Book Image

PHP 5 CMS Framework Development - 2nd Edition

By : Martin Brampton
Book Image

PHP 5 CMS Framework Development - 2nd Edition

By: Martin Brampton

Overview of this book

If you want an insight into the critical design issues and programming techniques required for a web oriented framework in PHP5, this book will be invaluable. Whether you want to build your own CMS style framework, want to understand how such frameworks are created, or simply want to review advanced PHP5 software development techniques, this book is for you.As a former development team leader on the renowned Mambo open-source content management system, author Martin Brampton offers unique insight and practical guidance into the problem of building an architecture for a web oriented framework or content management system, using the latest versions of popular web scripting language PHP.The scene-setting first chapter describes the evolution of PHP frameworks designed to support web sites by acting as content management systems. It reviews the critical and desirable features of such systems, followed by an overview of the technology and a review of the technical environment.Following chapters look at particular topics, with:• A concise statement of the problem • Discussion of the important design issues and problems faced • Creation of the framework solution At every point, there is an emphasis on effectiveness, efficiency and security – all vital attributes for sound web systems. By and large these are achieved through thoughtful design and careful implementation. Early chapters look at the best ways to handle some fundamental issues such as the automatic loading of code modules and interfaces to database systems. Digging deeper into the problems that are driven by web requirements, following chapters go deeply into session handling, caches, and access control. New for this edition is a chapter discussing the transformation of URLs to turn ugly query strings into readable strings that are believed to be more “search engine friendly” and are certainly more user friendly. This topic is then extended into a review of ways to handle “friendly” URLs without going through query strings, and how to build RESTful interfaces. The final chapter discusses the key issues that affect a wide range of specific content handlers and explores a practical example in detail.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
PHP 5 CMS Framework Development
Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
Preface
Packaging Extensions
Packaging XML Example

Summary


In this introductory chapter, we have reviewed:

  • Why the idea of a content management system has become important for web building, and how its definition has become more flexible to meet broadening needs.

  • The essential and desirable features that will be needed for a CMS, and therefore should be included in a CMS framework.

  • Basic ideas for managing a CMS-driven website, including the security considerations that affect the choice of a distinctly separate administrator login.

  • A brief justification for using object-oriented design techniques and exploiting the greatly improved OO features of PHP5. The object patterns that are most relevant to a CMS framework. Some questions about how best to make use of PHP.

  • The ways in which we can create XHTML for delivery to a browser, taking advantage of the features PHP offers for the purpose.

  • How environmental factors, especially security, shape the design of a CMS framework, which needs to be designed from the outset to be as robust as possible in the face of cracker attacks.

The next chapter starts to look at some fundamental topics required for building any advanced PHP system, starting with how to manage the numerous code modules of a large system.