There are a few parts to QCodo/QCubed that speed up my coding time. First, I mentioned code generation. This is the strongest feature and is what originally drew me to QCodo. If you provide QCubed with your database information, you can have it scan your DB and write pretty clean “drafts” of OOP PHP code based on relationships and foreign keys. It will also generate draft QForms that can be used to perform basic CRUD functionality with the objects it has generated from the database.

Which brings me to the next feature that QCubed offers: QForms and QControls. QForms are as the developer puts it “stateful, event-driven objects.” What this means is that each QForm is basically an HTML form that posts back to itself and remembers its state from the previous posting. No sessions or cookies are used.

QControls are essentially PHP objects that have defined getters/setters that can be overridden or added onto.  The QForm is responsible for rendering the QControl as HTML and handling any events that are applied to the QControl. QControls can be nested and expanded on to create really powerful web applications.

The last part of QCodo/QCubed are QQueries. This is a shortcut way to perform SQL Queries in an object-oriented manner. QQueries can take in conditions and clauses to provide custom loading of objects in your application. For instance take the following logic:

Select all Projects where: the Project ID <= 2 AND (the manager’s first name is alphabetically “greater than” the last name, or who’s name contains “Website”)

<?php
$objProjectArray = Project::QueryArray(
QQ::AndCondition(
QQ::OrCondition(
QQ::GreaterThan(QQN::Project()->ManagerPerson->FirstName, QQN::Project()->ManagerPerson->LastName),
QQ::Like(QQN::Project()->Name, '%Website%')
),
QQ::LessOrEqual(QQN::Project()->Id, 2)
)
);

foreach ($objProjectArray as $objProject) {
_p(sprintf(‘%s (managed by %s %s)’, $objProject->Name, $objProject->ManagerPerson->FirstName, $objProject->ManagerPerson->LastName));
_p(‘<br/>’, false);
}
?>

This is much easier to read and understand than the SQL command required to perform the same function. Also, if you change your database source you won’t have to rewrite code, as long as the relational structure stays the same.

I highly recommend you check out http://examples.qcodo.com and http://trac.qcu.be/projects/qcubed/wiki/Tutorials to get a sense of how powerful this framework truly is.