Kohana 3 – any easier than Kohana 2? - kohana-3

All the way while I have been trying to migrate from Kohana 2 to Kohana 3.2 in a new project, I was wondering how is it better?
There is an evidence that databases work slower in Kohana 3
Captcha module was left out of the framework (so that one need's to search in forum to solve the problem by hacking the old module)
There's a mess in Kohana 3.x documentation (you meet things documented only for Kohana 3.0 or 3.1, though there can be big changes in versions)
Finally, my application does not produce ANY output on certain types of mistakes, what I never met with Kohana 2. — Can't figure why. (Resolved: new host doesn't display errors.)
Obviously, I feel sorry the developers left the good old Kohana 2.x branch, because all I need is an easy and stable solution for quite simple applications.
The question is, what are the advantages of Kohana 3.x that make it worth its disadvantages compared to Kohana 2.x? (I mean the kind of advantages, that make the programmer's life easier and save time.)
Thanks!

HMVC out of the box
Light core (a lot of optional classes where moved into separated modules)
New routing system!! Its so cool, and Im really hate 2.3.x routes
Userguide module. Write your docs with automatically generated API
Config writers (v3.2+)
Improved error handling (especially in 3.3)
Minion module (v3.3) - CLI tasks with Kohana features!

Related

Using Dapper in MonoTouch

Since I'm a big fan of Dapper and using it for a couple SQL Azure Projects I would like to use on MonoTouch as well against the built-in Mono.Data.SQLite.
I realize that Dapper's speed comes from the dynamic code generation which unfortunately is a big no-no on iOS where everything has to be compiled ahead-of-time by MonoTouch.
First question: Has anyone made any efforts to provide reflection based implementation of the relevant parts of dapper? (I know it will be a LOT slower) If not how hard would it be to implement it (only glanced over the Dapper source).
Second question: I hope I am not sounding naive here but would it be remotely possible to write a little utility that would materialize the dynamically generated IL for your entity POCOs into an IL assembly source file that could be added to your MonoTouch project and thus gets AOTed during build time? Or is this impossible due to joins and QueryMultiple etc?
Note: I realize there is at least one attempt to port Dapper to MonoTouch but glancing over the source I have no idea how's that supposed to fly since all the dynamic method generation stuff is still in there.

Java Server Faces 2.0 or Tapestry 5.2? [closed]

