Kerkness, A PHP Framework for RIA Development

For the past seven or eight years I've been developing and re-developing a PHP framework which I use as a backend model for almost all of my professional and personal projects. Currently I'm in the process of finishing a re-built from the ground up version that has been tailored for RIA development.

The new version is suitable for supporting the backend functionality of any Ajax or HTTP Request type application or web site. I currently use the framework as a backend for Adobe Flex/Air projects as well as a backend for modular web development.

With this new version I am also finally making a concious effort to release the framework in under a GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.

How Kerkness Works

Kerkness is a MVC ( module, view, controller ) framework for php specifically designed to provide back end functionality for dynamic web sites and rich internet applications.

The Kerkness framework contains several core modules and class objects that aid developers when building custom modules and web services.

Making Requests

By default the Kerkness framework receives requests via HTTP and returns a JSON formatted response. However it also has the ability to return a response based on a custom designed template such as HTML or XML.

A typical request could look like this.
http://kerkness.ca/request.php?kr=pages.home

or like this with clean URLs enabled
http://kerkness.ca/pages.home

This request is asking for the ' home ' view from the ' pages ' module. When this request is received the Kerkness framework creates a request object and will execute the script ../kerk/modules/pages/home.php. The response is returned as a JSON formatted string or designated HTML template.

Request Chain

Requests can be linked together to create a Request Chain so that multiple requests can be called one after another. Kerkness remains flexible and is able to respond to simple AJAX type requests but can also serve complete web pages showing many dynamic content blocks.

Getting Started

Click here for a simple tutorial to get up and running quickly.

Click here to see the Kerkness Wiki

Watch this blog for more information and tutorials as I have time to write them. If you wish to get involved or have questions about the framework please leave me a comment.