Ideas to help code

I have caught myself doing this often, and need to always regroup and figure out what is a better way to do these types of things. I am speaking of coding in absolutes. What does this mean? Coding a type of block that is hard set to do something exactly. Like for an example, let’s say that there is a calendar application. In this calendar application, there are four languages to select from, so a code block does something like this:

// Controller file
$eng = $this->Users->Select("language", "English");
$spn = $this->Users->Select("language", "Spanish");
$gmn = $this->Users->Select("language", "German");
$fre = $this->Users->Select("language", "French");

**Note this is not using any kind of construct in CakePHP, Symfony or any particular framework, just an example of a User class with a function called Select passing in 2 variables.

As an example, the view of this same code may be something like:

// Controller File
$this->set('lang', array($eng, $spn, $gmn, $fre);

Now while this may work for the time being, it could cause a hassle later on if there are more languages that the application will need to support.
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CakePHP and Symfony

There are many frameworks out there that have a good deal of uses to them. In this post, the focus is on CakePHP vs Symfony. Does this mean one will be a winner over the other? Not really. I will only present what I have come to find in each of these frameworks and how I have used them in different ways.

Since this will be a comparison, most of the ideas will revolve around the tutorials that each camp has created. Plus, I will be only looking at the latest stable versions, so they are:
CakePHP: 1.2.1.8004
Symfony: 1.2

Each have their own tutorials, and they are at the following:
Symfony: Jobeet Tutorial, using Propel.
CakePHP: CakePHP Blog

First off, about the tutorials.
I really do think that Symfony has a better tutorial. It is a lot more intensive and sometimes confusing, which means it also goes more in depth about what this framework can do, and how to do it. This tutorial also brings in a good deal of real world dilemmas.

CakePHP’s blog tutorial is just a standard blog tutorial, which everyone seems to have anymore. It is a good tutorial, and it does show off some real good aspects of the framework, but it really does lack some of the “gotchas” that would really happen in the real world.
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