Jan - 04 January 2009 09:03 AM

Alex, what kind of backend is used for Coffee House? Ruby? PHP?

PHP, unfortunately.

I actually like PHP, it’s portable and trivial to install The language is kinda iffy at times, but it gets the job done.

It’s a good language for hacking things together, but the the lack of MVC and routing irritates me. Still, it’s the only web language I really know, so not much choice there.

For MVC and routing, you should definitely have a look at Code Igniter. I use it for some MacRabbit things, and it combines the hackability of PHP with an acceptable MVC approach. It also has a great user community.

I had look at Code Igniter, it’s not bad. It seems to require a large directory tree, however.

alexgordon - 04 January 2009 09:23 AM

I had look at Code Igniter, it’s not bad. It seems to require a large directory tree, however.

The initial “what the heck am I supposed to be doing with all these files?” conundrum is definitely one of the problems with Code Igniter.  For anyone who wants to use it I highly recommend following the instructions for separating your custom and library code in the Code Igniter wiki.  Makes it a lot easier to ignore all the library cruft, although the Application folder will still be overly complex.  Easier to update CI, too, without worrying about overwriting your customizations.  The security step of moving everything out of your document root described in the article is one you can take or leave as you please (or as your environment allows).

Glad to see the new Coffee House URLs!

Edit: Also love the Language.xml upload in order to show more info about how the Sugar works; great idea.  One minor aesthetic suggestion for the submission form: it might be a good idea to use a label-linebreak-input format with a little more vertical space between inputs rather than label-input.  At least in OmniWeb the form is getting a little screwed up as in the attached screenshot (and in general left aligned forms are usually easier to read and use than ones with the labels floated left).

George the Flea - 04 January 2009 11:46 AM

Edit: Also love the Language.xml upload in order to show more info about how the Sugar works; great idea.  One minor aesthetic suggestion for the submission form: it might be a good idea to use a label-linebreak-input format with a little more vertical space between inputs rather than label-input.  At least in OmniWeb the form is getting a little screwed up as in the attached screenshot (and in general left aligned forms are usually easier to read and use than ones with the labels floated left).

Yeah, we collaborated on this with the purpose of allowing my Sugar Manager to query and display information about all of the sugars listed in the Coffee House, as well as making it easier to install them from there.

I’ll publish more data on the new format of the Languages.xml file as soon as the Sugar Manager itself is in a more workable state.

I know the submit form is screwed up. I’ll fix that when I get a chance.