adopting web framework in web-application development
Contents
1. 26 FIGURE 15 Data Flow in Codelgniter Programs Codelgniter User Guide 2012 H 26 FIGURE 16 Database connection in PHP without framework 30 FIGURE 17 Data input in PHP without framework eee 30 FIGURE 18 CSRF hash implementation in Zend eese 31 FIGURE 19 Porm controller in Zend nuits oerte toti tne 32 FIGURE 20 CSRF has implementation without framework 32 FIGURE 21 Form validation without framework eee 32 FIGURE 22 Internationalization and localization are orthogonal to the application layers Sachdey 2007 ios osea et pte aka RUN tora Na SOM delet SNT n 33 LIST OF TABLES TABLE 1 Programming Language position in 1996 2006 and 2011 Tiobe programming community index TABLE 2 Features comparison DNDN rM GLOSSARY WWW HTML PHP CMS WYSIWYG MVC SQL LAMP RMDS CSRF I18N LION World Wide Web Hyper Text Markup Language PHP Hypertext Preprocessor Content Management System What You See Is What You Get Model View Controller Structured Query Language Linux Apache MySQL PHP Relational Management Database System Cross Site Request Forgery Internationalization Localization 1 INTRODUCTION Originally the World Wide Web was imagined as a means for sharing information where documents are linked togeth2. ADOPTING WEB FRAMEWORK IN WEB APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Case Kehitt j n tieto ja menetelm pankki Lahti University of Applied Sciences LAHTI UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES Degree Programme in Business Information Technology Bachelor s Thesis Spring 2012 Nguyen Minh Thanh Lahti University of Applied Sciences Degree Programme in Business Information Technology NGUYEN MINH THANH Adopting web framework in web application development Case Kehitt j n tieto ja menetelm pankki Bachelor s Thesis of Degree Programme in Business Information Technology 40 pages 3 pages of appendices Spring 2012 ABSTRACT Since the web found its true form it is no longer static web pages without any user s interaction During the last few years web applications have matured to the point that they can compete with full fledged desktop applications The support technologies have been growing significantly with the likes of Google web toolkit web application frameworks and CMS This thesis is based on the real application of Tykes which has been coded by hand in PHP for a few years The approach is set to improved Tykes s features and performance As the result it shows the benefits of implementing web frameworks in real life works The action research method is used to answer the research guestions in this study in inductive approach The researcher s experience is compared to other relevant published sources Example sour
3. LOO Integration Layer FIGURE 22 Internationalization and localization are orthogonal to the application layers Sachdev 2007 In general PHP itself only support native array and gettext Gettext is an open source project which can be used to internationalize PHP applications However the usage of gettext is very complicated At first every string which is shown in the view must be wrapped in the gettext function The translator will create a new po file from the template which is filled by the translation and then be edited 34 either by hand or by third party translator tools Finally these files will be complied and ready for distribution When running the program will display the text in selected language if the file is available for it Besides using native array gettext is considered the most comprehensive tool that supports 118n However as described above the process is rather complicated and required using command lines and other third party tools Moreover source code must be modified for gettext to work Zend Framework on the other hand has its own Zend Translate package to support i18n and 110n The package contains several adapters for developer to choose which one to use Some of them are Zend Translate Adapter Array Zend Translate Adapter Ini Zend Translate Adapter Gettext etc More important Zend Translate also allows self written adapter classes Upon integrated these adapter can be used ju
4. factors have been presented in Chapter 3 Many of them such as e Learning curve e Documentation e Activity level of the user community e Frequent updates and bug fixes e Performance e Work market available Further works At the time writing this thesis many web application frameworks have matured enough for developer to work with confident Most of them provides good stable versions and working on next versions with improved features and performance However there are still rooms for improvement At the moment the general problem occurring in development in all languages is that developer often needs to use more than one language in only one dynamic web application Here is the current scenario 40 e Code in X HTML or Javascript for static web sites e Code in PHP Python Ruby etc HTML code is called from inside which may become complicated and lengthy e Templates are available in some frameworks such as Zend and Symfony However to some levels they still require X HTML As the result a suggested further study would be an improved template built upon frameworks One possible case is that the template is able to translate itself to X HTML Javascript Ajax and other essential languages needed to run on client side 41 REFERENCE 2012 Google Online 2012 https www google com fhl en amp sugexp efis amp gs nf 1 amp tok Copl3uuWLu0MV UKPEMVDJQ amp cp 7 amp gs_id u amp xhr t amp q cakePHP amp pf p amp out
5. Because the save function has been pre defined in the model mapper it can be called easily by the controller This practice may also reduce code duplication as pre defined functions can be called whenever needed 31 4 4 Security Cross site request forgery CSRF is a very common vulnerability in any web application with forms In general a member with established level of privilege with the target site is a victim and also an unknowing accomplice In CSRF a victim is the one who actually do the attack not the attacker which makes it even more difficult for web authority system to detect and prevent the attack It can easily bypass usual authority mechanism including authentication identification and authorization and can only be mitigated by a specific form validation mostly by using token In a typical scenario the attacker tries to trick the victim to load a page containing a malicious request which is able to inherit the victim s identity and privileges to perform unwanted actions on the target site under the victim s behalf Therefore the site will not be able distinguish the attack from a legitimate user request If the victim is the administrator account the attacker may compromise the whole application As the result the only way to prevent a CSRF attack is in the form design by using an anti CSRF generated token The token is generated before the form is loaded and stored in session When user submits the form th
6. 18 3 1 PHP among other languages Which language is the most popular one in the web world There are several ways to measure the popularity of a language For example it can be based on the number of e Available jobs required the language s skill e Searches on every search engines e New existing application written in the language e Developers using the language Using different ways a number of surveys have been attempted to rank programming languages Tiobe is specialized in assessing and tracking the quality of software It s ranking of programming languages is one of the most popular and reliable in the business The rating is not about the best programming language but about the popularity of the languages based on the number of skilled engineers world wide courses and third party vendors Tiobe programming community index 2012 TABLE 1 Programming Language position in 1996 2006 and 2011 Tiobe programming community index 2012 Position In Position In Position In Programming Language nec 2011 Dec2006 Dec 1996 Java 1 1 5 C 2 2 1 C 3 3 2 C 4 8 Objective C 5 42 Php 6 5 Visual Basic 7 4 3 Python 8 7 26 Perl 9 6 6 Javascript 10 10 25 Lisp 13 17 16 To see a bigger picture between some of the most popular language nowadays the table above shows the position of the current top popular language compared to 5 19 years ago In
