I've spent the last 6 months working quite successfully with CodeIgniter, but a few frustrations are making me consider alternatives. Particularly, form handling (especially validation) for complex pages with many buttons has turned into a coding headache. I also seem to spend too much time making basic functionality (authentication, form layout CSS etc) that could just be part of the framework.
I came across PRADO when reading about Delphi for PHP and ASP.net. I was initially very excited, but then I read about performance concerns (which I've definately seen on many ASP.net sites). My mind is full of questions:
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Why can't you avoid the performance problems by storing view state information in a DB session table instead of as hidden page data? Are all web tools that attempt event-driven UI components doomed to suffering this problem?
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Is Yii adopting MVC simply because of this or were there other problems? To what extent does Yii retain the concept of "fixing web statefulness" on behalf of the developer, and encapsulating all widget properties into a component? Or are MVC and event-driven models mutually exclusive?
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In what way will Yii fix my coding headaches for complex forms - I want to work with input variables and rules, and have everything else taken care of (not coding low-level variables about error information).
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I actually quite liked the idea of packaging all the relevant aspects of a UI widget (view state, properties, style, validators etc) into one component, rather than coding the same variables multiple times across the web stack. Is this is never going to be the best way on the web?
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What's the quickest way right now to learn the Yii classes? I'm someone who learns best from examples rather than API specifications - will it help me to learn PRADO first while you're still working on the tutorials?
Keep up the great work!
Kind regards,
Mark