Hi all,
I want to see if any of you know a (free and open source will be ideal) tool/ app that can help build a php web application very quickly without investing too much time on writing codes, preferring drag and drop/ point and click work-flow designer for logic design (see Agile from Outsystems below). Plus, visual designer for the business logic is great since it can help a developer visualize the logic better.
There are a lot of GUI builders, form builders out there, but I am looking for one app for the entire web application development process.
My goal is to find an application that a team of developers can use together and use the build-in code of the app as much as possible. E.g. the app will provide a modular just for handle user login or a shopping cart; a developer just need to drag and drop the modular to the logic designer and the code will be generated. This way the functionality will be in a module and code will always be standard across developers. So if a new developer get on-board, he will just need to use the system and get up and running quickly.
To explain this better: there is a lot php frameworks, e.g. cakephp, CodeIgniter, etc which I can use to help coding, but still I need to create (code) the GUI, writing quite a bit of codes. I am looking for a tool/ app that is a little more high level than those frameworks. Here is 2 examples apps I found during my google search which they have visual logic designer and gui builder in one single app. Also a single click deployment (but I need it to be php apps or at least I can deploy the (php) code to a LAMP/ WAMP server):
- Wavemaker: for JAVA
- Agile from Outsystems: for JAVA or .net (This one is really good, with work-flow drag and drop logic designer!)
- Talend: it is just an ETL tool, but the concept is what I want to bring up. Drag and drop, point and click logic design. Custom code can be added if it is needed, but the drag and drop process already finished the structure and most of the coding of the web app one needs to build.
I want to list Adobe Flex, but it is more like a GUI designer + IDE, not exactly what I want to describe here. The drag and drop/ work-flow logic designer is a key for the app.
I could go for the CMS route by learning how to extend them, but it is not that flexible for me and is a long learning curve.
Anybody came across this type of app before? Or any idea of how can I find those apps? I googled them for long time, I don't see any of them for php and just few (just 2) for Java.
Thanks in advance!