Ok, so a current project i’m working on is rolling out potentially hundreds of sites..
All of these sites are using the same base, but have different configuration, design and data for each one..

A problem has been how to roll all these sites out, while keeping them easy to update with bug fixes and modifications..

Here’s my solution..

Firstly we start with the config files.. app.yml and view.yml are very site individual, so what do you do if you want some site specific settings?

Well, in your app/config folder, create an app_local.yml and a view_local.yml - these will be your local config files, while the app.yml and view.yml contain settings that are the same for all of your sites…

Here’s an example of how the app.yml and app_local.yml would work from my sites..

all:
  #parameters for the gallery and avatar directories and sizes
  galleries:
    size_limit:         30
    limit:              20
    gallery_count:      25
    upload_dir:         < ?php echo sfConfig::get('sf_web_dir')?>/images/media/galleries/uploads
    allowed_image_types: [image/jpeg, image/jpg, image/pjpeg, image/gif, image/png, image/bmp, image/tiff]
    allowed_video_types: [video/mov, movie/quicktime, video/mpeg, video/x-ms-asf, video/x-msvideo, video/x-ms-wmv]

And here’s my app_local.yml

prod:
  #MUST EDIT THESE PARAMETERS - FOR PRODUCTION ONLY
    site_name:              Skeleton Site
    cookie:                 skeleton
    site_domain:            skeleton.com
    site_support_email:     support@< ?php echo sfConfig::get('app_site_domain')?>

    merchant:
      id:                   4
      pass:                 password

all:
	#SHOULD EDIT THESE PARAMETERS
  #the selected attributes for the member profiles - eg, what profile questions to ask.. refer to db
  member:
    attributes:           [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25]

  swf:
    heading_font:         DeliciousHeavy

Ok.. so hopefully the division is starting to make sense…

Now we need to configure the handlers… This part requires some small hacks of the symfony core files..

lets start with app.yml (note the paths are my personal nix paths.. im presuming you know where your symfony core files are)

open up /usr/local/lib/php/symfony/symfony.php and at around line 97, add this in:

  if ($file = $configCache->checkConfig($sf_app_config_dir_name.'/app_local.yml', true))
  {
    include($file);
  }

(more…)

So..

What a fun morning!

We had a problem.. We are rolling out a stack of sites using the same base code and trying to avoid hardcoding ANYTHING except for css and ymls…

So, lightbox decided that they would hardcode the location of the fileLoadingImage and the fileBottomNavCloseImage..

Me and the man dk have been working on a solution.. let’s start from the top..

Firstly we need to pass the location of the images folder into the javascript.. our first dilemma.. so we basically want to call lightbox.js?imagepath=/path/to/images

our View.yml looks something like this

 viewgallerySuccess:
  stylesheets: [lightbox]
  javascripts: [getRequest()->getRelativeUrlRoot()?>/js/lightbox.js?imagepath=getRequest()->getRelativeUrlRoot()?>]

Now, symfony seems to have a problem with adding .js to the end of everything, so we’ve hacked up the AssetsHelper.php as such:

function _compute_public_path($source, $dir, $ext, $absolute = false)
{
  if (strpos($source, '://'))
  {
    return $source;
  }

  $request = sfContext::getInstance()->getRequest();
  $sf_relative_url_root = $request->getRelativeUrlRoot();
  if (strpos($source, '/') !== 0)
  {
    $source = $sf_relative_url_root.'/'.$dir.'/'.$source;
  }

  $tail = '';
  if(strpos($source, '?') !== false )
  {
    list($source, $tail) = explode('?', $source, 2);
  }

  if (strpos(basename($source), '.') === false)
  {
    $source .= '.'.$ext;
  }

  if(strlen($tail) > 0)
  {
    $source .= '?'. $tail;
  }

  if ($sf_relative_url_root && strpos($source, $sf_relative_url_root) !== 0)
  {
    $source = $sf_relative_url_root.$source;
  }

  if ($absolute)
  {
    $source = 'http'.($request->isSecure() ? 's' : '').'://'.$request->getHost().$source;
  }

  return $source;
}

Now that should take care of that!!

Next step..

We need a way to retrieve the variable from the url in lightbox.js so we’ve ripped and hacked up this code from scriptaculous..

var imagepath;

$A(document.getElementsByTagName("script")).findAll( function(s) {
     return (s.src && s.src.match(/lightbox\.js(\?.*)?$/))
	}).each( function(s) {
     var path = s.src.match(/\?.*imagepath=([a-z\/:.]*)/)[1];
		imagepath = path;
});

var fileLoadingImage = imagepath+”/images/lightbox/loading.gif”;
var fileBottomNavCloseImage = imagepath+”/images/lightbox/close.gif”;

This will get the var imagepath out of the url and pass it through to lightbox to display those images..

Well that’s just about enough out of me for now, have fun!