CakePHP Application design documentation
I posed the following questions on the CakePHP Google group.
To follow responses click here…
While CakePHP provides an EXCELLENT framework for coding PHP apps. When it comes to tools which help aid in the design phase of application development, some of you might have adopted some techniques to streamline the analysis and design phase.
For creating databases and CakePHP models, i would opt for DBDesigner combined with dbdesigner2cake.
DBDesigner allows easy creation of ERDs as well as implementation of databases in various DBMSs. dbdesigner2cake (http://dbdesigner2cake.cirello.org/) as per its site “DBDesigner 4 Scaffold Tools for CakePHP”.
But what about modeling business logic and user interfaces.
My approach would be to model business logic in DFDs (would be great to see a DFD to PHP app), while prototyping user interfaces in image manipulation tools such as Photoshop.
What form of documentation, processes and tools are folks using for application design?
UPDATE:Shorty after writing this post i stumbled across ArgoUML, it’s modular so it enables engineering of PHP code using the ArgoUML-php module (http://argouml-php.tigris.org/)
Another open source tool to consider is http://uml.sourceforge.net/index.php which is some what OS independent as well (Bonus points).
May 28th 2008
Enterprise Archtiect ( http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/products/ea/index.html ) is one of the few modeling tools that offers to/from conversion to PHP(as well as SQL/Java/etc…).
I use it at work, and I’ve been wanting to find the time to start using it for my cakePHP projects - but have not had time to yet. I have used it for some database design though
It is completely customizable, so it would not be difficult to customize it to automatically generate some cakePHP components in model and in code.
It is commercial, but it is dirt cheap ($135) compared to many other modeling tools that cost several times more and don’t do near as much.
May 28th 2008
Thanks for the feedback Steve.
A good friend of mine pointed Enterprise Architect out to me a while back, but while i ran Linux i paid no notice to it. Seeing that it’s feature set is comprehensive and whole-system virtualizers is becoming more common, i might just consider using it.