http://vimeo.com/31100268

Imagine the need to censor every user post on your site. Most of the web projects I’ve been involved with has the “website claims no responsibility for user content”. That won’t be the case anymore. Imagine if you as a webmaster could go to jail if user posts a copyrighted piece of information.

Agile Toolkit website will be unavailable for 24-hours to join Wikipedia in efforts to raise awareness on Jan 18th.

More about SOPA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

How did we start?

Agile Toolkit 4.0.1 was publicly released about a year ago, in early 2011. It came with a brand new homepage, which by the middle of February was looking like this: http://old.agiletoolkit.org/ (Enjoy this older snapshot, I might remove it later).

The important point here is that Until February 2011 there were about 5-10 developer who knew Agile Toolkit. It hasn’t been a year but we now have thousands of installations across the world and we have very stable 4.1.3 and are working on 4.2. Back in February the whole community management deal was very new to me and I still think  we could use more active supporters.

At the start of the year, I knew of just a few cases where Agile Toolkit was used outside of our company and now there are lots of projects in development such as Support Ticket systems, Project management, Accounting systems, Payroll, Cloud Control Interfaces, Skill testing, Graphing and Plotting UI, Political discussion websites, Application Store Management System, Game statistics tracking, Racing database and even for an interface for ordering Salad from local cafeteria.

Lately we have been working further to commit back code and start several open-source project including Agile Content Management System, Agile Cart/Checkout, Generic Membership website, Project development collaboration platform (Colubris).

What Users Say?

Here is some of our user feedback I’ve collected:

Thanks. I think you have done an incredible project. With some more documentation it will overtake some big and hard to learn frameworks. [Jaume]

I am quite curious about atk4. I ran into AModules3 a few years back and was intrigued but did not have the time to do anything with it. I now ran into ATK and realized it is fact based on AModules3! I am taking a better look now. [skip] Cheers for what looks very promising! [Dominic]

Hi, I’m a simple php developer from Montevideo Uruguay.I’m in the process of adopt a PHP framework and are very Impressed with ATK, It’s really very simple to learn (for me) compared with other frameworks thath I have tried (zend, symfony, cake). [Alejandro]

This framework is very promising. We’re going to try it in a internal project initially and then if succesfull we will integrate it in our products. [Ivan]

Looks very interesting on first look through, anything that makes UI development/intigration more streamlined is welcome [Dave]

This framework looks solid and extremely sophisticated yet simple at what it does! [?]

Geez! How powerful is ATK, and getting even stronger! Thumbs up guys! Congrats.Hoping to become familiar with the toolkit and start using it as my best tool. [Fernando]

This is Babu…. your technology seems to be awesome and very efficient one.It would be more better for me if there is any complete reference materials for this technology because i am working in a project using this framework. [Babu]

I just checked the presentation .. and I can say WOW! indeed looks very promising and powerfull. I also am checkign the new demos. Very good impression! [Svetlozar]

Congratulations! I am glad, framework keeps on growing. With a lot of interest now I am going to check atk4.com looking for new things =) [Kirill]

My Wish for New Year

For the new year I wish that Agile Toolkit would simplify a daily life of as many web developers as our word of mouth could reach.

Happy New Year Everyone!

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/agile-toolkit-devel

You can learn a lot buy learning fundamentals of Agile Toolkit.  I’m starting from the very bottom layers of the framework, so join in quick!

Unless you want to reinvent the wheel, you should look into using some AJAX / PHP library. Agile Toolkit amongst other can be a great help when you want to build interaction between JavaScript and PHP.

JavaScript event to trigger PHP function

Before going into AJAX, here is how you could produce random numbers in plain JavaScript:

<button id=”mybutton”>Click Me</button>
<script>
$(‘#mybutton’).click( function(){
$(‘#mybutton’).text( Math.random() );
}
</script>

Agile Toolkit comes up with an elegant way in PHP:

$mybutton=$this->add(‘Button’)->setLabel(‘Click me’);
if($mybutton->isClicked()){
$mybutton->js()->text( rand() )->execute();
}

See this example in action

More information of Binding JavaScript actions to PHP

Code achieves same result, but the “Rand” value is calculated on the server. This code relies on the JavaScript function “ajaxec()” defined in JavaScript Utility library (Universal Chain).

How to make it even better?

Wouldn’t it be even greater if you could bind any action to any object like that?

$this->add(‘H3′)->set(‘Move mouse over’)->on(‘mouseover’, function(){

$this->js()->text(‘Thank you’)->execute();

});

Subscribe to my channel on YouTube to see the screencasts as soon as I publish them.

The first 6 one-hour sessions is about creating a simple Task Manager. Many thanks to Maurizio for his participations.

Screencast with me!

