Is it Possible ? ProcessWire as Framework ?

[JeevanisM]

Hi All,

I have some web application projects ( not website, but custom application lots of admin management). So is it possible to use ProcessWire as a framework ? I mean, just like Laravel ?  Since these projects are  web application, the existing PW Admin panel is not sufficient, I will have to create many options from the scratch.  I am thinking of doing such projects in Laravel but if PW can handle such tasks, then I would stick with PW. I checked out another framework called SilverStripe but it seems a lot of more closer as Laravel. Please let me know if I can use ProcessWire as a framework, if yes, pls point me to the Getting Started.


thanks in Advance

 

[louisstephens]

I have used ProcessWire as more of a framework numerous times last year. I will say, that sometimes recreating some of the backend functionality in the frontend was a bit of the headache (solely based on things like repeaters etc). Overall, it was very easy to get a front end going and using ajax to post/pull from the backend. I did use the Pages2Json to deliver the json with made the requests a bit easier for me. I am sure there are many more people here that have made bigger scale web apps though, and they might be able to give a bit more in depth response. 

[dragan]

"framework" and "web application projects" are very very loose terms... If you could describe a bit better what you are trying to build, I'm sure people could chime in with more "to-the-point" suggestions, or concrete real-life examples from their own experience.

1 hour ago, JeevanisM said:

the existing PW Admin panel is not sufficient

There are various ways how to extend / customize the whole backend. Custom dashboard, custom modules etc. @bernhard has an excellent, epic tutorial how to create your own module to handle potentially... well, just about anything you'd want.

So, I guess if you want to get constructive feedback here, you should elaborate on what you're trying to achieve. And what exactly do you miss in PW that you have in Laravel or Silverstripe.

[LostKobrakai]

If you're not harnessing the backend from ProcessWire I'd personally tend to not use ProcessWire. While it's entirely possible to do so (maybe also search for prev. discussions on the topic) there are some parts, which in my opinion discourage that kind of usage:

1. Lack of proper testing capabilities. There are topics on how to do TDD with processwire, but the options on managing db state or handling requests in tests are not there.
2. If you need to manage a lot of diverse data the autoloading of every template/field on each request can become a bottleneck. Working around it by reusing more fields/templates can work, but isn't great either.
3. The selector engine for pages is great for light to medium complex stuff, but complex selections and especially aggregations need custom SQL or third party solutions like RockFinder. Also if you're not careful it's tempting to fall into n+1 query problems with fields / relationships being lazy loaded by default.
4. Transactions are hardly used by the core, so if you want/need to prevent partial updates from happening you need to ensure that on your own by wrapping stuff into transactions.

Not to say ProcessWire isn't otherwise a nice system, but those are the things I'd urge anyone to evaluate before using ProcessWire in a web application project.