code Sniffer, you get an idea of what's documented already and what still needs some work. It also provides a nice [class diagram](http://formaid.sourceforge.net/docs/graph_class.html), showing the relation and inheritance between the different classes. While going through the code, cleaning it up, some possible improvements were spotted. Both in coding style, f.e. making if statements less complex, or class design, refactoring a few methods by moving some common functionality to a parent class or method. But also in updating the code to implement developments in PHP language, or in general software development practises. One of the things that needs some reviewing are the access levels (public, protected or private) for class methods and properties. Another example, when the first classes of this project were created way back in 2006, PHP 4.* was still current and abstract classes were not added to the language yet. Nowadays, OOP support in PHP has greatly improved, so the classes need a bit of a overhaul. Recently I learned about OOP design patterns, so a few classes will be adapted to serve as a singleton, while others already seemed to implement a few patterns in some way. As the framework is being developed more and used in some of my own applications, I notice that the framework could do with more abstraction. What started first as a small framework to generate web forms and tables will probably shift towards a data abstraction framework in the future that sits between a storage layer (in a database, an xml file, session variables, ...) and the output, being it a web page, a web form or a JSON object serving an AJAX call. So there is still some work ahead and some plans with the project, but first all hands on deck for the next milestone, a first bèta release. [Less]

After renaming the project to FoRMAiD, some other changes were done : - convert the Subversion repository to Git - migrated to the new project layout on Sourceforge - FoRMAiD has a logo now! And a new website layout : ... [More] http://formaid.sourceforge.net/ - FoRMAiD goes social : it has a page on Facebook and one on Google+ - started with applying PEAR coding style - Code documentation got updated, phpDocumentor 2.0 is now used to generate it : http://formaid.sourceforge.net/docs/ [Less]

After renaming the project to FoRMAiD, some other changes were done : - convert the Subversion repository to Git - migrated to the new project layout on Sourceforge - FoRMAiD has a logo now! And a new website layout : http://formaid.sourceforge.net/ ... [More] - FoRMAiD goes social : it has a page on Facebook and one on Google+ - started with applying PEAR coding style - Code documentation got updated, phpDocumentor 2.0 is now used to generate it : http://formaid.sourceforge.net/docs/ [Less]

Work on the first release continues and also a roadmap was created, defining what will be included in the first beta, and what features will be included in future releases. These features have to be finished before the first release : * Database ... [More] class * Rename some filenames, classes and methodes * global config file - for database connection, debug and error handling settings, ... * Create usage example For an extensive overview of features and their progress you can check the page on the wiki : https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/damafra/index.php?title=Roadmap [Less]

Work on the first release continues and also a roadmap was created, defining what will be included in the first beta, and what features will be included in future releases. These features have to be finished before the first release : * ... [More] Database class * Rename some filenames, classes and methodes * global config file - for database connection, debug and error handling settings, ... * Create usage example For an extensive overview of features and their progress you can check the page on the wiki : https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/damafra/index.php?title=Roadmap [Less]