Is it a good idea to combine an Ajax/UI JS Framework (ext,jquery-ui) with an MVC PHP framework (zend, symfony)?

Question

I realize this is a very generic question, but I guess I'm not really looking for a definitive answer. Being new to PHP frameworks I'm having a hard time getting my head around it.

Javascript frameworks, especially with UI extensions, seem to have their sort-of MVC-like approach by separating your JS code from your design. It just seems like it would get confusing to use an additional MVC framework on the backend.

Is this commonly done for primarily AJAX-driven applications? Is there an accepted/common way of doing it?

Answer 1

Personally we are using Zend (MVC as well as other aspects of the Zend framework) with jquery and it works very well together. Since not all of your interaction from the html page will be via jquery (ajax) then a standard MVC architecture is highly recommended. You certainly want the layers of your architecture (separating the model and the view) and having jquery is (at least to me) and additional "feature" of being able to execute your MVC asynchronously.

Answer 2

It's the next logical step from MVC, in my opinion. You already separate your data access (model), from the business logic (controller), from the output (view) - now you're just separating behaviour from markup.

In my experience, it works really well with AJAX features, since you only need to change your View to return the necessary information as JSON or XML.

Answer 3

It just seems like it would get confusing to use an additional MVC framework on the backend.

No need to worry about that. You can use zend framework and extjs for example independently while developing, they are really separate products. The dependencies between these layers should be kept simple. No need to worry.

The coupling is low, you only need to set up means to query data from your server-app and do whatever you want with in on the client side. The line between these systems is simple and won't confuse you.
Extjs doesn't really has an mvc structure imho. It offers predefined rich components. You glue these components with some configuration and set up the urls of your server where data can be fetched from.

How do you get your zend mvc respond to ajax? I recommend you to view the presentation about zf ↔ ajax from the zf's project lead.

Answer 4

A quick example of how it can fit together for a Zend Framework app (and this is from a demo app I wrote a few months ago):

• Use the MCV Framework to build a fully functional site (which works without javascript).
• Modify the controller to understand the difference between a 'normal' request and an AJAX request (Zend's context switching makes this easy).
• Add Javascript (in my example jQuery) to cleanly replace the links with AJAX events.

In the end, the PHP app knows that an AJAX request needs an AJAX response (less bandwidth, less processing, only JSON or HTML 'snippet'), but a normal request needs an entire page generated.

Basically, you're just using AJAX to request (or update, or add data to) the 'view' template, without having to process the entire layout. The Zend Framework Context Switch Action Helper may help this make more sense.

It's worth mentioning that context switching works well in making a request available in different formats - HTML/XML,CSV,etc.

Answer 5

Its a very good idea, since the PHP MVC frameworks are bundled with JS frameworks:

• Zend comes with Dojo
• Symfony comes with Prototype and script.aculo.us
• CakePHP comes with Prototype and script.aculo.us or jQuery (future release)

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updated link, thanks "Exception e".

Answer 6

@Tim Lytle

Is this demo app available somewhere? I'm going to develop a "gmail-like" (fragment navigation) web app with dojo and zend and I am interested in your mvc-ajax solution.

Thanks