Vance Lucas: Introducing Bullet: The Functional PHP Micro-Framework

Vance Lucas has a new post to his site sharing at a project he's been working on, a micro-framework for PHP that takes a functional approach to its structure (and the structure of the apps you can make with it), Bullet.

Bullet is a new PHP micro-framework with a unique functional approach to URL routing that allows for more flexibility and requires less verbosity than the more typical full route+callback approach found in other micro-frameworks. The main problem with most micro-frameworks and even full-stack MVC frameworks that leads to code duplication is that the callback or method executed to perform the action and respond to the URL route lives fully within its own scope. This means that you are forced to repeat a lot of setup code across URL route handlers that load the same resource, authorize it, etc.

He illustrates with an example of a GET/DELETE to the same routes and having to create multiple handlers for each. He restructures this with Bullet and shows how it can nest callbacks inside of handlers to make for simpler routing. It also scopes down requests and gets more fine grained as you nest, making it easier to create reusable handlers (like in other files). If you're interested in finding out more about Bullet and its structure, you can find it in the project's main site.