RPInventory - Custom Fields and Future Plans - Redmine

Custom Fields and Future Plans

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Description *So, in the last couple of days, I've been doing a bunch of work on this custom fields stuff (see previous blog posts for explanations), and I actually have something to show for myself! ~1500 lines of code changed got me to a point where I can create a new field and have it be displayed on the main page. Granted, it's a very minuscule victory, but a victory nonetheless :). Mostly, I wanted to write down my thoughts one where I would like to see RPInventory go in the future. First, we need to do some documentation. With 5416 lines of code just in the lib/ directory, we need to write some stuff down. My first thought was to use Doxygen, but I figured I should do my research before committing to any one thing. Obviously, I'd prefer one tool to do all the documentation, which means Doxygen would be out (as it doesn't play with Javascript, according to "Wikipedia":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_documentation_generators#Language_support). Of course, now that I think about this, as long as we conform to the javadoc-like syntax, we should be alright. Second, we desperately need to be running Unit Tests. I've found so many things that were mysteriously broken (sometimes due to stuff I did, sometimes not) that it's just a terrible situation. I really don't have any clue in this case what kind of software to use. Again, it'd be great for the software to interface with the PHP, Javascript, _and_ the database, but I don't know if I'm being hopeful. I don't necessarily want to have something that's going to prevent me from committing more code while tests are broken, but having something to do some double checking of committed code would be awesome. Third, which will definitely only come with >=RPInventory-2.0, is a re-write of the application. When we started out, one of our original developers used Smarty as a template engine. The rest of us just kind of went along with it because, well, we were noobs (shh don't tell). But it's really starting to inhibit development at this point. Colin has been working with "Symfony":http://www.symfony-project.org/ and I've done a little tutorial work with "CakePHP":http://cakephp.org in the past, but I'm really just not sure. Perhaps I'm just a little hesitant to give up the amount of control we have over the system at the moment, but at the same time, I have to realize I'm giving that up due to my own ignorance of how the framework operates (and how I can do the fun advanced things I want to do). Anyways, that really sums up where I'd like to see this project head. It's really grown out of the RPI-shoes it was initially bought, and I think, with an appropriate user-base, it could really be a nice little piece of software. So, let's just keep on hacking.

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Added by Josh Elser 159 days ago

So, in the last couple of days, I've been doing a bunch of work on this custom fields stuff (see previous blog posts for explanations), and I actually have something to show for myself!

~1500 lines of code changed got me to a point where I can create a new field and have it be displayed on the main page. Granted, it's a very minuscule victory, but a victory nonetheless :).

Mostly, I wanted to write down my thoughts one where I would like to see RPInventory go in the future. First, we need to do some documentation. With 5416 lines of code just in the lib/ directory, we need to write some stuff down. My first thought was to use Doxygen, but I figured I should do my research before committing to any one thing. Obviously, I'd prefer one tool to do all the documentation, which means Doxygen would be out (as it doesn't play with Javascript, according to Wikipedia). Of course, now that I think about this, as long as we conform to the javadoc-like syntax, we should be alright.

Second, we desperately need to be running Unit Tests. I've found so many things that were mysteriously broken (sometimes due to stuff I did, sometimes not) that it's just a terrible situation. I really don't have any clue in this case what kind of software to use. Again, it'd be great for the software to interface with the PHP, Javascript, and the database, but I don't know if I'm being hopeful. I don't necessarily want to have something that's going to prevent me from committing more code while tests are broken, but having something to do some double checking of committed code would be awesome.

Third, which will definitely only come with >=RPInventory-2.0, is a re-write of the application. When we started out, one of our original developers used Smarty as a template engine. The rest of us just kind of went along with it because, well, we were noobs (shh don't tell). But it's really starting to inhibit development at this point. Colin has been working with Symfony and I've done a little tutorial work with CakePHP in the past, but I'm really just not sure. Perhaps I'm just a little hesitant to give up the amount of control we have over the system at the moment, but at the same time, I have to realize I'm giving that up due to my own ignorance of how the framework operates (and how I can do the fun advanced things I want to do).

Anyways, that really sums up where I'd like to see this project head. It's really grown out of the RPI-shoes it was initially bought, and I think, with an appropriate user-base, it could really be a nice little piece of software. So, let's just keep on hacking.

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