7. 2011 http www onlinemarketing trends com 201 1 09 social media war for video html 43 Sweet Richard E 1985 The Mesa Programming Environment California s n 1985 Synodinos Dionysios 2007 Choosing technology language framework for web application is not rocket science Synodinos Online 1 3 2007 http synodinos net 2007 01 03 choosing technologylanguageframework for web application is not rocket science but 2012 Tiobe programming community index Tiobe Online 2012 http www tiobe com index php content paperinfo tpci index html Welling Luke and Thomson Laura 2009 PHP and MySQL Web Development s l Pearson Education Inc 2009 2009 Which PHP framework holds a promise for the future Open source universe Online 2009 http www opensourceuniverse com component poll 17 which php framework holds a promise for the future html Zend Framework Quickstart Zend Framework Online http framework zend com manual en learning quickstart intro html APPENDICES APPENDIX 1 List of interviewed questions Decision making e Who proposed the idea of adopting web framework into your existing web application e What were the reasons of adopting framework to the existing web application e What were the factors considered when adopting framework e What were the factors considered when chosing that specific framework Framework implementation process e Who were involved in the proc
8. application developers to decide whether framework is the right tool to further their careers 1 3 Research approach According to Prof Burney in logic there are two broad methods of reasoning as referred to the deductive and inductive approaches Sometimes the two methods are combined to have the third kind Deductive approach moves from the more general to the more specific which usually begin with the theory then narrow down to the specific problem that we can test and conclude the research with a confirmation Inductive approach on the other hand works the other way It begins with some specific observations to detect the patterns and ends up with broader theory Burney 2008 In this study inductive is chosen as the approach because of the characteristics of the research problems as well as the research methodology which will be mentioned in the following part Following inductive approach the researcher first studies the development process of Tykes by applying Zend Framework By observing the process different between methods which are manually coding and coding in framework will be analyzed to give a broader generalization of web framework and answer the above research questions 1 4 Research Methodology The aim of this thesis is to study and understand in depth the benefit of implementing framework in web application development It requires a thorough acknowledgment of the whole process understanding all influence fa
9. the application is written in PHP a framework still has its own language infrastructure Therefore there s need of learning the framework s terminology It makes the learning curve sometimes very steep e Documentation A good documentation includes o User manual o Example codes and snippets 20 e Activity level of the user community A good documentation is a must but not enough without a good user community When most of the frameworks are still evolving the documentation might be patchy sometimes Moreover other informal tutorials and comments would be good to evaluate a framework e Frequent updates and bug fixes This would mean more functions come in but must not cause software unstable e Performance Performance might be an important factor should be considered when choosing a framework for a project but it alone is not the whole story otherwise we should use plain HTML or PHP instead It about how a framework performs its feature set with such a performance e Work market available A significant factor especially for novice developers choosing the framework for the upcoming work life is the amount of jobs available in need for that framework 3 2 1 Zend Framewok Zend Framework is an open source object oriented web application framework for PHPS Zend Framework Quickstart The framework project is sponsored by Zend Technology Ltd the company that develops the PHP language Zend has a great supp
10. the mention period of time Java has been a leading language and C remained in the second position However these languages are hardly implemented in web application because their implementation in low level making them even more complicated Therefore between the main web languages namely PHP Python Perl and Javascript PHP has the highest rank and probably the most anticipated web application language at the moment Compared to Python which had its first implementation during December of 1989 and currently is the second best web languages according to the above ranking PHP is a few years younger Originally named Personal Homepage Tools PHP was only a set of Perl script Its development began in 1994 and official launch came in June 1998 Although coming later PHP had an impressive debut and already came to fifth place in the ranking in December 2006 In 2004 it was chosen as a language of the year A few years later Python made it twice in 2007 and 2010 PHP is still the most popular web language at the moment based on its usage However Python has made a great breakthrough proving its easy and efficient implementation successfully 3 2 Introduce some popular PHP framework There are several factors when looking to a framework e Learning curve To start developing with a framework a developer has to go through 2 learning curves instead of 1 the first one for the language and the second for the framework Although
11. 73 206 83 79 75 50 m RPS without APC 93 79 38 29 24 18 FIGURE 12 PHP frameworks performance in comparison Framework performance comparison 3 3 Comparison between the frameworks Each framework has its own advantages and disadvantages most important in performance documentation and user community To start working with a web application project choosing a framework may prove critical A complex framework is necessary for large projects but may consume more time than simpler framework when apply for small and medium projects To come up to the decision of choosing Zend as a tool for research in this thesis I ve done a few interviews with some small Finland entrepreneurs that have web application in development process and opinions of professor Alix Bergeret from Wolverhampton University The United Kingdom Considering the above criteria plus a poll opened on an open source forum with question Which PHP framework you prefer to use for your future web application projects Which PHP framework holds a promise for the future 2009 Zend is a promising framework and a good choice for many projects because of its ability to scale Moreover the current version is very stable Though the beta releases may 24 add more features and bug fixes in near future Last but not least it s backed by the leading PHP company which makes it more reliable PHP Frameworks 4 80 sii mZend msymfony E CakePHP E Codelgn
12. MS or WYSIWYG The last part of Chapter 2 will talk about the main design pattern which is usually used in most web framework that is MVC This chapter also includes example codes to illustrate the design difference between coding PHP by hand and code using frameworks In Chapter 3 we go on with the languages A comparison chart between languages is presented especially between those designed for developing web application Chapter 3 also introduces some popular framework for PHP which is the programming language used in this thesis These frameworks are arguably the most popular PHP frameworks based on specific criteria that will be mentioned beforehand In Chapter 4 main features of a web application are compared between a code with and a code without framework Codes without framework include codes done manually by hand with CMS or WYSIWYG Note that not all methods may be compared in the same feature mostly between manually coding and framework coding At the end of Chapter 4 will be a table to sum up the comparisons Finally Chapter 5 presents the conclusion of this thesis which includes own opinions after the research about the chosen tool its advantages and disadvantages and suggestion for further works 2 INTRODUCING WEB FRAMEWORK 2 1 Web Framework definition and characteristics There are different kinds of frameworks which support different tasks However they all have the same requirements and do the same tasks They make i
