Spoon - A PHP5 Library

The last year I've been seeing a lot of php libraries and frameworks going towards standalone components. The first that comes to mind is Symfony. How great is it that you can pick a single component you like and use that in your project without being forced to use the entire framework/library. It's pretty awesome, let me tell you that!

With Spoon Library I'm choosing to take the same route. What does that mean? Well, I've started creating separate git repo's (on github) that only have one package/component. There are no dependencies forced from within the library. If you do need some functionality between packages, there will be a plugin system. Of course you will still be able to download the entire library at once.

Let me give you an example:
The template engine is being tweaked and all hardcoded dependencies for SpoonForm are removed. Instead there will be a 'form plugin' that you can use if you wish to use forms within the template package. Each plugin will list which version of a component is required to be able to use it. That means you will be able to upgrade specific components without having to worry about other functionality. Say you upgrade the template engine to the latest version, then you will be notified if other plugins you are trying to use will cause any known problems.

Only the most basic packages have been somewhat converted to the PHP 5.3 components. You can check them out on github.

Spoon can now be found on github.com

We're planning to release v1.2.0 on May 12th. At this moment the website is being reworked, using v1.2 of spoon.

Stay tuned!

It might seem as if we've been slacking, but behind the spoon scenery we're getting ready to release v1.1.0

About a month ago, I attended a presentation about utf8 support in PHP and decided to make some tweaks to Spoon so that it runs smoothly with utf8. Therefor the release of v1.1.0 was pushed back quite a bit. In the meanwhile we're working on the documentation and tutorials. Mark July 1st on your calendar!

Quite a few ideas for the v1.1.x release are popping up. Here are a few of my own. Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments

• SpoonDatabase will be using PDO
• Localisation files will be created for the most common terms & a specific module could/will be devoted to it.
• SpoonForm and its elements will be revised, since I still think that creating large forms is too much of a hassle.
• The template engine is going to be reworked internally, because I want to be able to add project specific functionality (within certain limits).

On a sidenote, we're currently revising the layout, after which the first decent tutorials will be released.