I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that programming is my life. Even outside of work, I try to contribute as much time as possible, both to my own personal projects, and also to the projects of other people that I’m interested in. Below you’ll find a quick listing and description of the things I’ve done or the things I’m working on. Some of them are far from complete, and some of them are barely usable, but insofar as they are useful to you, you’re welcome to them!
DirtyMVC
DirtyMVC is a PHP based web framework, inspired by Ruby on Rails that emphasizes ease of use for the developer of web applications. Of course, if you’re familiar with web frameworks in general, you’ll find that most of them say the same thing, (except maybe the inspired by Rails part). In fact, I won’t even go so far as to say that my web framework is any better than anyone elses. All I can say is that it is my framework, and its the one I use when I have to build a full-fledged web application in PHP. Features include:
- Customizable routing to create “pretty” urls.
- A fully integrated ORM layer that makes dealing with SQL much easier.
- Migration system for handling database construction, including a Rails-like syntax for creating migrations.
- Model-View-Controller architecture with Rails-like conventions.
- Javascript helpers, (with AJAX helpers coming!)
- Form generation helpers
- Partials and layout rendering in the Rails style.
Given the above feature set, you might be asking, “Why don’t I just use Rails?”. My answer to you is that you should use Rails, but if you are in a situation where you can’t, DirtyMVC is a PHP alternative that you might like to try. At present, the easiest way to get your hands on DirtyMVC is to clone the GIT repo: git@github.com:stlewis/Dirty-MVC.git. At present, DirtyMVC is sadly undocumented. I might get around to some proper documentation in the future, but in the meantime, I’m focusing on building more features!
LinkPageFor.me
My-Linkpage.com is a web-based application designed to allow users to centralize bookmarks and other information that they need accessible from multiple computers in one place. Being a web-application, it’s cross-platform, and at least mostly cross-browser, (though I don’t take any real pains to support older versions of any browser or most versions of IE). It’s still in pretty active development, which is to say that the features are mostly undocumented and there’s not a lot of help to be had unless you ask me directly, but if you’re interested in taking a look and seeing what it’s all about, you can sign up for a free account here: http://www.linkpagefor.me/
XPBoard
Yet another idea that I’ve put together mostly as a tool for my own use, XPBoard is an Agile software planning tool. I take most of my inspiration from the bloated, (and extremely expensive) Mingle application from ThoughtWorks, but I’ve tried to slim the idea down to a basic feature set that will satisfy the needs of most users. As such, my version is free and open-source. Features of XPBoard include:
- Planning board and draggable cards, ala index cards and a whiteboard.
- Project/Feature/Task style breakdowns
- Support for arbitrary development iterations or release points.
Unfortunately, this is another idea that is somewhat stable but not quite ready for public consumption just yet. As soon as it is, I’ll be releasing download links.