If you’ve got Skype and great idea for Agile Toolkit we could help each-other. I can help you move forward with your idea and I would get a material for a new screencast session. Please use contact form to send me your ideas.

• Completely new “TMail” implementation
• Completely new “DB” implementation based on PDO
• Completely new “DSQL” implementation
• Completely new “Model” implementation
• Completely new SMlite implementation
• Improvements in Site Debugging

The new implementations are functionally compatible with the 4.1 branch, although the do offer a number of benefits. In this article, I’ll highlight some of the new features about the new component implementation.

Another important feature of all the new modules is that they are are under heavy automated testing from the very start.

What’s new in the “TMail 2.0″

The TMail class actually been pushed into 4.1.3 release adds much more modularity as well as support for transports. Previously TMail would only send out emails through the mail() function, now it could be written into database, sent over Amazon SES, mail() or any combination of these.

There are also number of improvements in how TMail manages templates – it allow both HTML and Text part to be defined in your template and will automatically produce non-HTML version if you supply with the HTML only.

What’s new in DB implementation

Actually there is nothing new in the DB as compared to “DBlite”. You initialize database by calling $api->dbConnect() and it’s going to stay this way. To use the new database driver you would need to supply the “pdo” in the $config file.

DB implementation features a “query cache”, if a query is executed multiple times, it is prepared only once. This actually makes a lot of sense when you operate with models and parametric values.

What’s new in DSQL implementation

DSQL has been rewritten, but the fundamentals are the same. You create dsql() instance then call methods such as “field()”, “where()”. The new version is much more consistent about escaping arguments and handling of expressions. The new implementation completely relies on parametric nature of PDO, which proved to be a little more challenging to implement, but the interface have not been changed.

1. where(‘id’,2);                    // equals
2. where(‘id’,'>’,2);                // explicit condition
3. where(array(‘id’,2),array(‘id’,3));    // or
4. where(‘id’,array(2,3));           // in
5. where($dsql,4);                   // subquery
6. where(‘id’,dsql);                // in subquery
7. where($dsql->expr(‘length(name)’),123);      // expressions

The new are expression and sub-qureies, and DSQL does a great job figuring out all the parametric queries as you wildly join tables. Dsql now support iterators and the following syntax is permitted:

$q=$this->api->db->dsql();
$q->table('books')->where('price<',20);
foreach($q as $row){
    echo implode(',',$row)."\n";
}

What’s new in Model implementation

It has become much simpler and modular. Also I’m adding implementation of interfaces which makes it possible to access active-record in a super-easy way. Here is an example of model use in 4.2 which implements Iterators and ArrayAccess:

foreach($this->add('Model_Books')->addCondition('price<',20) as $book){
    $author = $book->getRef('author_id')->sendNotification();
    echo $book['name']." by ".$author['name']."\n";
}

Additionally field implementation is now implemented as number of classes, not just a single “FieldDefinition” class.

$model->addField('name');
$model->addExpression('age')->calculated(function(){ return 'years(now())-years(birthday)'; });
$model->addReference('client_id')->setModel('Client');

In all 3 cases the field is defined by a different class which defines how the field is being queried. “Model_Table” is now implemented on top of “Model” class which is a very simple implementation of a model without data-source. This base class can be further extended to allow storing model data in No-SQL storage. Caching could also be further added through controllers.

Models have also some of their methods renamed shorter. Long version will continue to work throughout 4.2, but the use of shorter version is recommended.

if(!$model->loaded())$model->load(3);

Models will also support proper joins in which you could define how new entries are being added.

The way how Models interact with Views and Controllers will be different. Currently $view->setModel(‘abc’) initializes controller first and then initializes model. In 4.2, model is initialized first and placed inside $view->model() and then controller is initialized which imports fields into a form or grid. As a result, you will be able to use Models with “Form” and “Grid” classes, without the need for “MVCForm” and “MVCGrid”

This makes it possible to do many really interesting things for example create Form presenting fields from multiple models.

Also “reference” field is no longer needed as models can be used with “dropdown”.

SMLite improvements

The implementation of our Template Engine is really old but works well. It relies on explode()ing string into chunks then iterating through them. The new SMlite implementation will rely on regular expressions and will perform faster. Currently there are some technical issues with regular expressions, but I hope to overcome them before next release. There will be no new features for the template engine, I intend to keep it simple.

Other improvements and Debug

Overall the migration to use exception() method for raising exceptions proves to be quite rewarding. Errors now contain more useful information and are ready to be localized.

While in debug mode, it will be possible to extract additional information from your current errors. For instance if exception is raised inside Model, it adds a link to error message allowing you to reload the page with model’s debug enabled. This way you don’t need to add $m->debug() manually to spot the problem.

Additionally debugger will allow you to dump a complete tree of all the objects in the system highlighting the problem branch which produced an error.

