davegardner_me_uk - portfolio website
=====================================

Author		Dave <contact@davegardner.me.uk>
Copyright 	(c) MPD Consulting Ltd; www.mpdconsulting.co.uk
License		http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Link		http://davegardner.me.uk/
Version		$Id$


What is it?
-----------

This is my portfolio website - davegardner.me.uk

I created it for two reasons:

 1. I wanted to showcase my experience and start a professional website I
    can build on
 2. I wanted to try out some new ideas regarding structuring OO projects


How's it put together?
----------------------

There are really four layers to the structure:

+----------------------------------+
|  GUI - implemented using Smarty  |
+----------------------------------|
|  Domain model; eg: project class |
+----------------------------------|
|  DAOs - grab data from MySQL     |
+----------------------------------|
|  Database - MySQL via mysqli     |
+----------------------------------|

I wanted to try to incorporate Allen Holub's advice that "each object should 
be responsible for it's UI". However I also wanted to keep UI code outside
my domain objects, allowing each to be "outputted" in a flexible way.

To achieve this I used the concept of an "exporter" interface. The domain
objects all implememented an "export" method, which took as a single parameter
an object implementing this exporter interface.

The idea is then that a "project" object can be asked to display itself as a
summary (html.projectSummary.tpl) or as a more detailed overview 
(html.projectArticle.tpl). This can all happen without the actual object
itself knowing about it.

Allen's approach implemented a seperate interface for each object, with
messages such as "exportTitle" and "exportDescription" - one for each of the
key attributes of the object. I skipped this and just used Smarty's syntax of
assign( $variable_name, $value) which seemed to work OK.


Can I use it for my portfolio?
------------------------------

Yes - it's released under creative commons attribution share alike license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/