Yes folks, digitalspaghetti.me.uk lives again!

I've decided to not set up new hosting at the moment, and for a short while I was using a Wordpress.com blog but never got round to pointing my domain there - then I found this great new place to host my blog, which includes a forum too!

Topics for discussion will be the same as before - Development, Linix, Web 2.0 and anything else that takes my fancy.

My main focus for development now is with CakePHP, IMHO the best framework for rapid application development out there. Then of course there is the fantastic jQuery JavaScript library.

I'll be re-posting some of my earlier stuff on here soon, as well as some new stuff. So keep an eye out for it.

Oh dear....last night, in my enthusiasim to remove TinyMCE from my app, and go with a all-jQuery powered app using WymEditor, I somehow managed to compleatly break my application, Webrocket.

Today I tried some damage control, but in the end I got to a point where so many things went wrong, I have decided to rebake a fresh application based on my existing database.

So, with this opertunity - what are the most likely things I am going to do:

• Remove othAuth as the third-party authorisation and security package. I'm going to replace it with CakePHP's own Auth component, and use ACL for permissions. This will also provide me access to CakePHP's own sessions and security components which means re-writing some core code.
• Stick 100% with jQuery for JavaScript and AJAX stuff. This includes all effects, the WYSIWYG editor and other plugins such as grids, thickbox, tabs, etc).
• Cut out a lot of extra components, helpers and behaviours that looked good at the time, but I ended up not using. I'm going to resist copying and pasting a lot of code from places like the bakery, without first understanding my need for it, and how it works.
• Clean code base - much like the last point, I'm going to keep the codebase clean, looking to do 'fat models, skinny controllers', putting code into behaviours, components and helpers where appropriate. Internal documentation will also be very important
.

It might seem on the last two points I contradict myself. But what I am talking about is maintaining my own code, and using CakePHP's conventions to their fullest. I've learned a lot over the last few months, and I think a clean break will help solve a lot of the problems I've been encountering.

Printed off on Photo Paper, my Laptop is now proudly showing off it's Ubuntu credentials.

ATTENTION:WINNER (YOU HAVE BEEN GRANTED THE SUM OF £500,000 GBP)

DEAR ESTEEMED WINNER,

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the YAHOO! International Promotions Program held on the 25th of May 2007. Your e-mail address attached to ticket number 883734657492-5319 with serial number 7263-267, batch number 8254297137 drew the lucky numbers
14-22-28-37-40-44 which consequently won in the 1st category, you have therefore been
approved for a lump sum pay out of £500,000.00 (i.e Five Hundred Thousand
United Kingdom Pounds)in cash credited to file REF:YAHOO6/315116127/27.
This is from total prize money of US$20,400,000.00 shared among the seventeen international winners in this category.To file for your claims,please contact your claims agent immediately providing him with your winning information/details such as; REF Number:, Batch number:, Winning Email Address , Full Names, Contact Address, Telephone Number.

SIR.FREEMAN WALLACE (REMMITANCE DIRECTOR)
EMAIL: sir_freemanwallace02@yahoo.it
Tel: +447031917516

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Your Sincerely,
Mrs. Amelia Hunts
Online Promotions Manager

Uk Administrative Unit

Eh?  No thanks.

Blogged with Flock

For the last two days, I had a little time off and wanted to keep myself busy - I have an upcoming second project I want to work on, and just to see what would happen I decided to fire up Rails and have a look at it as a framework. Since I'm already using CakePHP - I am familiar with the MVC setup, and thought it would just be learning a new syntax.

Well after 2 days I've decided - I don't like Rails. Ruby - yes it's a nice language and I can see me using it again in the future for applications on the client side, but Rails just stumped me.

To start, I thought CakePHP lacked any documentation - compared to Rails, the Bakery is the Library of Alexandria. Nowhere could I find any clear, concise tutorials - nothing more than snippets most of the time, and badly written at that with no clear explanation. And trying to install plugins - Rails says it's 'convention over configuration'. I think someone forgot to tell the plugin programmers that!

Two things that did come out of this experience I like - Migrations. They are great for databases, and application versions - they would have helped a lot in my current application. Secondly, data being returned as a object rather than an array to me it made a lot more sense and I can't wait to see it in CakePHP.

Anyway, I'm sure there are a few out there who will disagree with me - but thats your opinion and this is mine. So :p

Through the development of Webrocket, I was always looking for an easier way to define custom content types - much like Drupal - so that any content on the site inherited the core values of my node type. I wasn't having so much luck until I came across a tutorial for Implementing Single Table Inheritance In CakePHP.

Now I am in love with this method! It's taken from RoR, and is not standard in CakePHP - but has been easy to implement. Basically, I now have 1 table for ALL content on the site, be it a page, post, image, event or anything else I decide to add.

My core table is called my 'leafs' table. Each leaf type is defined in it's own model, and by changing some of the core functions such as findALL() I am able to inherit the fields that I want for that content type. For example, a Page does not have start and end dates attached to it, but an Event does not have a byline. But by specifying what fields to use in the model, I can ignore the ones I don't need.

It also seems very expandable - if I want to add a new content type, or even add a new field type to existing models, all I need to add them to the database and include them in the model with minimal fuss.

The only cevat is that Bake does not currently support it, so if I want to create my new MVC for the content type, I have to do it manually. Hopefully this will be corrected in the future by adding an interactive way to create new models with only one main table.

Edit: Well they are cool, but it seems that CakePHP's paginate functionality doesn't like my custom findAll() function and likes to spit out warnings and errors. Due to deadlines, I'm going to have to abandon this line of enquiry - but not forever! Once I pass my current milestone, it'll be something I'll look at again - maybe even look at Class Table Inheritance as another option.

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So, it looks like CakePHP is a winner!  It came first in the SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards for the Web Development and Design category.  Yet another feather in the cap for the best PHP framework out there!

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Hey folks.  Just a quick note to say that Webrocket has a new SVN & Trac system running.  I've started adding content (such as a Wiki page on installing Ffmpeg and FLVTools2 to use with the Video controller) and I'll be defining Milestones better than they currently are - but after the weekend as I'll be without net access over the weekend.

Web Rocket Screenshot Version 0.3.1 Screen 4

Web Rocket Screenshot Version 0.3.1 Screen 2