Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a technique for modularizing crosscutting concerns (CCCs). A variety of CCCs can be found in typical Web applications. Most CCCs are scattered over Web-specific events such as page requests. AOWP, a PHP-based AOP framework, provides Web-specific aspect instantiations for dealing with session management and pointcut & advice mechanisms for capturing Web-specific events. CCCs in Web applications can be clearly modularized by introducing AOWP.

We propose a new domain-specific aspect-oriented programming (AOP) mechanism for Web application development. A variety of crosscutting concerns such as access control and performance tuning are found in typical Web applications, but it is not easy to concisely modularize the concerns as aspects in current AOP languages because they do not provide pointcut mechanisms for directly handling events in the Web controller layer. To deal with this problem, we propose a Web-specific AOP mechanism called AOWP and a PHP-based AOWP framework. Using this framework, a programmer can easily address Web-specific crosscutting concerns triggered by Web-specific events, including page requests, page transitions, and session management events.