Revision [17394]
This is an old revision of WikkaCake made by BrianKoontz on 2007-08-11 21:34:51.
Integrating Wikka and CakePHP
Why use both?
I advocate the use of Wikka as a FlexibleWikka presentation framework for rapid development of Internet-based applications. Wikka does a great job of handling user authentication, session tracking, and presentation, but does not offer much in the way of easily customizable, high-level database read/write access. Enter CakePHP: A rapid-development PHP framework that handles many of the low-level DB access details so you don't have to. While Cake itself offers similar framework functionality as Wikka, my goal was to implement a totally self-contained Cake application within Wikka. The look-and-feel would be all Wikka, while the Cake engine would provide a database abstraction layer independent of Wikka.In addition, I'm a big fan of the MVC (model-view-controller) architecture, as it helps with cleanly delineating database functionality, business logic, and presentation. Cake is based upon the MVC (3-tier) model, while Wikka is better classified as a 2-tier model (database and business logic represented by one layer, presentation by the other). It's my belief that Cake could be used as a "plugin" framework that Wikka so badly needs. What follows is my proof of concept of one such implementation.
Goals
The goals for this project were simple:- No changes to the Wikka core libraries were to be made.
- No changes to the Cake core classes were to be made.
- Any modifications required to accommodate a Cake plugin were to be independent of operating system platform.
- No animals were to be harmed during this exercise.
I believe the first three goals have been met (and my three dogs are still happy with me, so I'm confident goal #4 was met as well).