13. OL DB link if Sdb die CanVt connect to database mysql error endif gt lt html gt lt head gt lt title gt PHP Example lt title gt lt meta http equiv Content Type content text html charset iso 8859 1 gt lt head gt lt body gt lt php result mysql_query SELECT FROM users while row mysql_fetch_array result fullname row fullname echo lt ul gt lt li gt fullname lt li gt lt ul gt gt lt body gt lt html gt FIGURE 1 Example code in PHP First the code opens a connection to a database to run and retrieve the names of all current users Looping over the user list it generates an HTML list of the names This is a very simple one of page even a novice developer with little knowledge can understand everything from start to end It is also easy to deploy saving it toa php file to any server and visit the page with any web browser With it the write from scratch approach isn t a very bad idea However because of its simplicity there is nothing to learn As the result 3 main issues are rising which can affect any projects First of all even a simple web application usually contains more than 1 page So what happen should multiple part of an application need the same function say connection to a database in the above example It is surely no need to duplicate the fraction of code into each script One simple solution for most dev
14. Security Internationalization and localization User management 5 CONCLUSIONS REFERENCE APPENDICES A A OU Oo N e Oo a N 16 18 19 20 21 22 23 25 25 27 28 29 30 31 33 34 38 41 44 LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1 Example code in PHP cie eee sanaa kanaa aa e eet Akaa dessa nasta 8 FIGURE 2 Technical knowledge needed Bergeret 2010 11 FIGURE 3 MVC model in SmallTalk80 Krasner amp Pope 1988 12 FIGURE 4 Define database link in Zend Framework sess 12 FIGURE 5 Controller The application logic eeeeeeeereene 13 FIGURE 6 View The application presenter seeeeeene 13 FIGURE 7 MySQL database tables i eite est ne deett cct tens 13 FIGURE 8 Model s methods used in application controller 14 FIGURE 9 MySQL table S S UUGDUEG ma oss e Pe ee n hed decsdysatesgahcgsumehcenadedgoosane 15 FIGURE 10 Diagram for decision making Synodinos 2007 17 FIGURE 11 Job Trends for Zend CakePHP and Yii Job trends 2012 21 FIGURE 12 PHP frameworks performance in comparison Framework pertormance Comparisoll 62m de its ramia E PA dene ta Bade aan 23 FIGURE 13 Result for Which framework is the most promising 24 FIGURE 14 Typical Flow in PHP Programs Golding 2008
15. ason MVC is usually overlooked by developers for small projects and sometimes even for medium size projects because the extra effort may not worth it In the figure below it describe the data flow in a typical PHP program without using any framework and MVC In the figure the PHP script serves like a bridge between client and database It handles everything from handling user input to manipulating database and presenting the result To reduce redundancy using the include function is the most common way in which developers take out common objects to store into external files 26 2 o m EZ a lt t 1 Database Script 8 O FIGURE 14 Typical Flow in PHP Programs Golding 2008 MVC improves the PHP flow by effectively divined the flow into smaller steps and separate them clearly thus making sure that each object is written once and only once The flowchart below illustrates the application flow in an application written with Codelgniter framework E LN ES K Routing Ee Y EH Application Index ph Controller 23329 FIGURE 15 Data Flow in Codelgniter Programs CodeIgniter User Guide 2012 In the flowchart above the Index php serves as the front controller It s the main controller initializing the resources needed to run the application and is the first component to run when the application starts When receiving a HTTP request the router exam
16. ation software stack which is used by Facebook for its front end server Although NoSQL has been introduced since around 2009 by those who aren t pleased with MySQL claiming that NoSQL has even stronger consistency and better transaction integrity MySQL is still a preferred choice for web developers because of its easiness to work in web application environment and much larger support community Moreover because of the lacks in availability and scalability many huge sites such as Google or Amazon chose to live with MySQL scarifying consistency for availability and scalability However as NoSQL continues to rise Google has added NoSQL support in Google Web Toolkit a well known framework like web application development kit provided by Google 4 3 1 Connection In order to use database a connection must be established between the application and the database server The connection reguires credentials and should be placed separated in a restricted access area is a good practice However this is rather hard and reguires a good knowledge of PHP when coding by hand The Figure 4 in Chapter 2 shows how the connection is established in Zend Framework The connection is defined and kept in a separate file where outsider can t access to keep the credentials safe This is done with ease in most frameworks In the figure below a simple but bad practice usually is done by developers coding PHP by hand In the code username and password of the u
17. ce codes are extracted from Tykes The research results show an expected range It confirms the positive effects of implementing web framework in web application development Features which have been tested in Tykes are presented and compared to their originals Some example source codes are extracted from the application to prove the results To conclude the reasons and recommendations are put forward Although the frameworks and their communities have grown up dramatically and are near maturing there are still lacking of features and incompatibility problems Therefore further study is recommended on those Keywords web application web framework PHP CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 Research background Research questions and research objectives Research approach Research Methodology Scope and limitations Thesis structure 2 INTRODUCING WEB FRAMEWORK 2 1 2 22 1 2 22 2 9 Web Framework definition and characteristics Web Framework in comparison Wed Framework against Library Framework against CMS and WYSIWYG Design pattern of Web Framework 3 WEB APPLICATION LANGUAGES 3 1 3 2 3 2 1 32 2 3 2 3 3 3 PHP among other languages Introduce some popular PHP framework Zend Framewok CakePHP Yii Comparison between the frameworks 4 FEATURES COMPARISON 4 1 4 2 4 3 4 3 1 4 3 2 4 4 4 5 4 6 Model View Controller Learning curve Database Connection Mapping and Methods
18. ced in different placed in a different files and include when directory needed e SQL queries and e SQL queries are used framework s adapter are two available options e The most effective CSRF e The method is available Security prevention method is and well supported by available but more Zend Framework difficult to implement than in Zend Framework e Can be implemented e Methods are available using third party software with Zend Adapter e Two methods are e Support wide range of supported native array demands Himes 100 and gettext e Gettext is available via e Native array is only Zend Adapter suitable for static string e Self written adapter e Using gettextis classes can also be used complicated User e Good user management e Good user management management e Native PHP methods are with support of Zend Auth 37 To conclude this Chapter features used in the two approaches are presented in the table above In general the use of MVC pattern and Zend_Adapter are two main elements which improve the general coding practice in Zend Framework The controller in the pattern is the application s logic part which acts as a glue between the user s view and the application s model Unique Zend_Adapter helps providing cleaner codes and eliminate SQL queries Native PHP language provides enough security measurement and a good user management Zend Framework with Zend_Adapter again requires a bit less effort to gain the same purpo
19. com 201 1 01 12 internet 2010 in numbers 2012 Job trends Indeed Online 2012 http www indeed com jobtrends q zend 2C cakephp 2C yii amp l Joomla Joomla Online http www joomla org about joomla html Krasner Glenn E and Pope Stephen T 1988 A cookbook for using the Model View Controller user interface paradigm in Smalltalk 80 1988 Lubarsky Anatoly 2007 Facebook Object Oriented Diagram Online 2007 http blogs x2line com al archive 2007 06 02 3124 aspx Marston Tony 2007 The Singleton Design Pattern for PHP Tony Marston Online 3 10 2007 http www tonymarston net php mysql singleton html Morgan Terri Luttrell Carol and Liu Yuzeng 2001 Designing Multilingual Web Sites Applied Authoring Techniques s l ACM Digital Library 2001 O Brien Rory 1998 An overview of the methodological approach of action research Toronto s n 1998 2011 October 2011 Web Server Survey Netcraft Online October 6 2011 http news netcraft com archives 201 1 10 06 october 201 1 web server survey html more 5024 Porebski Bartosz Przystalski Karol and Nowak Leszek 2011 Building PHP Application with Symphony CakePHP and Zend Framework s l Wiley Publishing Inc 2011 Sachdev Puneet 2007 Web Application Internationalization Microsoft MSDN Online 12 2007 http msdn microsoft com en us library cc168605 aspx 2011 Social media war for video Online Marketing Trends Online 9 7
