More on Reflex

I’m sorry, Reflex won’t be ready in august as promised. I’ve tried put this fuzzy artificial deadline thinking that some pressure will help me do things faster, but it didn’t work at all. I believe it could have been done by rushing some design decisions, something I don’t like and decided not to do. And there are many design decisions to be done in Reflex.

I think the project is becoming bigger than I first expected which is, in part, responsible of this delay. Currently, Reflex has:

  • a database abstraction layer with a special PHP-made syntax for database queries;
  • a database manager that create and drop tables and fields in the database as required by modules;
  • a record class reminding me ruby on rails’ active record;
  • an event system to implement many automatic behaviours;
  • a template system that can be compiled to dynamic PHP code, static HTML file, or a mix of the two;
  • a completely hookable administration interface (half done); and
  • basic modules for static pages, weblogs and comments (half done).

As I said before, the idea behind Reflex is to have a good framework for creating web applications that can simultaneously share the same database while making it easy to design a completely custom website layout (including URL layouts). What links these two concepts together is a template system inspired from the one in Movable Type, but that can handle arbitrary datatypes instead of just weblog entries and comments.

Well, I’ve said enough for now. I’d better return to work if I want this ready one day. Feel free to add your thoughts, comments, suggestions, questions to the discussion below.


Comments

Jeff Thomas

I’ve been on your website before because I was interested in your PHP Markdown script. Only now did I realize you’re also building a CMS. I’ve been looking high and low for a CMS that I don’t hate. Haven’t found one yet, so I decided to make my own. The problem with that is I’ve never really programmed before! After reading what little you’ve said about Reflex, it sounds similar to what I’ve been looking for and might even implement myself if I knew what the hell I was doing with PHP!

I hope you have a chance to finish it; it sounds like a good concept that I’d like to try.

Michel Fortin

It’s still my intent to finish it. First public appearance is planned for the end of this month (october 2005).

Thank you for the encouragements Jeff. :-)

Jeff Thomas

You’re welcome. I look forward to its release.


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