What is PICKLES?
The whole point behind PHP with PICKLES was for me (Josh Sherman) to take a decade of PHP experience and a dozen or so of my own websites (all running on different but similar custom systems of my own design) and build a new framework rapid development system that would be flexible enough to run all of my sites off of a single shared codebase. PICKLES runs in such a way that the core files are completely separate from the site code it's serving. So much so, that the core files should never really need to be accessed after installation (unless you want to void your warranty and/or make a global change to all of your sites), and each site you have running will be nicely packaged in a directory all it's own. This keeps your sites simple and tidy with no duplicated code for each site! In a site's directory modules (pages) are kept seperate from templates and everything is ran through a single entry point controller.
Okay, but why?
Now I know you're wondering, "why didn't you just use one of the pre-existing and already established PHP frameworks that are out there?" I do have a handful of reasons for that, but those are personal gripes based on a limited number of experiences and I won't being going into detail about them. The main reason for developing my own framework is that I am, and also have been, a very do it yourself type when it comes to coding, and typically very proud of my coding accomplishments. Also, because all of the sites I had previously written shared a lot of the same concepts and in some cases, the same bits of code, it made a heck of a lot more sense for me to develop a new system based around some of the better concepts from previous outings than to rebuild my sites inside of another framework.
Get the facts!
Some of these may not be entirely accurate until a formal release is issued.
- PICKLES will only run on PHP 5.0.0 or greater. There are no plans to ever support PHP 4.x.y (or below) as those versions have reached end of life, so please don't ask.
- PICKLES is not Model-View-Controller (MVC). It was developed around concepts (as well as some naming conventions) of the MVC design pattern but does not entirely conform to my own understanding of MVC. I'm from the school of thought that there's not a single hammer for every nail, so there's no point in forcing PICKLES into the MVC box for the sake of it. PICKLES strives to provide a modular system for developing websites while keeping the display elements separated from any database calls and other logic. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just meants that PICKLES isn't all that trendy because it lacks a silly buzzword that's a bit overused at this point.
- PICKLES supports rendering Smarty template pages, returning JSON data and RSS feeds (currently only supports version 2.0) and is fully capable of running from the command line modes.
- PICKLES is coded fairly closely to the PEAR coding standards (sorry, I like my fancy braces inline for class and function definitions) and is fully documented in DocBlock notation.
- Included with PICKLES are shared CSS files (foundation classes and one to do a full CSS reset) and shared JavaScript files with includes a very trim AJAX library that handles a PICKLES-centric JSON object automatically. If your dataset does not fit into that format, custom handlers can be used instead.
- Writing error free code is very important to me, so any PHP development I do is made to be E_STRICT compatible. This means that not only is PICKLES code free of any errors, it is free of warnings as well.
- Depending on your server, any number of sites can be ran off of a single PICKLES install!
This site is still pretty ugly!
Yessum. I've since revamped the site slightly, but the site still doesn't go PICKLES justice. At the end of the day I'm a developer and not really a designer (although I play one on the internet). A proper better looking site will be built eventually, and it will be fancy and all Web 2.0ish or something, but for now, this is what you get. If you are a designer and are interested in donating some time to design a site for PICKLES, that would be great. Just go ahead and contact me.
So who's using it?
The only sites currently running on PICKLES are my own, and a few of my client's websites:
How do I get PICKLES?
I promised myself that I would not release PICKLES to the world until all of my existing sites have been fully ported to it. As it stands right now, 75% of all of my sites have been fully ported to PICKLES. Unfortunately, I'm not sure when I'll have time to finish up the other 25%.
Now let's say you're insistent on getting your hands on PICKLES? I have been distributing the code on a more personal basis to get opinions and general comments on setup and usage. If you're an interested party, feel free to drop me an email. This is on a very limited basis though, and I'd prefer you send me a nice message instead of just "send me the code".
Now let's say you're insistent on getting your hands on PICKLES? I have been distributing the code on a more personal basis to get opinions and general comments on setup and usage. If you're an interested party, feel free to drop me an email. This is on a very limited basis though, and I'd prefer you send me a nice message instead of just "send me the code".