[eluser]tonanbarbarian[/eluser]
I am a Joomla! developer from way back (when it was mambo)
I can guess the reason for wanting to develop a product that can run stand-alone and integrated, we are doing the same thing
I am trying to build a library of code at the moment that will allow a CI app to do the following
- run stand alone
- run inside almost any other app or framework, i.e. Joomla, Mambo, oscommerce, you name it
I am basically building libraries that can determine how the app is being run and act accordingly.
If it is run stand alone the app uses its own Session and Authentication libraries and its own User model
If it is integrated into an app it tries to run in 1 of 2 ways
- Fully integrated so that if possible it uses the frameworks existing Session and Authentication functions. As an example it would look at the $my global in Joomla! to determine if the user us logged in and be calling functions from the MainFrame obejct etc.
- Partially integrated so that it would look for an existing session cookie or whatever mechanism the framework uses and determine if the session and user is valid
The libraries for the external frameworks will all be the same so that the system can use any of them transparently, i.e. once the libraries are loaded they will always be accessable via $this->session or $this->auth and they will have the same methods for each so that code can be consistent.
Also building URL libraries that will convert a CI url to something acceptable for the framework and back again.
Plus the libraries have a CRUD scaffold type feature to make development even faster
I am building this to integrate into Joomla! 1.0x at the moment as that is what the app I am building will run in.
I will also eventually build integration code for Joomla! 1.5x, Mambo 4.5x 4.6x and I have plans to build libraries for other things so that app can be integrated into anything.
SO if you want a newsletter that can integrate with an oscommerce install then it will be possible. It will use the oscommerce user database and if there is an existing session there will be no need for a new login.
Plan is to have an app installer too. Stand alone installer will hve options to decide where to install CI, the App and the web (i.e. index.php and any css, images js etc).
There will also be a Joomla! app installer.
The Joomla! app at this stage is planned to be able to run either directly inside joomla, or to CURL or fsockopen to the standalone app. The CURL / fsockopen method will allow for the app to be run when there is little free memory. Joomla! uses so much memory in its core that in the CI app is more than 3 - 4 meg it may run out of memory so that CURL / fsockopen method will have the app running in a seperate webserver thread and therefore using less memory.
The project I am currently developing this for is for a commerical client, but I hope to have a version of the framework finished and possibly released to the community in a couple of months. And hope to start churning out app about the same time.
[quote author="xwero" date="1199667630"]I'm wondering why you would want to bend CI code to fit into the joomla framework? Wouldn't it be easier to make a joomla component?[/quote]
The main reason we are looking at doing this (not sure for fatbear's reason) is that Joomla! is no longer supporting commercial extension in any format.
So to get around this we are now going to develop our extensions such that they can be stand alone apps or run inside Joomla! or any other framework.
This increases our client base as they no longer need to use Joomla! as a framework for the apps, allows our existing clients to still use our apps in Joomla! if they wish, and hopefully allows our clients to use ouor apps almost anywhere they need to.