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Closed 9 years ago.
Are there any up to date articles comparing JSF 2 and Tap 5? Everything I seem to find is comparing JSF 1.2 and Tap4.
Does anyone have any experience with T5 or JSF2 and time to evangelize one or the other?
I'm looking for a framework for rapid development in Java, on top of Hibernate and mySql.
Other framework sales pitches accepted, but JSF2 and T5 are currently our top picks.
I've worked mostly with Tapestry 5 over the last few years; I won't evangelize though. Choosing a good web framework is certainly a good idea, but usually not your prime problem.
A list of good and bad things from the top of my head:
Tapestry 5 has a rather steep initial learning curve. There's magic and metaprogramming happening everywhere. You could argue it's overdoing convention over configuration.
Simple stuff is very simple to do, harder stuff requires you to understand in detail how Tapestry 5 works and can be hard if you don't (yet).
I love the live class reloading. You change something in a T5 component or template and you see it right away. Really useful when your app does a lot of stuff and takes 30s+ to start in Jetty.
Tapestry does not support dynamic page structures. This is usually not a problem, but if you're developing some kind of portal solution where people can individually arrange components, don't use Tapestry. Tapestry is for static structures, which it handles really well.
Tapestry has beautiful URLs. package/page/${param1}/${param2} ...
Tapestry uses the proper HTTP verbs to do stuff. A link is a GET, a form submission is a POST, the post-redirect-get pattern is the norm.
Tapestry's community is not very large. Apart from Howard Lewis Ship, there are a few other committers, but nothing like the support Wicket has. Thus, Tapestry evolves rather slowly.
Tapestry's approach to templating (instrumenting HTML with types and IDs) is one of the better ones I've seen, but it doesn't go as far as Wicket in keeping code out of the HTML. On the other hand, the class files are less verbose. Still, I think the Wicket way is preferable.
Tapestry is somewhat under-documented.
I like Tapestry very much, I think you can be very productive with it, and I would always happily participate in projects where it is used.
I would, however, advise to also check out Wicket. It seems to have gained more traction than Tapestry and solves some problems less magically, but with a common sense approach.
(I've only briefly used JSF 1, which I found was completely off in just about everything it did: wrapping every request in a POST (thus breaking basic web functionality), using JSPs, but requiring to use special tags for everything, even plain HTML... I read a lot has improved in the JSF camp, but I can't tell, I've never looked at it again.)
Taking up your offer and pitching another Framework :
If you want really rapid development then you should look at the Play Framework.
I've used JSF/Richfaces/Seam/Hibernate etc and I'd say that using Play more than doubles your productivity. There are no deploy cycles. So no developer downtime. It's got JPA/Hibernate baked in and lots of plugins that extend it's functionality in other directions.
I also like the fact that it makes your pages so lightweight. My biggest issue with JSF was always the weight of the pages (unecessary IDs, lots of tables, client state etc)
Take some time and view the webcast.
Check out my presentation JSF 2.0 vs. Tapestry 5: A head-to-head comparison at Jazoon 2010. This might help you to make your decision.
As Tapestry committer I would advise you to choose Tapestry, but I think the best way to make the decison is to give both a try. Need more demo applications?
https://github.com/drobiazko/tapestry5inaction/tree/master/tlog
Most important Tapestry 5 feature for me is the flexibility of the framework. You can override almost every piece of code inside Tapestry's core, thanks to Tapestry IoC.
Don't look to me for an unbiased opinion ... Tapestry has been my life for several years now, and I continue to love it.
That being said, the learning curve is getting less steep, the documentation is improving rapidly, and Igor's book is just around the corner.
Some of the things that confuse people are simply lack of documentation; for example, the naming conventions are optional, there's always more explicit configuration (in the form of method annotations) that some people are more comfortable with.
To address a couple of Henning points:
Tapestry component templates are, by design, static (and this is very important to Tapestry's scalability and clusterablity story). However, an add-on that's part of my TapX library supports dynamic external templates that fill the gap.
Also, if you want to keep your templates maximally spare, you can do that too, such as:
<form t:id="myForm">
... in the template, with the remainder in the Java class:
#Component(parameters={"zone=target", "clientValidation=blur",
"context=client", "secure=true")
private Form myForm;
.... in other words, all the Tapestry specific content out of the template and into the code. Not ideal for trivial components (more switching back and forth between template and Java source) but great for keeping the worlds nice and separate.
I've been pretty pleased with Tapestry. It is a different approach than what most people are use to. It uses a lot of the same paradigm as WebObjects (what the iTunes store is built on).
Tapestry does a very good job of minimizing the amount of code you have to write to accomplish a task. This is great once you know what you are doing, but it can be frustrating at first while you are learning the naming conventions because some stuff seems to magically work and other things won't because you named wrong.
One of my favorite things about Tapestry is how little XML is required. For example, if you create a Hibernate entity, you place it in the com.example.entities package and give it the #Entity annotation. There is no other configuration necessary--no XML, no adding the the class name to a file somewhere, etc.
I'd highly recommend taking a look at actual code to see what you think. Here are a couple suggestions:
wookicentral.com/
github.com/spreadthesource/wooki
tapestry.zones.apache.org:8180/tapestry5-hotel-booking/
github.com/ccordenier/tapestry5-hotel-booking
Also take a look at the jumpstart site. It contains a number of examples along with the code showing you exactly how to use most of the various components. It also contains a starting point app that gives you some user management features if you want to base an application on it.
jumpstart.doublenegative.com.au/jumpstart/
Also check out the revamped Tapestry documentation. It isn't posted on the main site yet, but it is already a very big step forward:
people.apache.org/~uli/tapestry-site/
Use JSF 2, particularly if you make use of Java EE 6 features. If you want to have fancy UI, try Primefaces.
As per your requirement, the important part to consider is that you're using MySQL, and that's it. Therefore, take if from different angle. You're using JPA2 (and your persistence provider happens to be Hibernate in this case). With this approach, down the track you can quickly very easily 'swap' your persistence provider or database you're using.
Looks like Java EE 6 solves it.
Here's a pretty good comparison of Tapestry 5 and JSF 2
http://blog.tapestry5.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/JSF-2.0-vs-Tapestry-5.pdf
Note this was put together by Igor Drobiazko, a Tapestry 5 comitter
I love this question about Tapestry. Maybe it will influence your decision.

