PureMVC vs Cairngorm framework comparison

Reasons to use PureMVC over Cairngorm.

#1 IMO if your gonna use Cairngorm your better off just going ahead and skipping every framework concept and just making classes with static (global) variables. That's what it feels like to me anyway lol.

#2 Makes it too easy for you to be sloppy. Accessing your model locator everywhere in your app can get ugly fast. PureMVC has a very structured but flexible way to code. Once you get comfortable with PureMVC, you will be able to get up to speed in other projects coded with PureMVC much quicker than Cairngorm coded projects.

#3 If your just starting to try to learn Cairngorm and find it confusing, it's cause you can't make sense of something that doesn't make sense!

#4 It's difficult to make a modular program in Cairngorm. Since the controller/models are singletons only one instance can exist (thus only one instance of the application). There are ways to get it to work, but you're gonna have to think outside the box for that..
PureMVC Multicore provides a framework for creating modular applications right out of the box.

#5 PureMVC utilities. The PureMVC community has added more capabilities on top of the PureMVC framework such as Undo/Redo (works great BTW), Pipes, etc.

#6 Scalability. It just gets way too messy trying to make a complex Cairngorm application. It can especially happen if you're just beginning at it or have been coding lazily. Because coding in PureMVC is much more structured, you won't be held back in the late game.

#7 PureMVC is fun to program in. Cairngorm is a nightmare :P

#8 Views can actually be reused in PureMVC. It's hard to do this in Cairngorm with all the views accessing directly to the global variables in the models. The reason PureMVC can decouple the view from the model is it has something called Mediators which take care of displaying and interaction in the views.

#9 Cairngorm is Adobe's official framework, and Adobe has been pissing me off lately with all the bugs I keep running into :P

p.s. Sorry for the long rant :P

Getting started with Unit Testing in your Zend Framework application Leopard

Hello, this guide is for someone who has no idea how to get started writing unit tests inside the Zend Framework application. I don't claim this to be the right way to do it, but its a step in the right direction for me.

Step 1] Install pear and PHPUnit

Here are the steps I used in Leopard.

First install PEAR:


#cd /tmp
#curl http://pear.php.net/go-pear > go-pear.php

#sudo php -q go-pear.php

press enter, choose option 1 the prefix directory as "/usr/local" this will install the pear executable to /usr/local/bin/ and the PEAR files to /usr/local/PEAR

After the install finishes try typing:

#pear


If it doesn't work, the install failed or the $PATH variable doesn't include the /usr/local/bin dir.


Next, install PHPUnit using pear:


#sudo pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
#sudo pear install phpunit/PHPUnit

If it gives you any warnings about folder permissions you might have to do something like #sudo chmod 777 the temp dir or wherever its complaining about.


Once pear installs PHPUnit try running it in the commandline

#phpunit


It should run ok. If you get any warnings you will have to look at your php config file.


If your php.ini isnt located in /etc/php.ini you'll have to create a symbolic link as such. For example, I develop using XAMPP so my php config is in /Applications/xampp/etc/php.ini.


#ln -s /Applications/xampp/etc/php.ini /etc/php.ini


Next edit /etc/php.ini to make sure the include_path to PHPUnit is correct


#sudo mate /etc/php.ini


Mine looks something like this.
include_path = ".:/php/includes:/usr/local/PEAR:/usr/local/PEAR/PHPUnit"


Try running PHPUnit again in the command line.

#phpunit


If it doesn't give any warnings, move on to step 2.

Step 2] Create the /tests and /tests/myapp folders.

Your Zend project structure should look something like this:


/myapp/
/myapp/application/
/myapp/application/controllers/
/myapp/application/models/
/myapp/application/views/
/myapp/application/views/scripts/
/myapp/library/
/myapp/library/Zend/
/myapp/tests/
/myapp/tests/myapp/


Step 3] Create the /myapp/application/controllers/IndexControllerTest.php file

This file is to test the IndexController.



class MyApp_public_IndexControllerTest extends Zend_Test_PHPUnit_ControllerTestCase
{

public function setUp()
{
$this->bootstrap = APPLICATION_PATH . '/bootstrap.php';
parent::setUp();
}

/**
* Tests FooController->barAction()
*/
public function testIndexAction()
{
// TODO Auto-generated FooControllerTest->testBarAction()

$this->dispatch ( '/index/index' );
$this->assertController ( 'index' );
$this->assertAction ( 'index' );
}
}


Step 4] Create the /myapp/tests/myapp/AllTests.php file




define('APPLICATION_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../../application/'));

set_include_path(
APPLICATION_PATH.'/../library'
. PATH_SEPARATOR . get_include_path()
);


if (!defined('PHPUnit_MAIN_METHOD')) {
define('PHPUnit_MAIN_METHOD', 'MyApp_AllTests::main');
}

require_once('Zend/Test/PHPUnit/ControllerTestCase.php');

require_once APPLICATION_PATH . 'controllers/IndexControllerTest.php';

class MyApp_AllTests
{
public static function main()
{
PHPUnit_TextUI_TestRunner::run(self::suite());
}

public static function suite()
{
$suite = new PHPUnit_Framework_TestSuite('All Tests - MyApp');


$suite->addTestSuite('MyApp_public_IndexControllerTest');

return $suite;
}
}

if (PHPUnit_MAIN_METHOD == 'MyApp_AllTests::main')
{
MyApp_AllTests::main();
}


Step 5] Run AllTests.php

Open the terminal and navigate to the folder where you created AllTests.php


#cd XYZ/myapp/tests/myapp/
#phpunit AllTests.php

PHPUnit 3.3.10 by Sebastian Bergmann.

.

Time: 0 seconds

OK (1 test, 2 assertions)



Hope this started you off okay. Goodluck!


P.S.

Leopard's included PHP does not have PDO_Mysql included by default.
In your Zend_Config_Ini you can use mysqli instead.

Example /application/config/app.ini

[production]
webhost = www.awebsite.com
database.adapter = pdo_mysql
database.params.host = localhost
database.params.username = auser
database.params.password = apassword
database.params.dbname = adatabase

[development : production]

[testing : production]
database.params.dbname = adatabase
#leopard's compiled php doesn't have PDO_MYSQL
database.adapter = mysqli