Jimmy Z

I checked my Google Analytics today, and I noticed that I got quite a bit of traffic from the International PHP Magazine (http://php-mag.net). Apparently, they wrote on my previous post about CakePHP being a good transition into Ruby on Rails.

To be honest, I hadn’t visited the magazine site before. I just spent a few minutes checking out their articles, and they have some really good stuff for php Jedi Masters.

Here’s the link:

http://php-mag.net/magphpde/magphpde_news/psecom,id,26261,nodeid,5.html

Thanks php-mag.net!

Cool domain name by the way! I like that mag.net thing.

Since I’ve made the jump into CakePHP, I’ve begun using the Prototype javascript libraries. If you’re a Javascript programmer, and have never used prototype.js, you’re in for a real treat. It handles a lot of your cross-browser issues, and gives a really cool API for building Web 2.0 applications.

Anyways, prototype has a real nice function called Ajax.Updater, which makes a call to your server and replaces an element with the returned html. It makes creating an ajaxy application really nice. But is this really AJAX? Or is it AJAH?

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. So I came up with the term AJAH, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And HTML. Okay, I know that HTML is a flavor of XML, so technically you can say that it AJAH is AJAX, but I still think there is a difference.

XML is primarily a markup that allows you to send data formatted in such a way computers can read and interpret the data. The data can be extracted at a granular level. With HTML, the elements of data that you are passing are usually not extract-able unless you use micro-formatting.

With true AJAX, a call is made to the server, the nicely formatted data is returned and the client application extracts the data from the xml, and replaces whatever elements need to be replaced on a page. With AJAH, a glob of html is returned and slapped into the page.

So, which is better? I’m not sure at this point. AJAH definitely allows you to create a dynamic site that can talk to the server behind the scenes quickly and easily so I’m fine using AJAH.

Also, I’m working on a CakePHP/Frameworks post… Stay tuned.

About two months ago, I was introduced to CakePhp, a Ruby-on-Rails-inspired php framework. After studying the various rails-inspired php frameworks, I decided that Cake was the way to go. My experience has been great, although there have been some bumps along the road.
For almost a year, I had been wanting to dive into Ruby-on-Rails. I had successfully completed a few Rails tutorials, but, at the time I didn’t program in Ruby. Therefore the lines were blurred as to what was being done by Ruby and what was being done by Rails magic. CakePHP has provided a great transition for me, as I’ve been able to learn the framework without learning Ruby.

I have read most of Agile Web Development with Rails, and am now able to differentiate between the Rails work and the Ruby work. Ruby looks like a really fun language to learn, and I hear it is really powerful. I would love to jump into it fully now and reap the benefits of this beautiful framework.

I wouldn’t ever want to develop another site without a good php framework. CakePHP is a great framework to work with. However, it still isn’t as mature as Ruby-on-Rails, and doesn’t support all of the features that Rails does. That’s why I still want to jump into Ruby-on-Rails.