20. ctors To obtain the result this thesis uses action research as its main research methodology Action research aims to contribute both to the practical concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation and to further the goals of social science simultaneously Thus there is a dual commitment in action research to study a system and concurrently to collaborate with members of the system in changing it in what is together regarded as a desirable direction Accomplishing this twin goal requires the active collaboration of researcher and client and thus it stresses the importance of co learning as a primary aspect of the research process Gilmore Krantz amp Ramirez 1986 Originally founded by Kurt Lewin action research is known simply as learning by doing Researchers try to approach the problem and attempt to resolve it Their effort is collected and analyzed during the process To cope with the growing pace of Internet technology and user s needs web based applications need to become more and more flexible and can do many more things The application would get out dated easily without frequent update and ability to scale up to meet up with demands Together with action research qualitative research tools will be used to gain more views from developers and companies who currently employ or are in the process of employing frameworks in their web application Due to the similarity of the two research met
21. developers is simply using the language they know the most This is not a good way in professional work However it minimized the risks working on a less familiar language The other way to use when discuss this issue is following an activity diagram by answering a list of architectural choices The chart bellow shows an example of the decision making process Following this way every project should be approach individually and each choice made must be based on the project s requirements not based on any developer s strength Synodinos 2007 In general language is just a tool for a developer to work with It isn t really matter which programming language using as long as the customer s requirements is acquire on time and within budget However it matters as we all are familiar and get passionate about our tools 17 Yes have no respect for myself new technologies is s strategic decision and shouldn t be taken lightly Dunno Don t care wanna Not the wait unil it HUGE use something sexy Requirements DEMAND distributed architecture yes yes but it is essential to use web services Yes just wanna make 2 3 pages yes not willign to write tx management code N ava EE 5 Willing yi No I m to old to learn or my app server doesn t s Few pages or rich client Start designing coding FIGURE 10 Diagram for decision making Synodinos 2007
22. e gt fetchAllQ entries array foreach resultSet as row Sentry new Default Model Users entry gt setuserID row gt userID gt setUsername row gt username gt setPassword row gt password gt setUsertype row gt usertype entries entry return Sentries FIGURE 8 Model s methods used in application controller class Default Model Users protected username public function __construct array options null if is array Soptions this gt setOptions options public function set name value method set name if mapper name II method_exists this method throw new Exception Invalid user property this gt method value public function get name method get name if mapper name II method exists this method throw new Exception Invalid user property j return this gt method 15 public function setOptions array options methods get class methods this foreach options as key gt value method set ucfirst key if in_array method methods this gt method value return this public function setUsername username this gt _username string username return this public function getUsername return this gt _username FIGURE 9 MySQL table s structure Although the code in
23. e token is checked before the form is processed If the token is mismatched the form will be terminated immediately In Zend Framework thanks to the request response mechanism the token validating process is pushed up fast and easy Within a one line code in the form the application is protected against CSRF attack this gt addElement hash csrf array ignore gt true FIGURE 18 CSRF hash implementation in Zend With no other action required when a csrf hash token is added in the form it will be automatically checked upon submit Then the form is processed normally by the controller 32 public function exampleAction request this gt getRequest form new Default_Form_Example if this gt getReguest gt isPost if form gt is Valid request gt getPost model new Default Model Example form gt getValues model gt save return this gt _helper gt redirector index this gt view gt form form FIGURE 19 Form controller in Zend In coding by hand the token can also be generated easily by using md5 function for example Moreover the token as a session variable should be initialized if lisset SESSION token SESSION token md5 unigid rand TRUE FIGURE 20 CSRF has implementation without framework The token is inputted hidden inside the form which will be validated when the form
24. eloper would be to refactor it into a public function or using namespace Secondly it isn t a good practice when a PHP developer has to take care of all HTML tags and other metadata This may reduce productivity level of the developer and increase chances of mistakes Moreover separating logic part and the HTML part is a good practice as it allows a coder and a designer working simultaneously Finally with the above mentioned separation a designer who has no experience in the code language will be able to redesign the page without any chances which may crash the whole application In other words the designer may edit the page appearance without affecting the logical part Precisely these issues are the main reasons why developers should work with frameworks as those are what web frameworks mean to solve 2 2 Web Framework in comparison 2 2 1 Wed Framework against Library Conventional subroutine library or sometimes called toolkit for the same matter is a set of prebuilt modules which can be taken into use in applications In many cases several libraries could be used in one single application The main difference between Library and Web application framework is the level where they can be implemented in When using a library developers write the main body of the application then call the desire codes of the library It doesn t invoke developers code Framework on the hand acts as the main body which calls the codes
25. er in an inter network Berners Lee amp Cailliau 1990 These documents were basically static As growing forms were introduced helping users to interact with servers Soon after the first Web application was created with the born of server side scripting language making dynamic generation of HTML documents possible Until now the web technology has reached to a new standard where web applications have full abilities of desktop applications A group of dynamically generated web pages is the most common way to represent web applications The online market is emerging required developers to produce better featured application within less amount of time Web application frameworks are created with this purpose in mind As companies have applied and succeeded in saving time and boosting applications features frameworks have proven its ability to cope with the market demands 1 1 Research background In October 2011 a web server survey made by Netcraft an England based Internet Services Company received responses from 504 082 040 sites According to the survey there are around 506 million websites across all domains and has increased significantly from 255 million websites as of December 2010 October 2011 Web Server Survey 2011 Another study made by Pingdom a Sweden based website monitoring company in December 2010 shows many other interesting stats email for example People are getting more and more familiar with this electron
