Hi - I've done several successful apps with phprunner and I like it. But here's a need that I'd like to have knowledge about how to do something:
I set up a top level phprunner app for a customer (small manufacturer). This is like the root of the system - it manages the logins and the main menu, sets the theme and master css, menus etc...
Now I want to easily come back and add more applications to this and have them all link into the top level web site authentication, "Menus" theme, styles et al. I have hacked a template that I can use for the sub apps (arranged in a sub-directory under the original phprunner top level app) that sort of achieves this. Then I can pick up on the top level theme and style sheets etc (by changing references to css files from file.css to a relative reference outside the generated app root such as ../../file.css). My implementation is not really complete and would be best dealt with in the top design of the generated code (ie. a feature in phprunner). I want to approach the site (with a new project awarded to me from this customer) and without touching anything in the original top application (no project regeneration allowed) and I want to connect to their DB and add more tables for a new project and tweak the project and add my event code and so on and then generate it and drop it into the sub directory and have it just work. This I see has been a big issue with me in so far as doing ongoing work for a customer like this. It seems like phprunner excels in generating a singular self contains web app, but when I want to come back and add more apps, I'm missing some crucial understanding or something. So -- when I create this new application, I'll want to easily make it appear in the top level menus so it all seems seamless. I see it as being risky and not scalable (from development POV) to merely add the new app functionality to the original application and then regenerate the whole big thing. What happens when I get to the 50th application - the size of the project would get much too unwieldy. Any advice or suggestions as to how to cope with this would be greatly helpful. This product saves me from doing SO MUCH low level crap work so that I can work on delivering end user functionality quickly and with high quality - it rocks!!! Maybe you could add a feature that says "Generate this site as standalone" or "Generate this site as a sub app". The sub app would have to have some known relative location from the original or something so that it picks up the top level theme, artwork, header, footer et al... Maybe this is best done something like I've already done... By tweaking a copy of the top level theme to do this and when I start a project, I use the sub app theme vs the original top level theme. Of course, I hope I've explained myself reasonably well here for you to track my wish list.
Assuming you understand what I'm asking about, if you could provide such easy functionality in the product, geez, I'd really be positioned to knock out apps for more and more customers and easily integrate them into the top level work...
I look forward to hearing you reply.
Thanks,
Keith