Steve Hannah: This week

As a software developer, I am often knee-deep in work on some new software project.  Below you will find links and information about various scripts that I have created in the past, or are currently working on.

Dataface

Dataface is a web-based framework to quickly build front-ends for MySQL.  It was born out of the recognition that almost all database-driven applications offer the same functionality - add, edit, and delete records.  Despite these similarities, we still end up re-inventing the wheel every time we build a new database application.   Dataface ends that old way of doing things.  Now the procedure for building a database application is as follows:

1. Create your tables and columns using SQL or a tool like PHPMyAdmin.
2. Install Dataface and edit the config file with the appropriate connection information (eg: username, password, database name, etc…).
3. Customize how each table and column is to be presented by creating config (ini) files for each table.

That’s it.  At this point you have a full working database application.  All config files are INI files so that they have simple syntax to learn.  Using the config files you can configure such things as:

1. Field labels and descriptions.
2. Widgets to be used when editing
3. Whether it should be included in the list view.
4. Relationships between tables
5. Valuelists that can be used as possible values for select fields and checkbox groups
6. Permissions (Application, Table, and Field level)
7. Groupings (if a group of fields should be grouped together)
8. More.

In addition, each table can have a delegate which is a PHP class to define specialize handling for various fields.

Dataface is still under development but it will be released soon.  It is being used for 3 separate projects to start, and I plan to unroll it on several more.  Stay tuned for screen shots and docs. 

For more information about Dataface click here