[TriLUG] Question about webapp design philosophy

rob wildermann alteran at yahoo.com
Mon Sep 9 13:33:12 EDT 2002


Sorry if I'm late with this, but have you heard of
Fusebox? 

<evangelizing>

Its a design methodology which does precisely what you
are proposing. It was originally concieved for the
proprietary web app server ColdFusion, but has since
been ported to PHP.

The basic idea is to abstract your code in specific
ways to facilitate code reuse and application
stability. Fusebox specifies EXACTLY where and how
code is abstracted, so that maintenance IS NOT a
problem -- indeed, maintenance is much easier because
when minor things change you don't have to look all
over your server for every scrap of code that might be
affected.

Because the code is abstracted, you pass (usually via
url parameters) arguments that tell the script which
elements it needs to grab to build the desired page.

I've implemented most of the spec (it's fairly complex
to start) and really hate going into my older web apps
now.

Fusebox home:

http://www.fusebox.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=learn.FAQ
http://www.fusebox.org

PHP-specific sources (also available by delving into
the main Fusebox site):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/php-fusebox/
http://bombusbee.com/

</evangelizing>

A significant problem both with what you are proposing
and the original Fusebox spec is that web spiders for
most (all?) large search engines ignore the concept of
url parameters altering page content. This effectively
means that only the info on your default page will be
searchable. If you go your own way, I would at least
look at how the Fusebox folks defeated this problem if
you are concerned about how your site shows up in web
searches.

--rob wildermann

--- Mike Helms <Mike.Helms at martinmarietta.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I've been studying ebay (as best as one can study
> ebay just by looking at
> it), and it appears that many of the pages in ebay
> are generated from the
> same "page" on their webserver.  There is a variable
> passed through the URL
> that acts, in effect, like a "command" to the page,
> telling it what we are
> trying to do.  When I go to the My Ebay page, the
> command is
> MyEbayItemsBiddingOn.  When I view an item, it is
> ViewItem.
> 
> This makes sense, as it means there wouldn't be
> dozens, if not hundreds or
> even thousands of separate pages to maintain in the
> website.  In effect, you
> could have one tremendously large page that would
> actually comprise the
> entire website.  If nothing else, this would save on
> repetition.
> 
> Is there a reason not to do this?  I'm laying the
> groundwork now for a new
> webapp that I'm going to build, and this has
> certainly given me cause to
> rethink my design philosophy.
> 
> Cheers,
> -- Mike Helms
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>    
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=====
--rob wildermann
alteran AT yahoo DOT com

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