Note: This is a beta version of the software. You are advised to proceed with caution!

Introduction

Overview

A free and open source web development starter kit for building ready to go enterprise applications.

Installation

Prerequisites

• Git
• Composer
• NPM

Option 1: via Composer

• Run composer create-project logicent/crudle:dev-main && cd crudle

Option 2: via CLI

• Run git clone git@github.com:logicent/crudle.git && cd crudle
• Run composer install

Continue:

• Create a database and update sites/.env settings
• Run ./crudle migrate --migrationPath sites/database/migrations'
• Run cat sites/database/scripts/crdl_People.sql | mysql -u <my_root_user> -p <my_db_name>
• Run ./crudle user/user/create-superuser 'my_password' and ./crudle user/rbac/init
• Run ./crudle serve -t sites/web in local environment or use preferred web server in production

System Architecture

Context

Crudle (CRUD logic extensions) is a meta framework for rapid application development and customization using a modified project template, some predefined coding conventions and a fully-fledged admin backend built with Fomantic UI.

Containers

• backend (App)
• codegen (Kit)
• modules (Ext)

Components

Main page - to provide custom interaction components built for end-users

• Workspace - view the workspaces created to show favorite menus and widgets
• Dashboard - view the dashboards created using the dashboard + widgets tool
• Report - view the reports created with report builder to show query result

Setup page - to provide visibility and customization tools for end-users

• System - configure general settings and layout (UI) preferences and menus
• Data Tool - import and/or export data, create/modify domain master models
• Email Sending - create email notifications, templates, check email queues
• Data Storage - configure backups and manage file storage and system cache
• People - add users, user groups, roles and permissions and view user logs
• Printing - create print styles, print formats and configure print devices

App modules - contains core app functionality like auth, crud, email, map etc

• backend/database provides tool to interact with DB connection and storage
• backend/main to define app-level enums and provide reusable app functions
• backend/listing to display a set of records in multi-record visualization
• backend/workflow to define approval routing, change triggers and statuses

Ext modules

• modules/web_cms - to set up a website for data publishing and interaction

Sites

• sites/config to define global config settings
• sites/database to define DB scripts and seeds
• sites/storage to hold shared data & resources
• sites/web to define global JS and CSS scripts

Technology Stack

Programming Languages and Frameworks

• PHP 8.0 using Yii2 and JavaScript using jQuery
• Yii2-crudle dockerized (optional - todo later)
• Deploy via deployer (optional - todo later)

Templating

• Twig (to consider)

Databases Supported

• MySQL 8.0 (or equivalent MariaDB version)
• SQLite (to be tested)
• PostgreSQL (todo later)
• SQLite (offline) (todo later)

UI Frameworks, Components and Libraries

• Fomantic UI 2.9
• HTMX 2
• Fullcalendar 5.11
• LeafletJS 1.9

Web Servers

• PHP built-in web server via ./crudle serve -t sites/web (Development)
• Nginx via PHP-FPM (Production)
• RoadRunner 2 (todo later)

Process Manager (to consider)

• Development
• Production

Job Queues

• Redis (todo later)

Caching

• Redis (todo later)

Realtime

• Web sockets using HTMX 2 (todo later)

Command Line

• Using built-in commands via console app

Roadmap

Now:

• Increase the UI layout width, add a pinable sidebar and editable menus
• Improve all the end-user system tools, app preferences and performance
• Upgrade to latest Yii2 using PHP 8.0 and MySQL 8.0 and Fomantic UI 2.9

Next:

• Add multi-tenant (sites) support in template + init script for instances
• Email templates for sending mails + attachments of documents and reports
• Print templates and formatting styles (script) for documents and reports
• Create Yii extensions for the tools and starter kit as composer packages

Later:

• Write UI, workflows and DB tests using either PestPHP or PHPUnit
• Use hybrid of Php Auth Manager (predefined) and Db Auth Manager (user-defined)
• Upgrade to Yii3 (with CycleORM datamapper) using Bulma and Buefy

Want to contribute? Thank you for considering to make a contribution to Crudle. New contributors to improve the solution further or help provide support to issues are most welcome.

License Crudle is released under the BSD-3-Clause.