Phiz - a light weight web application framework

by R. S. Doiel - rsdoiel@mac.com
copyright © 2005

Overview

Phiz is a framework for building web applications based on the View/Model/Controller design pattern. One of its novelties is that rather then use a template system with an embedded macro language views are render with plain old XHTML (or XML) and CSS processed with a phiz file that describes the mapping between the modelled data and the view to be rendered. This results in a nice division of labor for graphics designers and programmers. Designers can focus on producing valid XHTML and CSS while the programmers can focus on good models and robust model testing. While the controller code (usually index.php in the case of PHP implementations of Phiz) can take care of envoking the correct models and asembling the resulting views.

Contents

  1. Anatomy of a Phiz based application.
    1. A Simple Example Specification
    2. Assembling Views
    3. Building a Model
    4. Building a Controller
    5. Assembling a Phiz App

  2. Examples from simple to more elaborate.
    1. Hello World -
      1. Example 1a - simple hello world
      2. Example 1b - model based hello world
      3. Example 1c - controller/model based hello world

  3. Suggested practices.
    1. Front end first
    2. Back end first
    3. Parallel development

  4. Phiz - objects and methods

  5. Phiz/Model - the basic model responsibilities

  6. Phiz/Controller - basic controller responsibilities