26. ess e How the implementation was carried out e What were the factors influencing the process Evaluation e How would you evaluate the new application e Is it a successful or failure Why APPENDIX 2 Logos of frameworks appeared in alphabetical Framework z APPDENDIX 3 Database design of Facebook Lubarsky 2007 rsvp RSVPStatus Enum Attending Dediined NotReplied NotSpecified Unsure UF GroupMembershipType Fields B Properties Albumid SF Caption TP created LargeSource Link MediumSource Owner Photold SmallSource Methods FaccbookGroup m Cass Fields Properties Creator Description Groupld GroupSubType GroupType LargePicture MediumPicture RecentNews SmasllPicture UpdstedTime Website HHH YE 8 z i H venue oH venue WorkPlace Class Fields Properties SP CompanyName T Description TP EndOste Position StartDate Methods HometownLocation 5P Currentlocation TT WorkPlacetist ProfileGender LookingForGenders FacebookProfile Class EB Fields Properties AboutMe Activities AffilistionCowt Birthday FavoriteBooks FavoriteMovies FavoriteMusic FavoriteQuotes FavoriteTv Shows Firstname Interests IsApplicationise Lastname NotesCount PictureBigURL PictureSmallURL Picture URL Politicalvievs Religion SchoolCount SignificantOtherid UpdateTime Userld Wa
27. framework appears to be longer than the original it still could be shorten by not defining methods in class Default_Model_UsersMapper but using SQL query as a string instead However using SQL query is considered a bad practice in framework Moreover predefined methods in model mapper can be called easier any time when needed thus prevent duplication of the SQL query The above code is the standard of a framework including database definition model definition controller and view More of them could be forms and page layout for the whole page where data appears to be the same or little changes Besides MVC there re also many other popular design patterns commonly used in web framework such as Singleton Prototype Factory Method and Decorator However in the scope of this study MVC is the main design pattern used in the studied web frameworks Full description about design patterns can be found in an influential book of the Gang of Four namely Design Patterns Elements of Reusable Object Oriented Software In fact MVC also uses other design pattern Decorator to add scrolling to a view for example 16 3 WEB APPLICATION LANGUAGES Which server side platform is better may be the most common question when starting a new web application project This is not an easy question and unfortunately there is no instant tool for it In general there are two ways to a decision The common way to make decision usually applied by junior
28. here is a small difference between the two approaches Although novices may find themselves hard to learn a new language plus any terminologies of a particular framework using framework require a relative lower level of coding language and less experience than coding PHP by hand However there re still some great distinctions between the two kinds code in framework and by hand A great argument has been going on whether PHP is good to use on large websites Notably a large website is just an indefinable measurement mechanism To make a decision several questions should be considered They are 28 e How much control on the deployment platform will you have e How many numbers of distinct pages will the site have e How complex will the site be upon deployment e How large is the team working on the site now and in the future e How much experience do the developers have In contrast using framework developers can easily build large websites or easy to scale up when needed with the help of MVC Most framework claims itself for the sake of simplicity and productivity The site is divided in to two parts presentation and business logic In this way developer can make changes to either one without affecting the other changing the business logic or update its presentation with ease A very good example in using PHP on very large website is Facebook the largest social network at the moment Although the backend server
29. hods qualitative and action research and characteristics of the action research which are more about problem solving than simple collecting and analyzing of data Rory O Brien in his paper has stated that it allows for several different research tools to be used as the project is conducted and various methods which are generally common to the qualitative research paradigm O Brien 1998 While working on the action research several unstructured interviews will be made with Finnish enterprises who have running web application developed in framework and colleagues who have been working with frameworks to gain more opinions from different points of view Besides published sources and reports papers will be used as secondary sources 1 5 Scope and limitations The first and foremost the scope of thesis is limited to web application only The thesis introduces Zend Framework a PHP framework Although some other PHP frameworks will be studied besides Zend Framework in order to compare the differences between them these studies only give the general ideas but don t dig deep in other frameworks than Zend As this study is based on Tykes project using action research methodology only relevant features related to the project are considered learning curve database management including database configuration mapping and predefined methods user management internationalization and security In this thesis
30. ic mail which is faster and costs much less than the original written letter To illustrate it 107 trillion is the number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010 so we have the average number of 294 billion emails per day during 2010 Internet 2010 in numbers 2011 Internet technology is moving forward surprisingly fast It offers great support to upgrade living conditions of human beings People can do almost everything with their computer with support of the Internet with the increasing number of data and services available over the Internet It includes most everyday activities In the entertainment industry DVD is one of the most used instruments to distribute media However according to an analysis from Goldman Sachs Netflix a US cable company having most subscribers would end its DVD distribution by 2020 Social media war for video 2011 Besides with the rise of online services such as Amazon even fresh products can be delivered to home everyday when needed In this theme creating a web application is a vital task for every company Everyone may know web applications have something in common Most of them have users who can register gain access and interact with the application Interactions are mostly carried out through preset and secure forms connected to various databases Databases are then searched to process data and presented back to the user Grouping these patterns into some kinds of abstraction and transport
31. important PHP takes a good approach in user management The authentication process is very clear and straight forward User identification is sent via a form and matched with the corresponding pair from the database The user session will begin after the user is granted access The session will be destroyed when user decides to log out In Zend Framework the process is very similar However with the help of Zend_Auth_Adater and Zend_Auth_Storage_Session user management is a little simpler yet more flexible Moreover usage of Zend_Auth eliminates the use of SQL queries making the code cleaner TABLE 2 Features comparison 36 Code Manually Code in framework MVC pattern Hard to implement leading to very complicated structure Increase redundancy The data flow is simple but not effective MVC is available in many frameworks and easy to implement Good for medium to large project but may lead to too complicated for small project Redundancy is well avoided Data flow is separated leading to better performance Learning curve Require the most knowledge in coding Require less knowledge than coding but more than CMS and WYSIWYG Extra effort to learn framework s unique terminologies simple and effective Scalability e Very hard to scale e Enable easy scalability e Optional database e Database connection and connection and mapping mapping methods must be Database can be pla
32. ines and decides what should be done to response If a cache for the request exists it is sent directly to the web browser If not the request and any data submitted will be examined for security before an application controller is loaded to handling the request The controller loads any needed resources to 27 process the specific reguest and the finalized view will be rendered to the web browser for user 4 2 Learning curve In the Figure 2 Technical knowledge needed for different approach CMS and WYSIWYG reguire significant less coding knowledge than using framework or code by hand because they aims to ease the process to the lowest possible level By doing that it sacrifices the flexibility and limits the functions of the application Most current CMS and WYSIWYG development application doesn t offer a way to reduce redundancy of code as its top prior feature is to make development process easier thus it also sacrifices the application s performance As the result these approach usually suitable for non developer as they could only be used for small project such as personal site Framework as well as coding by hand though require a phenomenal amount of knowledge more are the approaches for professional developers It offers more options for developer to choose such as between MVC and being more flexible in program structure and can be used for all kinds of project However when talking about learning curve also in Figure 2 t