On the user-interface side, the started installation of Agile Toolkit will feature a simple “inspector” so that you could visually see and understand your code as you start with Agile Toolkit, very similarly to http://codepad.agiletoolkit.org.

Changes into atk4-addons

I plan to discontinue atk4-addons repository and instead make those addons loadable and installable through a web interface. The initial package of Agile Toolkit will allow you to browse addons library and install them individually with a mouse click. Addons would be installed into atk4-addons folder.

Documentation and Testing

One of the reasons why DSQL, SMlite and Models are currently lacking in documentation is because I am not satisfied with their internal implementation and was planning to re-implement them for 4.2. I am planning to have our own “Documentation Viewer” and “Testing Engine” as downloadable add-ons as well as having the documentation available for you in off-line format as some users have been requesting.

More importantly you will be able to enhance documentation and test scripts with your own as your application grow in scale.

Conclusion

I’m looking forward to the 4.2 release this winter. As I have already mentioned, Agile Toolkit release cycle produces new major version once every half year. The version is compatible with previous release, however if you do run into some compatibility problems you can still use old TMail, SMlite or DBlite/Models.

Throughout the minor releases any changes are backwards compatible with the use of “Contoller_Compat” class.

Many thanks for your continued interest in Agile Toolkit and I hope you are as excited about new changes as I am.

I first have learned about Object Oriented in the age of 10, in 1990. I have already mastered BASIC and was exploring the world of Turbo Pascal. My young mind couldn’t grasp the ideas of in capsulation and polymorphism so I asked my mom to help out. She took the book and carefully kept re-reading the introduction.

“Objects. Think Objects”.

Years later I have been eager to apply the Object Oriented principles everywhere: the games I wrote, the demo-scene productions, my copy of multiplayer user dungeon. When I settled in as a Web Developer and learned PHP3.0 I was disappointed at the poor implementation of the objects.

The birth of Agile Toolkit was as soon as the Zend Engine 2.0 alpha was released. I started to re-wrote the framework I had into a new, powerful language. From the first versions the most important distinctive feature of Agile Toolkit today have been embedded into the very core of the framework.

Rendering of the Runtime Object Tree

2-3 decades have passed since the concept of Object-Oriented User Interface have been launched on the desk-top computers. The realization that the elements you can see on your screen have many similarities even through the look differently defines every Graphics User Interface today. To understand this concept Imagine a “button” and a “input field” next to each-other.

Here a two object quite distinctive in their appearance are being rendered by the operating system by calling each object’s rendering function. The system may decide to force objects to re-render or skip rendering if they are not actually visible on the screen.

The exactly same idea is in the foundation of Agile Toolkit. Because I have been creating my own User Interface in Pascal and Assembler this was to me the best possible solution to interfaces in the Web Applications – implement them as a tree of visual objects generated during the run-time of your application and then rendering the necessary components.

Making Interface More “Webby”

Initial implementation of Agile Toolkit was only good to produce back-end administration systems as it was too in-flexible to do the requirements of the creative minds of our web-designers. Many UI Frameworks are destined with the same interface style, but Agile Toolkit was able to introduce a great breakthrough.

All the objects in Agile Toolkit, no matter how complex, are producing a valid HTML code based on object templates. This approach allows to easily change HTML behind individual or all objects and finally produce the great solution for website front-ends. However the default look and feel of Agile Toolkit application gives developers a great start.

Progressive Enhancement

By the time Agile Toolkit has matured the move towards Progressive Enhancements in CSS and Scripting made it possible to create a separate JavaScript layer which would  be optional for the elements. While earlier we would need to set “onchange” and “onsubmit” handlers into HTML baking templates extremely complex, now all of the JavaScript code have gone into a separate JavaScript API based on top of jQuery UI.

This allowed to purge all the JavaScript hacks from the code and rely on a much more powerful Object-oriented interface between JavaScript and PHP.

Business Logic

With the increasing complexity of our projects, it became apparent that a Objective Model layer is necessary. It finally appeared in Agile Toolkit in 2008 as an optional component. The models in Agile Toolkit serve a different role than the Models of other ORMs and Frameworks. Instead of only offering DataBase engine transparency and populating classes from data structures models in Agile Toolkit introduce a new dimension to modeling – inheritance. You can understand the power of this when you can narrow down values in the drop-down field by simply setting the right model to the reference definition. SQL Databases could not implement such flexibility but a PHP framework can.

RoadMap for Agile Toolkit

Up till now, Agile Toolkit had been walking a different path than other frameworks. Their goal was to provide developers with “utility” or a wrench to do certain things better. Approach of Agile Toolkit is to build levels of abstractions from the very bottom up. I must admit, that I can solve any web-related task with Agile Toolkit, but if I must produce a solution in clear PHP I feel lost and confused.

