This document contains requirements for any IDE that want to add support for PRADO projects.

Contents 1 Background 1.1 Creating a new PRADO project 2 Component Model 3 Application Configurations 4 Page Configurations 5 Templates 6 PRADO GUI Builder / Design View 7 References

Background

PRADO Framework is a component-based and event-driven framework for PHP which is now facing a critical mass of developers using it to create web applications.

PRADO stands for PHP Rapid Application Development Object-oriented. While the PRADO Framework is a RAD framework it still doesn't have a great IDE with syntax highlighting, auto completing, code insight and a visual designer.

Possible platforms:

• NetBeans
• Eclipse
• Zend Studio for Eclipse

Creating a new PRADO project

By few clicks the developer should be able to create a new PRADO project (typically File > New > PRADO Project) with a default directory structure similar to the one you get with prado-cli.php -c.

Typical example of directory structure in a PRADO application:

webapp/
  assets/
  index.php
  protected/
    .htaccess
    application.xml
    common/
    data/
      blog.db
    model/
      UserRecord.php
    pages/
      Home.page
      Home.php
      Admin/
        config.xml
        Dashboard.page
        Dashboard.php
    runtime/
  themes/
    Default/

Component Model

A component is an instance of TComponent or its child class. Basically everything in PRADO is a component.

See the following reference for details:

• Components Fundamentals

Application Configurations

Application configurations are used to specify the global behavior of an application. They include specification of path aliases, namespace usages, module and service configurations, and parameters.

The IDE should support code insight on properties and it's values in the application.xml file.

See the following reference for details about syntax:

• Application Configurations

Page Configurations

Page configurations is associated with a directory storing some page files and named config.xml. The IDE should support code insight on properties and it's values in these files.

See the following reference for details about syntax:

• Page Configurations

Templates

Templates are written in .page files. The IDE should support syntax highlighting, auto completion and code insight to select available components, properties and property-values.

See the following references for all details around syntax:

• Templates: Part I
• Templates: Part II
• Templates: Part III

PRADO GUI Builder / Design View

Any page templates should be able to open in both source view and design view. In design view you also get a component inspector with all the standard controls that is shipped with the Prado Framework and a property inspector to change properties of selected components.

(Similar to the visual designer of Flex Builder, Visual Studio and Delphi)

References

• To create an IDE, the component model should be designed for use in an IDE - first serious discussion about a PRADO IDE
• Dipping a Toe into Rapid Application Development for PHP - Zend Developer Zone
• NetBeans - open source and free IDE
• Eclipse - an open development platform
• Zend Studio for Eclipse - most powerful PHP IDE
• IDE/Editor for PRADO - PRADO Forum
• PRADO Framework Support - NetBeans Forums
• PHPEdit as a PRADO IDE - PHPEdit 2.12 comes with PRADO support
• Delphi for PHP - The RAD visual PHP development environment using VCL for PHP