Modular Extensions

[eluser]wiredesignz[/eluser]
Building a CodeIgniter MVC application is now easier than ever before.

Modular Extensions allow you to create self contained CodeIgniter applications as modules and re-use them anywhere or incorporate them as parts of a larger application.

Download the ME components from the wiki and try it out for yourself.

[eluser]MpaK69[/eluser]
hm, what about changes?

[eluser]Majd Taby[/eluser]
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[eluser]GSV Sleeper Service[/eluser]
are there any more examples of this in use? the wiki doesn't really do a great job of explaining what it can do.
it sounds like it could be very useful for a project I'm working on.

[eluser]ptrippett[/eluser]
What's the difference between this and just making reusable Controller classes? Unless you follow strict design guidelines between sites you still have to edit the CSS and HTML in either case.

Seems to me to be a bit CI², CI on top of CI

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
ptrippet ME is a more flexible way to create your file structure. In CI there is no other way to reuse your controllers then to copy paste them in the different applications. ME allows you to share controllers, models, views. Of course you would have to change the design of the site but if you want to have a one design backend for recognizability you can.

ME started out as a modular library but it has grown into something much more useful. Wiredesignz correct me if i'm wrong

[eluser]ptrippett[/eluser]
[quote author="xwero" date="1212071576"]ME is a more flexible way to create your file structure. In CI there is no other way to reuse your controllers then to copy paste them in the different applications.[/quote]

And i don't have to copy my ME modules between applications? CakePHP has similar functionality to this built in to its core, i think a lot of people transition from Cake to CI and expect this functionality without realizing its achievable as an "undocumented feature"

[quote author="xwero" date="1212071576"]ME allows you to share controllers, models, views. Of course you would have to change the design of the site but if you want to have a one design backend for recognizability you can.[/quote]

IMO (I like using that) it would be easier to create each "module" as a separate CI instance. and place them in subdirectories of your main website.

PLEASE NOTE: I am not in anyway flaming this contribution simply trying to understand what it provides which can not already be accomplished by a more flexible method.

We all know CI instances can be placed in subdirectories. Therefore, my understanding is for example you use ME to write a forums module for a large website and now this module is tightly integrated into your main website and uses its system resources. Suddenly your forums take off gets a google hits a day and it is slowing down your main website and other parts of it. You have no options. However by splitting it into separate instances of CI you can .htaccess 301 the old location to the new location of the forums on another server

[eluser]sikkle[/eluser]
humm, huge discussion could be done about ME.

The real basic utility is to be able to call an entire controller as view partial. Top ten post, whatever it is.

Having an entire modules, with config, autoload, library, view, controller. Making some speed test about that and you will be surprise of the small impact ME have on speed.

And yes, you have to copy and past your stuff between application. the best example is having a totally modular auth module. Don't you mostly always need it ?

Also for the record, when you build LARGE website, you have bigger decision to take than go with module or not, go with a framework or not is already a question.

Also a forum design will have a huge impact on the googling robot indeed.

Also for people i'll give a look soon when stable ME will be in place to give a hand to write some documentation about "major usefull" method of this libs.

see ya all around.

[eluser]wiredesignz[/eluser]
Modular Extensions allows you to create independent modules for different parts of your application.

No matter wether is a simple web service module or a full blown sub application in a module, you can just as easily remove the module to a new CI instance as ptrippett suggests and it will still run.

The beauty of ME is allowing you to keep your codebase clean and simple, while allowing modules to manage different tasks normally crammed into a single contoller.

View partials are a fundamental function in ME and allow HMVC style operations.

I don't think it is difficult to learn or use ME as there are only 2 functions that differ from normal CI style programming. All CI base functionality that is built into ME is transparent.

EDIT:
The additional functionality is:

$this->load->module(); - Used in Controllers only.

modules::run('module/controller', $data, 'method'); - Used in Views.

[eluser]Tony Nash[/eluser]
wiredesignz, do you have a complete sample application? very simple one. Perhaps, you can create a zip with exampless on wiki (Just application folder). I have been bit straggling to understand your sample code on wiki and I really need to test ME against Matchbox. Both seems identical to me. But I like to find out myself which one is the best and easy for me.

Thanks for all great works!