Some Github Lithium PHP Projects to Help You Learn Lithium Supporting tagline
Lithium Learning Curve
You can build a blog that works using Lithium PHP in probably about a half hour. Adding commenting ability is not too hard. Creating users, not bad.
But once you get past the basics, you kind of run into the same thing that I have run into every framework. The tutorials and docs run out at some point, because the developers using the framework have already got the concept and assumed you have. So you get examples of code that work but are not sure where they go. Or a bunch of sentences telling you how to write the code, but you haven’t quite learned all the jargon yet.
A Developer Easy Button is Different than a Newbie’s Easy Button
When I first tried Python, I thought, what the hell. Learn this first. This is hard. And I went to Visual Basic. Eight years and four or five languages later, I realize Python is the easiest language to learn, but maybe after you have used others.
For example, would you tell someone new to programming to set up a PHP based website or a Flask website if you had to field every question he had along the way.
And I think, the closer you get to being a 100% developer, the farther you are away from knowing what a newbie needs. Not the fault of anyone, just reality.
Another example is the heroku, nodester, engineyard type hosting platforms. Easy on one side. Hard on the other. Yes, it is easy to set up your stack by pushing buttons in the browser. And once that is done, you get a shell. Only a easy button for a knowing developer. The average PHP developer will now have to go get a book or read a few online tutorials.
Now I am not saying a PHP developer should not know these things, but if ease of use is what you are after, this is not exactly the route.
In the Wild Working Lithium Apps
Now that my rant is over, here are some actual usable or usable soon full lithium apps I found. Lithium is very flexible, so every developer does things a little differently. Learning from multiple examples can help a lot to learn this flexiability.
I found these by searching for ‘site:github.com “/use lithium\net\http\Router;”’ in Google, because Github search sucks and doing any type of lithium or li3 search turns up way too many results.
These aren’t just libraries but full apps. There are plenty of libraries available also. Feel free to contact me a stephanmil@gmail.com if you have a open source Lithium app. Your examples really help a newbie to the framework, like me.
Projects
- Platypus
- Chowly
- Li3MantisBT
- Sphere
- Lithium Site
- Marques Project
- lithe - My blog, in progress, but I will be using it actively within the month. Not the best example. My first.
- Minerva
Gists
- (http://pastie.org/2663865/wrap)
- (https://gist.github.com/1063377)
- (http://www.smipple.net/snippet/psparrow/Filtering%20Model%3A%3Asave()%20in%20Lithium)
Favorite Tuts
- How to Take Over the World with Lithium - Teaches you the power of the li3 console. Note: Remove the schema from the Photos model to get it to work.
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