BinaryCloud: The Opensource Platformfor php Web Applications

binarycloud is a platform for rapidly developing complex web applications.
It includes basic services like authentication, permissions, a template engine,
database abstraction etc., an extensive collection of libraries, and a framework
for configuring the system and building your own logic. During its six-month gestation
period, binarycloud was used in two commercial production cycles, and is (in
SourceForge lingo) Production/Stable. Go download it.

What follows is a summary of the installation tree of binarycloud r1:

Installation Tree

binarycloud/
     core/
          base/
          bin/
          lib/
     docs/
     user/
          conf/
          db/
          mod/
          tmpl/

core/base/
This is where all the base components live:

• db/ This is a standard metabase installation. Check it out on PHPClasses.
• auth/ The authentication component. Sets a user’s permissions.
• perm/ Permissions. This relies on user/conf/file_permissions.conf to determine access rules for php files in htdocs/.
• tmpl/ Template Engine. Our template engine is unique in that it does not use its own keywords, etc. The template engine populates a defined master template with modules at runtime.
• err/ Error Handling. We use a custom error handler to (optionally) log all PHP and binarycloud core errors to the DB.

core/bin/
Any useful ‘misc’ apps are stored here: webalizer for access log reports, some shell scripts for searching and change propagation, etc. This will expand as utilities are integrated into binarycloud.

core/lib/
This is where all libs live. Libraries are logic-only, they never include markup. A sampling of the libraries included in r1:

• Form builder
• Table builder
• Send mail (can send html & plaintext emails)
• Execution timer
• Shopping cart (from phplib)
• Client Sniffer
• Debugging