The immediate road-map for Agile Toolkit is to improve the 3 strengths it has by making it easier to interact and build. The “Model Builder” is in the works, which provides a visual interface to building new model fields and actually generating a PHP file as a result. The syntax of Models is already extremely simple but it will be even more so with the builder.

Another initiative is the User Interface builder. This allows create pages and add objects on your pages with a drag-and-drop interface. Similarly the tool would be capable of outputting a valid PHP code you can then further modify.

The number of Views and Templates will be made available through an on-line repository. In a way this would be similar to WordPress extensions, but tho time you will be installing classes which will aid you in building an Interface. The available views could be either free or paid creating a possible new revenue model for developers. A good example for such an view would be a “Gallery”. You could add this to any application you’ve got and bind it with the model holding images.

Unlike add-ons in other frameworks, the unified UI, JavaScript and Model structure makes sure that the add-on you are adding will fit-in perfectly, will be easily configurable to do the job and will contain minimum amount of code.

Conclusion

I adore web applications, but today it is way too complicated to build a web application. The situation reminds me the “DOS” and with Agile Toolkit I am able to introduce a Graphical User Interface for The Web.

http://codepad.agiletoolkit.org/

One awesome tool I’ve created in the process is the right-side “inspector”. Inspector examines the current page and objects on that page looping through them and finding objects which were added by the example. You can then mouse-over the objects to highlight the objects on the page or click to see source code of that class.

Enjoy all the examples and I plan to add more examples (from http://demo.atk4.com/) soon.

Download and Install Codepad

Would you like to look further into how codepad works? You can get it from github:

git clone git://github.com/atk4/atk4-codepad.git
git submodule init
git submodule update

Add your own examples into page/* to share them with your friends. You can also “fork” codepad and push back some of your own examples if you would like to see them in the Codepad.

One of the best qualities of Agile Toolkit is that it can be very nibble when you want to use it to fill the gap. So let’s scrap the whole page routing mechanics and simply create a SINGLE PHP file which would work on it’s own. For this, you will need to have most up-to-date Agile Toolkit (4.1.3).

Download “Agile Toolkit” and un-pack in the temporary directory. Copy folder “atk4″ into your wordpress directory.

Next open file test.php inside your wordpress and type the following:

<?php
include 'atk4/loader.php';
$api=new ApiWeb('sample_project');
$api->add('jUI');
$api->add('H1')->set('Subscribe to Newsletter');
$form=$api->add('Form');
$form->addField('line','email');
$form->addSubmit('ok');
if($form->isSubmitted()){
$em=$form->get('email');
$form->js()->univ()->alert('Thank you for subscribing, '.$em)->execute();
}
$api->execute();

If you open this file in your browser, you’ll see a form with a field. You can now refer to samples on agiletoolkit.org site to customize or even create your own theme, but pretty much any code should work for you.

As a result, I’ve created a universal “NewEntry” button, which can be added anywhere like this.

$client=$form->addField('autocomplete','client_id');
$client->setModel('Client');
$client->add('Button_NewEntry',null,'after_field')
  ->setLabel('New Client')->setModel('Client',array('name'));

This produces the following:

• Button is added next to the field
• When button is clicked, new dialog is displayed offering to add new client
• After form is submitted, dialog closes and new client is automatically selected in auto-complete field
• Works with any model, label and list of visible fields can be customized

Adding New Button Code

This should be as simple as copy-pasting the following code into your lib/Button/NewEntry.php

class Button_NewEntry extends Button {
public $field=null;
public $label=null;
public $model=null;
public $fields=null;
public $form=null;
function setText($t){
$this->label=$t;
return parent::setText($t);
}
function setModel($m,$fields=null){
if(is_null($this->label))
throw $this->exception('Execute setLabel() before setModel() on this button');
        $this->model=$m;
$this->fields=$fields;
        if($this->owner instanceof Form_Field){
$this->field=$this->owner;
}
        if($_GET[$this->name]=='click')return $this->dialog();
        if($this->isClicked()){
$this->js()->univ()->dialogURL($this->label,
$this->api->getDestinationURL(null,array(
$this->name=>'click'))
)->execute();
}
}
function dialog(){
$this->api->stickyGET($this->name);
$v=$this->owner->add('View',$this->short_name.'_dlg',$this->spot);
$_GET['cut_object']=$v->name;
$this->form=$form=$v->add('MVCForm');
$form->setModel($this->model,$this->fields);
        if($form->isSubmitted()){
$m=$form->update();
$js=$form->js()->univ()
->closeDialog();
if($this->field){
$js
->getjQuery()
->closest('.atk-form')
->atk4_form('setFieldValue',$this->field->short_name,$m->get('id'))
;
}
$js->execute();
}
}
}

See also git repository link for my implementation.