Why I dont see YUI used that much often

I have been using jQuery/Prototype/ExtJs and other frameworks for last two years. These frameworks have been very useful.
I switched to YUI recently and finding the learning curve a bit too steep. Also the framework is not making my life as easy as with Extjs or Jquery.
When I consulted several other developers no one seems to be very enthusiastic about YUI. Very few of them have actually used it. Of course this depends on where I stay and what kind of people I interact with but can I say safely that YUI is not beign received as enthusiastically as jQuery? Why is it so ?
NB: I'm an engineer on the YUI team! I think you ask a great question, something I have wondered myself.
IMO, jQuery is more widespread than YUI because it is easy to sprinkle it on web pages that need simple DOM manipulations and basic AJAX or animations. That said, YUI is an extremely popular library that has historically been a favorite of more advanced developers and application builders. We do have a huge and thriving online community on yuilibrary.com -- perhaps folks are too busy writing great code to make a lot of noise? ;-)
That said, we are hearing a lot of buzz these days from jQuery folks hitting the limits of that library as they transition from throwing together simple effects to needing more maintainable, performant, and well-architected code. YUI 3 takes you from the basics to the most complex applications without missing a beat. It is a world-class platform for novices, hackers, and application developers alike: a concise, convenient, and intuitive API that is lightweight and lightning fast, PLUS a well-thought-out infrastructure and comprehensive suite of tools to help you code like a professional.
I agree that the learning curve for YUI has been high -- we are in the midst of a website redesign and writing an O'Reilly cookbook to address exactly that issue. We're also hosting our second annual YUIConf this November to unveil our latest and greatest. We've coming a long way since the days of YUI 2 and we're excited to make it as easy as possible for folks like you to ramp up on YUI 3.
Akshar -- my response is YUI-centric, for sure, but the YUI developer community is huge, enthusiastic, and growing. Check out http://yuiblog.com/blog/category/in-the-wild for some of the implementations we've seen recently. In addition to what's out there in open source, the Yahoo! home page, Yahoo! Search, Flickr, and the upcoming redesign of Yahoo! Mail are all based on YUI 3, the next generation of the library -- which has been welcomed by developers as having industrial strength power along with the concision and selector-driven syntax that makes libraries like Prototype and jQuery so fun to use. My advice: Try it out. YUI 3 is a unique, incredibly powerful library, and its 200 community contributed gallery modules (a number that grows by the week) make it one of the most comprehensive libraries out there.
As a user of both jQuery and YUI, I have to admit that I look at them in almost completely different lights. I use jQuery for custom effects, animation, interactivity on our externally-facing website. The visual extensibility of jQuery means that we can customize the look and feel of these elements to match the rest of our website. I've used YUI as a quick and easy way to develop a snazzy front interface for some of our internal applications. These internal applications are simple Apache/MySQL/PHP apps, and YUI allows for simplified data visualization, form handling, tabs, etc. without having to worry about the look and feel as much. The standardized, slightly bland interface elements are a perfect, no-nonsense approach to quickly developing and rolling out these apps.
I found the learning curve to be a bit steep myself, but the examples help out a lot.
I've been using ExtJS and JQuery for some time, but now i'm experimenting with YUI 3. I like the general idea behind YUI (modules, async loader, plugins) but some things annoy me:
lots of documentation, but some things aren't documented at all or very scarcely
some features are very basic (data grids) compared to their ExtJS counterparts.
you never know which features are there in the core, in gallery or aren't implemented at all. You need to do the research yourself.
the framework feels less coherent than ExtJS
I'm trying to find a replacement for ExtJS for building business applications, but didn't find any framework that would be as rich and complete as ExtJS. I don't like how ExtJS looks and how it forces some strange implementation/architecture decisions on you (MVC!), but have to admit it's really hard to replace.

Is there a stable Programming Language for Web Programming?

