Hi, I accidentally sent my message too soon.. ugh...ignore my last message..
I've used some of the frameworks you've mentioned and I'm really new to FarCry but here is my take. I like FarCry for the most part because of the CMS plugin. I like the webtop a lot and I can see myself extending that and building some cool functionality and tools for others to use. It is easy to create menus, navigation, etc. It seems to customize FarCry it won't take too much effort. FarCry has been touted as a Framework for application development but it seems to take a different approach as a framework for building applications, not a bad approach by any means, just different in my opinion. The biggest hurdle for me with FarCry is the docs are a bit sparse, there aren't a ton of examples, and as you said you need to look at the code to try to figure things out. I took a peek under the hood at the database schema and it seems a lot of the tables don't have primary keys/foreign keys, when you create new content types it seems by default you end up with fields in your database that don't have the ideal datatype and length. For example, I created a content type and one of the fields was called "state", typically I would use a char(2) field for a 2 character state but FarCry seemed to create the field as a varchar(255). Maybe this is configurable and I just didn't know any better. With FarCry, I don't feel like I know if I am putting things in the right place even though it works. FarCry seems used a lot of custom tags and includes, I'm not a big include fan, but they seem to be everywhere with FarCry. I like to follow a more MVC approach with a Front Controller pattern. We've just implemented FarCry where I work and it's been great for non-technical users to be able to add content without IT intervention and little to no training at all. If you are building a content rich site I think FarCry is a great solution. I think you really need to look at what your building and choose the right tool based on your requirements. Typically, a developer is going to say the framework that they are most familiar with is the best. I've used FuseBox 4/5, ColdBox, and a Mate for Flex/Air Development. I really like ColdBox a lot though. The documentation is really amazing and there are tons of examples so I would strongly consider that. I also haven't worked with FarCry enough so some of my comments may appear negative, but that is probably just due to my lack of knowledge but I will say some more documentation, more examples, including some ajax ones would be nice. FarCry is also free, so I can't complain... HTH On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 3:36 AM, James Buckingham <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi there, > > Happy New Year to everyone :-). > > We've just been sent a rather large spec for a rebuild of one of our > existing applications. > > We're going to need to do some extensive work in this on both the > front and backend with things plugged up to a few databases, stored > procedures etc. but as things stand the code is just pure spaghetti so > it's time to look at moving things into a framework. > > As we're doing our new website in FarCry and because it's advertised > as a Web Framework our initial instincts are to say we go with FC. > However I wanted to throw the cat amongst the pigeons and ask other > people, who have probably used FarCry more than me, what are the > pros / cons of using FarCry over other application frameworks like > ColdBox, Model-Glue etc. > > What would make you say "Ok FarCry is good for X,Y & Z but really in > order to do this project I'm going to need to look at this from a > different approach". > > My view - > > FarCry takes the approach of giving you the tools that allow you to > setup / manipulate the black box which is core to suit your project. > In some sense that's a good thing because it gives you a decent > platform to work up from and build your custom content within. However > if things, for whatever reason, need to go outside those tools > (external datasources mixed with FarCry content, storing of temporary > data etc.) then I can see us maybe having management issues here. > > The other application frameworks act as basic "template" to help > organise your business logic, HTML etc. in a standardised way. It > leaves it up to you to organise the rest of it. So greater flexibility > but the starting point is a blank canva so no webtop, database > management etc. so obviously more work intially to get it up and > running. > > I'm find though that there is more community support for the > application frameworks than FarCry. For example, I know that we're > going to need to do some quite complex form wizards for this > application yet I don't really know where to find tutorials for say > "Creating basic / advanced custom frontend forms using FarCry Core > Tags". It tends to be that you need to look at the existing code in > the plugins / core to work it out. > > Anyway talked enough, would be good to get your feedback on this :-) > > Cheers, > James > > -- > You received this message cos you are subscribed to "farcry-dev" Google > group. > To post, email: [email protected] > To unsubscribe, email: > [email protected]<farcry-dev%[email protected]> > For more options: http://groups.google.com/group/farcry-dev > -------------------------------- > Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/farcry >
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