Ode to Agavi

Closing into the 14 day rush to the next Icinga release 0.8.2, we had a moment to reflect on our coding madness. As a developer, the one thing that makes such work easier is the choice of a good framework. And that is why we take our hats off to our trusty Agavi framework.

Why Agavi? It was no hard choice. As an open source, PHP 5, object oriented framework, it met all our web interface needs.

Thanks to its very strict Model-view-controller architectural pattern, we have very clean, testable and easily extensible code. By separating user input from application actions and from the interface view, there is much less complexity in the design architecture which leads to greater flexibility and easier extension. Less complexity and not to mention PHP open Icinga to a much larger developer community.

Extensibility is also built in through its modular structure which is perfect for all the Icinga addons that will no doubt come in time. Addons can be easily integrated into the frontend, added on as modules.

Icinga Web Architecture – a home for an Addon

Unlike other frameworks which restrict which components can be used, Agavi is highly flexible and leaves most implementation choices the developer. So at the end of the day we have complete control over the code. It’s independence from database abstractions and multi-language support further enhances to Icinga’s flexibility, making it accessible to diverse users.

As Agavi is an active project, we trust it can only get better. Most recently, Agavi’s improvements to its build system and its integration of the Phing (Phing is not GNU make) makes coding that bit faster. And if you notice that ever ticking counter on the right, you would understand why.