Design Model

The Design Model of Choice - MVC

All web applications created with RSD implement the design model MVC (Model-View-Controller).

"MVC was first described by Xerox in a number of papers published in the late 1980s. The key point of using MVC is to separate logic into three distinct units: the Model, the View, and the Controller. In a server application, we commonly classify the parts of the application as business logic, presentation, and request processing. Business logic is the term used for the manipulation of an application's data, such as customer, product, and order information. Presentation refers to how the application data is displayed to the user, for example, position, font, and size. And finally, request processing is what ties the business logic and presentation parts together. In MVC terms, the Model corresponds to business logic and data, the View to the presentation, and the Controller to the request processing." JavaServer Pages, Hans Bergsten, 2nd Edition August 2002, O'Reilly

So every application will consist of tree parts. The application logic (the Model) will be a collection of classes The request processing (the Controller) will be a collection of rather simple php files. The presentation logic (the View) will be implemented using Smarty templates.