Hi,
I've been following Fuel development for quite a while now and I really am liking the framework as it shows much of the more complexity of the PHP language oh, and it's forced me to get into GIT. But, I'm not really interested in what Fuel can do for my own app development workflow but more interested in Fuel as a software project in it's own right.
I am really keen and eager to start contributing (not anything mindblowingjust simple fixes) but, as I have never really been involved in any large scale software projects, am having some trouble following exactly what Fuel does and at what point it gets done. I have a very vague understanding of how it's built and I usually try to fit complete bits of software into my head but this is clearly not possible with a project like Fuel.
Short of actually reading through the code bit by bit, I was wondering if any of the more professional devs can give any hints or tips that they employ to get up to speed with such a project. I love the docs but I really don't want to have to rely on what others have written in order to know what's going on, I want to be able to read the code and perhaps contribute to the docs myself in time.
I look forward to hearing your advice guys.
Cheers,
Arthur
Start with the basics: check out the Fuel, Request, Router & Response classes. Start reading in the index.php front controller (check wikipedia if you don't know what that is) and follow the Request and Router execution into the controller and out into the Response which gets output by the Front controller when the Request execution is done.
You'll need to switch from file to file, read most of the method docblocks and inline comments but once you get that part, you know how Fuel works.
For deeper knowledge I'd suggest also studying the Autoloader and Package classes.
Realize that you'll probably have to look up some stuff on the PHP.net docs as well, like spl_autoload if you don't yet know what that is.
Thanks Jelmer, good to know what to start with. I have a PHP design pattern book from Apress that has helped me out so far with things like singleton and factory design patterns and I have a firmer understanding of each. I'm sure the front controller pattern will be covered in that too but thanks for the link.
I was actually looking into spl_autoload the other day as I saw it's used in Fuel.
I guess I have a lot of reading to do and hopefully I should get up to speed enough to help out a little.
Thanks again,
Arthur
Donate