33. ing Job Postings Jan 06 Jan 07 Jan 08 Jan 09 Jan 10 Jan 11 FIGURE 11 Job Trends for Zend CakePHP and Yii Job trends 2012 3 2 2 CakePHP CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP that provides an extensible architecture for developing maintaining and deploying applications With over 13 million hits on Google search Google 2012 CakePHP is arguably the most popular PHP framework at the moment 22 The most important factor that makes CakePHP becomes a popular PHP framework is its well structure and thorough documentation Although CakePHP has a unique terminology set making it hard for new developer to approach its documentation offers a good help to reduce the learning curve for new incoming developer to pass through There are books for every present version Even the new 2 0 released candidate has an in development book to present the new features The community is very helpful and the Q amp A answer is well built with many thorough answers for each question in different sections For case by case help a massive online community is there to provide it Compared to all kind of open source programming group on the Web the PHP community is the largest At some points there are still some drawbacks of CakePHP The first thing is its support of PHP4 which limit its features from more advance features of PHPS magic overloading functions to name one Backward compatible is good but since PHPS5 has been around l
34. is submitted if POST token SESSION token Valid Token Do something FIGURE 21 Form validation without framework A csrf attack is very dangerous because the request comes from the victim which makes it possible to attack applications that only the victim can access With just small steps in form design the thread is eliminated However every form in a single application is vulnerable To totally eliminate it tokens should be implemented in each and single form 33 4 5 Internationalization and localization As the www spreads web application gains more and more usage One significant advantage of web application is unrestricted to geography that users can easily access wherever they are However one rising problem is that users more likely to use applications in their mother tongue than other second languages Although you can buy in any language you must use the customer s language to sell Morgan Luttrell amp Liu 2001 Thus internationalization 118n and localization 110n are important features for applications available in more than one country using different languages I18n and 110n are two parts of the globalizing an application and both are orthogonal to the application layers Resource Support Bundles multiple Stykesheets sets 5 5 5 5 5 5 character sets Layouts Separate code n E Business Layer Static Content from localizable Images
35. is written not only in PHP but also in many languages such as C Java Python Perl Ruby and others at the frontend their servers run on LAMP Linux Apache MySQL and PHP stack At EmTech MIT 2010 conference EmTech MIT 2010 2010 in September 2010 Mike Schroepfer did an interview concerning the scaling ability and performance of site built in PHP Facebook has been growing so quickly since its startup that the database growing huge in both size and complexity The Figure in Appendix 2 shows an example of Facebook s database Due to unique characteristics of social networking its database has an extraordinary amount of interconnected dataset Facing these issues Facebook started a phenomenal amount open source projects and backend services 4 3 Database For database management system most web frameworks choose to use MySQL because it works well together with PHP as well as other languages to manage database for web application MySQL is obviously the most popular relational database management system RDMS It has several free and paid editions for developers to choose Although 29 the free edition already is a full featured database management system paid editions add more choices to support developers in commercialized projects Besides PHP it works well with other applications such as Joomla Drupal and WordPress MySQL is one of the core opponents of the widely used LAMP Linux Apache MySQL and PHP web applic
36. iter mYii FIGURE 13 Result for Which framework is the most promising 25 4 FEATURES COMPARISON 4 1 Model View Controller Since described in SmallTalk 80 MVC has been the widest used programming pattern In reality experienced developers tend to separate the user view and the business logic by putting them in separate files and include them when needed However this approach may be good for small to medium size project it s getting much more complicated to use in large project than applying MVC Sometimes it s even mistakenly realized as MVC because MVC is so popular and frankly some parts of the classic MVC doesn t really make sense in current rich clients Act as the backbone of an application MVC is one of the most important factor to be considered in application design At the heart of the MVC is the idea of Separated Presentation MVC tends to make a strong separation between presentation the view and controller and domain the model Domain objects therefore should be completely confined to it and they should support multiple presentations simultaneously With framework MVC is applied with ease Some frameworks apply strict rules on using MVC Others make it available as an option When coding by hand PHP applying MVC requires a very good knowledge in the model pattern It requires a significant planning hence a deeper level of complexity that requires a considerable attention to smaller details For this re
37. ks take advantage of design pattern to ease the development process MVC becomes the backbone of most frameworks First introduced in 1979 MVC was used to build user interface in Smalltalk 80 Since then the model has become the most well known design pattern because of its ability to increase flexibility and reuse It consists of three kinds of objects 12 Model is the application object It represents the data structure with all relationship and dependencies and provides an interface to manipulate all classes that correspond to logic object of the application View is the screen presentation A View should never modifies the application data but just only present it An application may have multiple Views for the same data to be display in different devices Controller is the glue between Model and View It handles user inputs and defines the way user interface react to them but should only use the methods provided by the Model Controller View User input d d ser npu ayout an Je device a I User interaction VNK Display input output sensors Model access and WA Dependents change Dependens 7 messages change Model messages Application domain state and behavior FIGURE 3 MVC model in SmallTalk80 Krasner amp Pope 1988 Below is an example of MVC architecture written in Zend Framework resources db adapter PDO_MYSQL resources db params host localhost reso
38. llCount WebAddFriendtink WebNotesByUsetrk WebPicturesByUsert irk WebPicturesOfUserLink WebPokelink WebPostOnUsenwalllink WebProfilelink WebSendMessageLink WorkPiaceCount amp Methods utu AffiliationType Enum SF Affiliationtist College HighSchool Work Geography TT Type School Class Highschool2 Fields Concentrations m E m Schoollist gt Gr stionYesr Highschoolt Name Schoolld Methods ProfileRelstionshipststus gt ProfileL ookingFor RelationshipStat Engaged InAnOpenRelationship InARelationship IsSingle itsComplicated Married Unspecfied Enum Dating Friendship RendomPisy Relationship Unspecfied WhateveriCanGet