A renowned PHP user once said: There will be a relaunch in 2 years, anyway.
Those times are gone. Web applications that are older than 5 years are common. With the original developer(s) gone.
The release cycles of the operation system, programming language, and framework are getting in the way of doing real work, if you don't have a big staff.
Is there any way to develop something that doesn't need constant porting to the next level, without the fear of losing support and backing in a community? For people who want to stay in programming instead of climbing the corporate ladder and leaving the problems to the next "generation"?
My company codes almost exclusively in C#, however we have ColdFusion 5 apps still humming along written back in 2001 or so. Theres no need to port them.
If it ain't broke, dont fix it.
Other than security flaws (which are usually handled by an OS/Server Patch, so they dont need code changes), theres no need to change an app just because a new version of the language has come out.
If I'm not mistaken, ColdFusion has had at least 2 new releases since we stopped using it for new code. but that hasn't affected our ColdFusion sites one bit.
Write CGI programs in FORTRAN 77. Should be pretty stable.
Firstly, it is possible to overstate the difficulty in maintaining web applications. In many cases, the changes to a language or platform are expansionary in nature rather than destructive. .NET, python, etc code from several years ago will still run, but new options are being added to make these these tools more powerful for future applications. The case where massive changes occur tends to be on the first or second iteration of a language, e.g. Rails 1 to Rails 2.
Secondly, the still active development of web programming is something to be thankful for.It means that this is a part of the industry that will remain productive and exciting for years to come.
Traditional CGI is stable. It's not sexy, but if your OS continues to be able to run the same binaries or scripts, it's still going to work.
The only programming frameworks that stay stable are those that have been abandoned. A framework that stood still long enough would have no support for, say, AJAX or JSON or even XML.
You're not going to find what you're asking for. The best you can hope for is a mature framework with good support like ASP.net or JSP. And, as #Neil N said, don't keep upgrading unless there's a compelling business need.
The first web programming I ever did was writing Apache modules in C which communicated with a dBase database. I'm fairly sure that code would still run today (if the company I wrote it for still existed).
I do most of my current web-related programming in Perl, which is very stable and has an excellent track record for backwards compatibility. Most, if not all, code written for Perl 4 (released 21 March, 1991) should still run on the latest stable Perl (5.10) - although you might want to update it anyhow to take advantage of the last 18 years of improvements in both software development techniques and language features.
Consider the shearing layers. I've previously worked in large aerospace companies where the same Fortran back-end code and databases have had their front-ends evolve from the paper tape era through mainframe, client server and onto Intranet web sites.
On the outside, you have will typically have CSS and XHTML templates which can be changed to re-skin an application. These change quite rapidly, in large organisations as upper management seems to decide the bike shed should be a different colour every few weeks.
Typically you then have some logic to combine the templates with data from the back-end, and forward user actions to the back-end. This shouldn't change that rapidly, but translate the presentation to calls into the back-end. Expect to refresh this every few years, and rewrite it once a decade. We used Java for this, starting in the late 1990s. Some parts get changed faster than others, but it's not a big issue.
The back-end is usually stable ( some of the aerodynamics code dated from the 1970s; the laws of physics don't change that often ), and will outlast the web UI, as it has all the other UI paradigms. Fortran is forever.
Write your own web server in C then you don't have to worry about a web programming language.
(No, that's not a serious answer)
Have you seriously looked at what TDD, CI, pair-programming, and a solid, rapid development framework (basicaly Django or Rails) can offer to you as a developer vis-a-vis the way you write and design code? There are some really massive benefits that all of those pieces offer to the development process that make it almost a joy to be a programmer again. There are downsides, of course, but the upsides are all in support of the happiness and ease of development for the engineer, which leads to more productivity. In my book, that's a slam dunk win. And the result of my productivity and happiness, has been solid products and great engineering.
YMMV, but if you are having the serious thoughts that you are (and I take them very seriously), I think it's worth you investigating what those tools can offer. By taking the good and leaving the bad from the agile religion plus some of the things I listed above, I've returned to find the joy in programming again this last year, after a good 5 years of a downhill slide of my happiness with this career. It's about finding what works for you. I can only help and lead the way by showing you what worked for me. I'd be more than happy to discuss at length if you want to talk offline, I think this is a really important topic...it lead me to consider a career change many times.
Java Servlets and JSPs have been in use for a decade or so, and they still work the same way like they did in '99. But honestly, can you imagine something uglier than a '90s web application without any rework done since?
The Python web framework web2py promises backward compatibility:
Always backward compatible. We have
not broken backward compatibility
since version 1.0 in 2007, and we
pledge not to break it in the future.
And supports Python versions from 2.4 to 2.7
EDIT: Updated an important project 2 times and every time there was a problem. Well, …
EDIT 2: Needs Python 2.6 to 2.7 now. No support for Python 3.

Is G4jsf still being developed/supported?

I've been evaluating different Java Web Application UI Frameworks. I have about 8 months of intensive JSF experience that I'd like to continue using. JSF also provides me the spider-readable markup as well as the ability to create very simple forms without touching much Java code.
I also will have need for thick-client side interfaces that will perform well with few server round trips. GWT seemed like an ideal choice for this.
So, when I found G4jsf, I thought I had found the best of both worlds. However, I can't seem to find any active development on it. I hope it hasn't died, but it seems like that is the case.
Is there active development on this? Or am I two years too late?
Well, based on the conversation in the reference below, it seems that G4jsf is no longer being supported. If the poster is in fact Sergey Smirnov, I would imagine he'd be a pretty reliable source on the matter. :)
http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=150674

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