What Is Arugula?
Arugula is my (PHP-based [for now]) web application implementation toolkit.
It has been growing from a seed of an idea, over the past 10+ years, ever since I first encountered Kohana. I enjoyed writing code with Kohana, as it was the first web framework that really resonated with me. But, unsurprisingly, there were things about it that bugged me. And it was eventually deprecated (circa 2016).
Like I did in the WordPress plugin world, when I wrote Post Notif, and, as I've done time-and-again, I took concepts I liked, left behind those that I didn't, added what was missing, and built something new.
Arugula is a work-in-progress and like all human-developed software (or "things", period, I guess, if I'm being comprehensive!) will always be. But, it is finally to a point where I can build apps with it and not feel at least a somewhat disappointed with how things went.
It is "good enough."
It is deliberately limited in scope and tailored to building the kind of applications I have an ever-increasing backlog of.
Though in the back of my mind, I've always considered the possibility that if it gets to a state of formality and "completeness" where it makes sense to, I'd let others use it (strictly on an individual basis or even completely open source), I built it for me.
Its primary purpose is to maximize my enjoyment of the process by which I build the apps I want to see exist. And there are a lot of them! Essentially all of which are things I want to use myself (as well as offer to others, either as gifts or as purchasable products).
So what's actually in it?
A router. An orchestrator. A layout renderer. A process executor. A data store interface module. And a user..errr..customer module. :)
It is SORT OF an MVC framework, though it's still sprouting, so I don't know exactly what it will become over time.
As I build my first "official" application with it, I anticipate blogging more about the innards (how they work, or don't[!], interesting challenges encountered, changes of direction, etc.).
I'm really very excited for this to take shape; it's been a long time coming!