39. ong enough to mature and most of share hosting supports it out of the box there s no place for PHP4 anymore Second its strict rules at some points are good to build good programming practice but preventing flexibility isn t a small drawback As mention in Zend CakePHP strictly implements MVC model while it s an option in Zend In Yii convention is a favor but CakePHP enforces it 323 Yi With a performance test under its own web page Yii claims to be the fastest framework among CakePHP Zend and Symfony by implementing lazy loading technique to acquire an astonishing performance Using this technique a class or an object won t be included until is accessed for the first time so the application requires less resource to perform However the test has been performed long ago so the result may somehow less accurate because most of the mentioned framework has been announcing several newer versions with bug fixes and performance enhanced together with new features The performance of the frameworks moreover can be easily tuned with proper cache configuration and as long as the ActiveRecord pattern is used carefully it isn t that far apart 23 Symfony 1 2 2 Prado3 1 3 CakePHP 1 2 1 Zend 1 7 3 Codelgniter 1 7 0 m pm pe pee Wina L 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 Yii 1 0 2 Codelgniter 1 7 0 Zend 1 7 3 CakePHP 1 2 1 Prado 3 1 3 Symfony 1 2 2 4 T E RPS with APC 6
40. ort which makes the Zend Framework becomes one of the most popular PHP framework of all Zend Framework is designed to be simple and the component is loosely coupled For some points the framework is considered more as a library of components which can be used when needed Unlike other popular framework such as CakePHP and Yii the MVC architecture is optional This option lowers the learning curve for novice as well as increases the flexibility of the framework for experience developers 21 At the time writing this study Zend Framework 2 0 betal has been released the first in a series of beta released cycle The Zend documentation is excellent for the current stable version 1 11 It s thorough and includes all features and libraries of the framework The user community activity is quite moderate though couldn t tell exactly because the archives doesn t show dates Because of the ability to scale up much more Zend is the first choice for many large projects For small and medium projects however using Zend would make them even more complicated to develop because the framework itself is quite large According to the Monster UK site beyond the 3 selected frameworks Zend has the highest hit rank with 129 hits on 20 of J anuary 2012 In the graph below Indeed com makes a clear comparison on jobs posted for the frameworks Job Trends from Indeed com zend cakephp yii 0 04 4 0 02 4 Percentage of Match
41. put search amp sclie nt psy ab amp oq cakePHP amp aq amp aqi amp aql amp gs_l amp pbx 1 amp bav on 2 or r_ge r_pw r_qf scf osb amp fp 144acd6 leed23f45 amp biw 1366 amp bih 653 Bergeret Alix 2010 Web frameworks introduction Wolverhampton s n 2010 Berners Lee T and Cailliau R 1990 WorldWideWeb Proposal for a HyperText Project November 12 1990 Burney 2008 Inductive amp Deductive Research Approach 2008 Clifton Marc 2003 What is a framework Code Project Online 11 3 2003 http www codeproject com Articles 538 1 What Is A Framework 2012 CodeIgniter User Guide Code Igniter Online 2012 http codeigniter com user_guide overview appflow html 2010 EmTech MIT 2010 Technology review Online 2010 http www technologyreview com emtech 10 Fowler Martin 2005 Inversion of Control Martin Fowler Online 6 26 2005 http martinfowler com bliki InversionOfControl html Framework performance comparison Yii framework Online http www yiiframework com performance Gamma Erich et al 1995 Design Patterns Elements of Reusable Object Oriented Software s l Addison Wesley Professional 1995 Gilmore Thomas Krantz Jim and Ramirez Rafael 1986 Action Based Modes of Inquiry and the Host Researcher Relationship 1986 Golding David 2008 Beginning CakePHP s l aPress 2008 42 2011 Internet 2010 in numbers Pingdom Online 1 12 2011 http royal pingdom
42. ser is shown publicly and could be easily exploited by hackers One way that has been used widely and has been mentioned above is using reguire or include function but this may cause the code becomes much more complicated even in medium size site 30 db new mysqli localhost db username db password db name if mysqli_connect_error echo Error Could not connect to the database exit Working with the database then exit upon finish db gt close FIGURE 16 Database connection in PHP without framework 4 3 2 Mapping and Methods input data getting from the form to the database query insert into table name value POST username POST password result db gt query query if result echo New username inserted to the database else echo An error has occur FIGURE 17 Data input in PHP without framework The code above can be used to work with the value entered by user through forms Although the code is quite simple for the sake of simplicity in this study real project work would require much more effort In framework applying MVC pattern besides separating the database connection credentials data models and functions may also be separated just like an example in Figure 4 in Chapter 2 In the Figure 5 data submitted by user through the form is handled and save to the database in controller
43. ses Last but not least although coding PHP manually may require better knowledge of PHP language than in frameworks novice developers may find it harder to learn coding in frameworks because of their unique terminologies Moreover implementing MVC pattern needs extra effort to learn 38 5 CONCLUSIONS There are many factors to consider when chosen a right tool for starting up To answer the first question we should analyze our needs and goals This depends much on the work s requirements and sometimes your current skills First of all developer should decide which language to use in a project If it isn t set to a specific language the best way is to stick to the language which you are most confident to use An example of decision diagram was also presented After that to choose whether using any tool or coding by hand is also a critical choice Although many companies have chosen web frameworks as a tool to aid its development process and improve coding standard because most of frameworks are very strict on this it isn t necessary true in all cases You may practically find it easier to code by hand while using framework may make it more difficult The list of advantages and disadvantages of framework over coding by hand may prove helpful when making the decision Advantages e Easy working with dynamic content for project like social networking online stores news and so on e Easy scaling applications which can grow over
44. st liked native adapter which already included in the package In both approaches the method is used just for simple text strings and static data which appear in the application Dynamic web applications usually use database to manipulate users data Thus implementing 118n needs to works with database In most cases developer needs to create a new data table for each language and setup inter connection between tables of different languages In this case web frameworks ability in working with database proves helpful in 118n 4 6 User management User management might be one the most important feature in every application Least privilege is an important feature in information security The system should assign the least possible privilege for its users In any case granting more than needed permissions to a user can allow that user to obtain or change unwanted data or even damage the whole system A full user management process includes user authentication identification and authorization A common method of user authenticate is by using a database table to store user identity The pair of user ID and password stored in the database will 35 be checked to see if the submitted combination is matched After a successful authentication authorization ensures the user can only work with its limited rights The limited rights are granted by the application s admin followed the principal of least privilege strictly Due to its
45. t System while WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get A content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Website much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them Joomla A CMS platform includes a large amount of add on modules and designs letting any user with little to non coding knowledge to build a website fast but still quite flexible On the other side Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver are the 2 popular examples of WYSIWYG In general WYSIWYG is a HTML editor that hides all HTML code from the user It displays exactly how the site will appear on the display screen and allows users to make changes directly from there making it possible for non technical users to make changes to an existing website or create a new website easily 11 In general framework CMS and WYSIWYG have the same purpose which is support the production of web applications With CMS and WYSIWYG users can process with least knowledge of coding Framework reguires a fair level of coding knowledge and is considered a tool to support professional web programmers e WYSIWYG e Framework e Code everything by hand Advanced FIGURE 2 Technical knowledge needed Bergeret 2010 2 3 Design pattern of Web Framework In object oriented programming design pattern is defined as a general solution to a commonly occurring problem Marston 2007 Nowadays many framewor
