Recommendation...Modular Extensions or Matchbox?

[eluser]zdknudsen[/eluser]
[quote author="lancemonotone" date="1204745002"]... what is the difference between [Modular Extensions] and Matchbox? Do they aim for the same goal but go about it differently, or is there a fundamental difference in philosophy and/or functionality?[/quote]

Please do note that this post might be slightly *cough* biased towards Matchbox.

The one thing our libraries have in common, is the fact that they both aim to let you modularize your application. Philosophy/functionality-wise there are some major differences, though.

Modular Extensions
Part of ME's philosophy is to not alter the CoreIgniter core at all. This does however mean that you will have to do slight modifications to the way you work (haven't worked enough with ME to tell you exactly what, though). Also, ME doesn't handle the routing of urls to your modules, since this under normal circumstances would require extending some of the core files of CodeIgniter. It does, however, sound like this is something wiredesignz is looking into, at the moment. Now, where ME differs from Matchbox in particular is the fact that Modular Extensions are effectively HMVC controllers, which you can read more about in the ME thread.

Matchbox *yay, go me!*
Unlike ME, Matchbox hacks into (part of) CodeIgniter's core (by overriding certain libraries: http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-gui...asses.html), and thus let's you keep coding your applications like nothing happened (except that you can then store your resorces in modules). You make your controllers/libraries/whatever like you always did (e.g. you can follow the documentation without worrying about Matchbox). Also, Matchbox handles all your routing so urls will be routed to module controllers when present. Basically a Matchbox module can work as a seperate CodeIgniter application, and intelligently loads libraries/views depending on which module they are located in.

I guess you'll have to try them both out to tell which is the best for you.