[csw-maintainers] A place for other project-related code

[Philip Brown]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 05:36:54PM +0000, Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski wrote:
> ....
> Your plan is to have additional custom PHP pages. How about... using a
> web framework? I'm mostly accustomed with Python and Django, and I
> know that it's fairly easy to marry Django with other authentication
> backends.

here's the problem with custom fancy web-framework-du-jour stuff.
It's popular today. but out of fashion tomorrow.
A very small subset of people understand all of it today, and
almost no-one will, in 2 years.

In contrast, our basic php infrastructure was written by me 5 years ago, it
hasnt changed much, and if need be, there are many many people who can look
at the code and understand it quickly.



> For instance, you can say:
> 
> pkg = Package.objects.get(name="CSWcommon")
> dependent_packages = pkg.dependentpackage_set.all()
> 
> And then in your HTML template, you can say
> 
> <h3>{{ pkg }}</h3>
> 
> <ul>
> {% for dep_pkg in dependent_packages %}
>   <li>{{ dep_pkg }}</li>
> {% endfor %}
> </ul>
> 
> This gives you a HTML page with a list of packages depending on
> CSWcommon. All the SQL magic is happening under the hood.


The basic premise of opensource/community development is:
If you want something to happen, be prepared to do the work yourself :)

Here's an offer for you.  if you'd like to make a fancyschmancy 
web/SQL/sprinkles page, I can set you up with a web page on our existing
server, plus DB access, and you can have a ball writing up something.
You just have to write it in something that's going to be comprehensible
for the next 5 years.
So, PHP, or Perl.
[MAYBE python, if you really really have to :-) but strong preference is
perl or php.]

> I'll be happy to get involved. If you tell me what kind of stuff you
> would like the application to do, tell me, and I'll write a proof of
> concept.

That's kind of backwards. The more usual flow is,
"write it how YOU would like the application to perform, and then be
 prepared to take lots of criticism on it" ;-)