46. t easier to work with complex technologies and promote consistent coding fewer bugs and provide more complex application Clifton 2003 So what is exactly a web framework In general a web framework is considered a skeleton of an application into which developers plug in their code and provides most of the common functionality It is built from a collection of pertinent objects factored into classes so that the framework can be reused either its design or code Gamma Helm Johnson amp Vlissides 1995 In the same way web application framework is defined as a collection of source codes organized into certain architecture that can be used to support the development of dynamic websites web applications and web services By that mean developers can think of framework as half done applications that can be built upon to extend them to complete a particular application by creating application specific subclasses of abstract subclasses from the framework In fact any half done applications could be released and called themselves framework They are considered bad frameworks that damage the reputation of the good ones Let s take a look at an example code written in PHP to address the current issues of web pages written in pure PHP without the help from any framework lt php link mysg connect localhost SOL USER SQL PASS if link die Could not connect mysql error endif db mysql select db S
47. them further into other applications could push up the process much faster Many different ways have been applied such as CMS Libraries WYSIWYG and Frameworks This is why there are so many brilliant choices to choose for developers to start working on a new web application to make it better and faster Above all Web Framework is proving to be one of the most emerging platforms to support web application development 1 2 Research questions and research objectives Given the above information the research questions of this study are e What are the reasons for new developers choose to work with framework e In what case should developers apply framework This thesis introduces Zend one of the most anticipated web frameworks to illustrate frameworks usage Since the release of Ruby on Rail in 2004 full stack framework has proved its ability to aid web application development Many different framework projects for different programming language have been launched Until the time of this study stable versions are available for many frameworks and new features are being tested via their beta versions For that reason more and more developers including free lancer developers and even larger groups and companies choose framework as their start up tool The goal of this thesis is to provide the insight of web framework how it could be used to boost the development process This thesis will be of interest to many new or soon to be web
48. time without needs in large changes in code e Taking the most advantage of modularity and reusability of codes e Increase ability to meet deadlines rotating staff and fitful customers which occur regularly in real life development e For any soon to be professional web developer well equipped with web framework is an sufficient effort as it is valued well by employers Disadvantages e Just purely an informative web page without any dynamic user created contents such as personal portfolio e Small projects with small database that requires limited database connection e Such small projects wouldn t benefit much from framework s code 39 generation e Some kinds of web application in which developers need to have total control over the code e You or your teammates can t afford to learn how to use a framework According to the above list of advantages and disadvantages frameworks are created for common web applications but not all should apply Some kinds of project such as extremely specialist websites small and static websites are out of range Since most of commercial web applications connects to a database and allow users to create and modify the content frameworks grow quickly and developing with web frameworks becomes a common practice for professional developers If you decided to work with a framework choosing which framework to work with is the next step Again this is affected by some other factors Many of these
49. urces db params username YOUR DB USERNAME resources db params password YOUR DB PASSWORD resources db params dbname YOUR DB NAME resources db params charset YOUR DB CHARSET FIGURE 4 Define database link in Zend Framework 13 class UserController extends Zend_Controller_Action public function indexAction user new Default_Model_UsersMapper this gt view gt entries user gt fetchAll FIGURE 5 Controller The application logic Username lt br gt lt dl gt lt php foreach this gt entries as entry gt lt dt gt lt php echo this gt escape entry gt username gt lt dt gt lt php endforeach gt lt dl gt FIGURE 6 View The application presenter class Default Model DbTable Users extends Zend Db Table Abstract Table name protected name users FIGURE 7 MySQL database table class Default_Model_UsersMapper protected _dbTable public function setDbTable dbTable if is_string dbTable dbTable new dbTable if dbTable instanceof Zend Db Table Abstract throw new Exception Invalid table data gateway provided this gt _dbTable dbTable return this 14 public function getDbTable if null this gt _dbTable S this setDbTable Default Model DbTable Users return this gt _dbTable public function fetchAIl resultSet this gt getDbTabl
50. using framework as a method will be compared against other coding methods in order to point out advantages and disadvantages of the framework The other methods include coding by hand using Content Management System CMS or What You See Is What You Get WYSIWYG method Throughout the study coding by hand has proven its strength and flexibility above the other two methods Moreover the characteristics of coding in framework and coding by hand are more comparable Therefore this study will concentrate more in comparing the two mentioned methods CMS and WYSIWYG will also be study and introduced in general view though As mentioned above Web application frameworks could be easily mistaken with other type of web toolkits A good comparison will be carried out in the latter part of this study in order to make a clear border between those 1 6 Thesis structure In Chapter 1 we have talked about the research structure and strategy as well as its scope and limitation This thesis targets to novice web developers seeking for tools to start their careers Therefore we are starting with the theoretical part explaining each and every techniques and tools included and why should we end up with the current tool Chapter 2 introduces the web framework talking more about the different and the nature of framework for web application There will be some comparisons between web framework and other popular development techniques such as using Library C
51. written by developers In this way developers have to write specific operations and calling conventions However it may reduce the decision making in structure design This phenomenon is Inversion of Control because the data flows in an inversion way compare to the ordinary course of programming It is also known as Hollywood s Law Don t call us we ll call you Sweet 1985 10 A comparison between a command line program and a window program is a simple but clear example of inversion of control In a command line enquiry developer writes a code that controls the system deciding what to ask or when to ask the user When using a window program the window system is in control based on the binding the developer made when creating the form It decides when to call the developer s method Inversion of control is a common phenomenon occurring regularly when extending framework makes framework clearly different from library Fowler 2005 The difference here is quite obvious They behave differently However some developers think of framework as something bigger and more complete than library The word framework eventually becomes more popular and overused That is why some large libraries are sometimes confused as frameworks 2 2 3 Framework against CMS and WYSIWYG CMS and WYSIWYG are the other 2 popular methods in development Similar to framework they support in building applications CMS stands for Content Managemen
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