PHP rapid skeleton generator for basic CRUD?

Question

I have been tasked with building a simple web based system for managing a list of vehicles.

I am interested to know whether there are any robust, clean PHP 5 frameworks / libraries that are specialized in doing this quickly.

They should be able to quickly build a skeleton web back-end to an arbitrary data structure with the basic functions:

• Customizable list view
• Customizable edit form
• create/update/delete operations

Nice to haves:

• Multi-user interface
• ACL based rights system
• Localization
• Image / File upload built in

Wet dreams:

• A skeleton CRUD API to manage items programmatically
• A skeleton RSS feed to inform about new items

I am aware most big frameworks provide tools and helpers for this, but would prefer a standalone, light-weight solution that is easy to get into.

Alternatively, is there a great PHP application that you would recommend looking into to modify to suit my needs?

Answer 1

I would recommend CakePHP

Answer 2

Sapphire has a lot of promise. I have used the CMS built on it - SilverStripe - for a few projects and it's very nice. But I haven't dug into the back-end too much.

From the website:

• Our Object-Relational Mapper takes care of your data. Define your data model using our simple PHP5 syntax and our ORM does the rest.
• Tell Sapphire about your data model, and you get 3 interfaces for free. A RESTful API, a SOAP API, and an admin editing interface.

It's not exactly lightweight, but its core is ~1.3 MB but meets a lot of your "nice to haves"

Answer 3

If you don't want a big framework, you could check out phpactiverecord

Answer 4

As far as building skeleton apps goes, nothing comes close to the Yii framework.

http://www.yiiframework.com/

From the site:

MVC, DAO/ActiveRecord, I18N/L10N, caching, jQuery-based AJAX support, authentication and role-based access control, scaffolding, input validation, widgets, events, theming, Web services, and so on. Written in strict OOP, Yii is easy to use and is extremely flexible and extensible.

It also includes CRUD code generation. Headed by the guy who did Prado.

Answer 5

There are several PHP frameworks that meet your requirements (basic requirements). You should use a framework that you are most familiar. If you do not familiar with any framework, I suggest you to use the CodeIgniter.

Answer 6

I've seen awesome demos of the instant blog in Rails and Django and Symfony.

Looking at Zend, Cake, Symfony, Symfony seems the most like Rails/Django. Check out the 10 minute (yeah, super sped up!) demo. It's pretty sweet:

http://www.symfony-project.org/screencast/cart

My experience tells me that there's no framework, lightweight or otherwise that you can easily do what you want quickly if you don't know it. So that's where the tutorials come in. You really need a nice ORM to avoid all that mess with the DB and or reinventing that with a CMS. So the best bet is to choose the one with the best docs, the best tutorial + screencast, in the language you know that gets you closest to your requirements by just changing the names of the variables. I know Django can do all that you're asking with Django 1.2, but with PHP 5 being the requirement, Symfony and it's ORM is my first suggestion.

Yii looks like something I'll be taking a look at right now! Yii-Haaw!

Here's Yii's screencast of blog making: http://www.yiiframework.com/screencast/blog/

Not bad so far! But it's quite a learning curve to get the blog working. Very similar to Rails.

Answer 7

virgo generates PHP (among other) for reach CRUD components based on a data structure. Check out http://www.metadetron.com/index.php/en/partnerzy/virgo