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PHPRunner

Originally published by "dbarker" on 2004-12-23 11:36:00Z

PHPRunner – PHP code generator for your MySQL database: A few weeks ago, I talked about ASPRunner, which is a code-generation engine to build ASP pages to manage ODBC databases.

At the end of that post, I whined that I wanted something similar for PHP/MySQL. Well…

PHPRunner creates set of PHP pages to access and modify any local or remote MySQL database. Using generated PHP pages users can search, sort, edit, delete, and add data into database.

This software is really top-notch. The interface is exceptionally well-done, and the code it generates is fantastic. All code templates are available, so you can actually tweak the master code that the generated code is based on.

There’s support for relational tables – you can provide dropdown lists for fields based on information in other tables – either pick from a wizard or write your own SQL. The system spits out pages to list, add, edit, delete, print, export (to Word, Excel, XML, or CSV), and search data. You can pick from a variety of stylesheets, or you can massage the HTML yourself.

Really, really great stuff. My gut aches at the “quick-and-dirty” projects (that were never “quick” enough) that I labored away on that this app could have written for me. I hate writing admin interfaces, and the time I wasted to get results inferior to what PHPRunner provides absolutely makes me sick.

As a postscript, I got into a pleasant email conversation with Sergey, the brains behind the *Runner software. Nice guy. I sent him an email that outlined what I think would be the killer upgrade to something like this. Instead of rehashing it, here’s the entire email.

(After reading that, you need to know that there’s nothing stopping you from implementing my plan now. Remember the source templates are freely editable, and you just need to write the master PHP to implement what I describe.)

Comment by "mort" on 2004-12-24 11:04:00Z
Hi Deane, neat tool and neat suggestions. Your ideas are very similar to what Drupal (drupal.org) calls 'hooks'. It's a fantastic way to make a system grow from a tool to a framework. Anyways, merry Christmas :-)
Comment by "Deane" on 2004-12-24 08:05:00Z
I actually used (as opposed to "played with") ASPRunner the other day to build a quick interface to two seldomly-edited administrative tables that I had been editing directly in SQL Server Enterprise Manager. Every developer has them: the type of tables you edit so seldom that it's not even worth building an interface for? But then you start editing them more and more, and you waste more and more time doing it manually...and you start thinking about building an interface more and more... With the generated interface, it's SO much easier. The interface took me a grand total of about 10 minutes, even after I was done customizing and validating the crap out of it -- something I didn't get in Enterprise manager. It's a first-class interface, extremely usable, and I have relatively NO time into it. I absolutely love this product.
Comment by "walterbyrd" on 2006-04-03 11:12:00Z
I am trying to create a simple database for a 3PL (third party logistics). I think an applicatiion generator would work for me. The top two on my list are PHPRunner, and PHPMagic. PHPMagic is much less expensive ($35). Is PHPRunner worth $165 more?
Comment by "nix386" on 2008-08-09 07:51:00Z
It's worth every penny and I love this product! (PHPRunner 4.2) It's fast, easy, powerful and virtually bug free! There is still plenty room for improvement in some aspects of PHPRunner though, like the visual editor and template implementation but other than that I cannot fault it. Well done to them and thanks for saving me countless hours coding something myself. Nick