PRADO is an open source, object-oriented, event-driven, component-based PHP web framework. PRADO's name is an acronym derived from "PHP Rapid Application Development Object-oriented".
The PRADO project was started by Qiang Xue, and was inspired by Apache Tapestry. The framework also borrowed ideas from Borland Delphi and Microsoft's ASP.NET framework. The first public release of PRADO came out in June 2004, but was written using the very limited and now outdated PHP 4 object model, which caused many problems. Qiang then re-wrote the framework for the new PHP 5 object model, and won the Zend PHP 5 coding contest with it.
PRADO is a rapid application development (RAD) framework, and in its infancy has been criticized to not be ready for high-performance, high-traffic scenarios. Implementations of template and configuration caching in later PRADO revisions eliminated most performance bottlenecks in its architecture, making it suited for the creation of medium- to high-traffic websites, while still providing a rapid way amongst PHP frameworks for the development of interactive web pages and applications.
In the late 2008, Qiang unveiled the Yii framework, a conceptual redesign of PRADO, targeted to high-performance, high-traffic scenarios. The following maintenance and updates to the PRADO project have been handled by community members of the project gathering on the project's Google Code page. Since 2013, the project has moved to GitHub.
PRADO features include the following:
A clean and extensible, dynamic, XML-conformant, tag-based templating system, similar to ASP.NET's, but designed for PHP's dynamic approachClear separation of presentation and content, input handling and business logic, based on the Model-View-Controller approachDatabase Access Objects (DAO), XML-based SQLMap data mapper, parameterized query builder, Active Record and automatic scaffoldingInteractive client-side presentation layer based on the Prototype JavaScript Framework and script.aculo.us effects library. It can however also use external controls based on jQuery and other JavaScript frameworksForm input and validation, supporting validation both on client- (for faster user feedback) and server-side (aiming to ensure data integrity and data securityAjax-enabled active widgets (such as auto-complete input field, active button, active data grid) which can be updated, shown or paged dynamically, without having to reload and re-build the whole pageBuilt-in URL mapping support for search-engine-optimized and semantic URLs, which works without needing URL rewriting support from the web serverOver 100 standard controls/widgets, including drag and drop, validation and data-bound controlsCustomizable data grid, with support of automatic generation of columns based on automatically discovered database schemaBuilt-in authentication and authorization supportSkinning and themingInternationalization and localization (I18N and L10N) support, including message translation, date and time formatting, number formatting, and interface localizationFull support of Unicode and non-English custom code pages, including automatic transcoding between client- and server-side character setsLayered caching scheme, supporting separate caching of data queries and output fragments, via database, shared memory, memcached) for storing cached data, and dynamic cache entry validation upon retrievalSupport for progressive rendering of pages, automatic script minification and on-demand lazy loading of client-side script and stylesheet files for faster loading of pagesError handling and logging, with errors handled and presented, and log messages optionally categorized, filtered and routed to different destinationsBuilt-in security measures, which include cross-site scripting (XSS) prevention, HTTP cookie tampering prevention and SQL injection preventionUnit testing and functional testing based on PHPUnit, SimpleTest and SeleniumAutomatic skeleton application generation from the PRADO command-line toolSupports both XML-based and native PHP-coded configuration of application and run-time environmentsCode generated by PRADO components adheres to the XHTML standardSupports for creation and consummation of SOAP- or JSON-based web servicesInteroperability with third-party code, including PEAR and Zend FrameworkPRADO comes with a collection of official documentation, including a tutorial to develop a simple blog application, a reference guide describing all features, and a class reference for all properties, methods and events. The documentation is available in both HTML and Compiled HTML Help (.CHM) form.
PRADO is released under a Modified BSD License, which enables free use of PRADO for developing both open-source and proprietary web applications, without requiring distribution of the source code of derived works.
