Kata - It's like CakePHP, but with less calories

Kata is a lightweight PHP5 MVC-Framework that balances speed and comfort. It's in use for pages with million of monthy pageviews, so it's a tried and true solution. Unfortunately i can't tell you where, i currently work there.

Hilights:

• Cache with support for memcached,apc,xcache,eacc,filesystem
• Models with Active Record (find() alike pattern)
• DBOs for mysql and mssql (postgres and simpledb coming soon), switchable on-the-fly back and forth
• Diverse debugging aids: code coverage, profiler, verbose output and so on
• A first: framework+webapp (+optional views) compileable into a single file for maximum code cache performance
• In the works: haXekata
• LGPL license.

Overview

• ChangeLog
• Installation and prequisites
• Doxygen-Reference of all classes, functions and files
• FAQ: First steps with kata
• Kata request flowchart - what happens when and where
• Tips and Tricks
• Eclipse (PHPEclipse or PDT) Setup

Installation

You need:
» PHP5
» Apache (1.3 or higher)
» mod_rewrite

Download Version 1.1: Zip, Tar.
Uncompress it to a directory somewhere under your Apache webroot. If you are using Linux set permissions so that the user the webserver is running under is able to write to tmp/ and all directories below tmp/.

$ cd /var/www/test/
$ chmod 644 tmp/ tmp/logs tmp/session tmp/cache
$ chown www-data:www-data ..
$ chown www-data:www-data * -R

Make shure the mod_rewrite extension is loaded. If you are running Windows take a look inside your httpd.conf inside the Apache-Directory, if you are using Linux try something like this:

$ ls /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*rewrite*
/etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rewrite.load
$

Make shure AllowOverride is set to something that allows .htaccess files to modify some of the permissions:

$ grep -i allowoverride /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
AllowOverride   All

Now lets test if the framework functions. Open your webbrowser and take a look if you can see the kata startpage (in the above case: http://localhost/test/)

Flowchart

Tricks with Kata

1. If you have access to your Apache-Config, you can move the docroot from / to webroot/, thus eleminating one .htaccess your Apache has to parse from each Request.
   You can speed up Apache further if you move the content of webroot/.htaccess into your httpd.conf, so Apache never has to read+parse that file on every request.
2. If you have some php-script that can't be integrated into kata (even using vendor() is not working in your case) simply put it into the webroot-folder.
   Example: You've put file file bar.php into webroot/foo/. You can browse that file by navigating to http://localhost/foo/bar.php.
3. If you are using some external class that outputs something to the browser and you dont want to use a view simply set $this->autoRender=false;, echo your data and return from the controllers action.

Setup Eclipse for Kata

You just have to add support for .thtml files to Eclipse. Take hte screenshots as reference how to do this.



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Comments

[ Frank Spychalski | 29.06.08 23:48 ]
Nice! Next time I play around with PHP, I will give it a try....

[ Ben Milleare | 26.09.08 16:47 ]
It's like a lean, mean, stripped down version of CakePHP. Love it!

[ slier | 24.12.08 22:31 ]
looks quite promising..

will look into core code

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