Strangler Application implementation with ZendFramework

Question

I have current PHP codebase written in procedural (mainly) style that our client is using for some time now. What we want is to "strangle" (as in concept Strangler Application) that code and add Zend Framework to enable new development.

What I have now is custom route that routes all "old" HTTP request to one controller (i.e. Strangler Controller) and that controller will use cURL to make new request transferring that request to "old" application (this "old" code uses also .htaccess to do some rewrites...) and fetching response that I send directly to user browser. This is done because the old code already does all processing and templates and such stuff (session...).

Next step will be to implement ZendSessions so we can mirror user experience through both applications.

After writing some new features using ZF MVC we will route these new request to new code... Hopefully, this will all end in removing all old code in some reasonable time window.

What I ask:

"Is there anybody already doing this and if Yes, what are the advices with taking these step and implementations?"

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You definetly shouldn't do anythink like "half way" :) You should develop the project in whole and test it. Then send it live :) We've done that with bank intranet and it worked OK.