Birthday Weekend Over :( back to work

Took a little break last week to celebrate my 23rd birth anniversary :D. Nothing really much to say about our project at the moment. Still working and getting stuff done slowly but surely.

One interesting thing that I started recently was my Android development. This is a side project that I've been meaning to do since it's free compared to Apple's $100 dev fee platform. I've set up a separate workspace in Eclipse for my Android apps. Right now I'm still in the learning phase. Still trying to familiarize myself with it. So far it's not too bad because I'm coding in Java. Here's a little screen shot of what I have so far:

I can almost see the finish line....

Wishes do come true! We get to stay in the same group and continue working on this project for the rest of the semester! Only couple weeks of school left and our group is planning on finishing strong. Our current status is still trying to catch up with the other CMS group. We might be a little behind schedule but I think that we are on the right direction and I'm confident that we can pull through.

Right now we are still trying to figure out how to approach the verification type aspect of our Joomla component. We have some ideas to implement so it's a work in progress. Not sure if I mentioned it before but there are three types of verification for this component. A text input, confirmation code, and an upload image form. The following image is the schema that we are currently working with.

This schema might change as we are constantly trying to improve our component. After we finish developing this component, we plan on publishing the final package so that the general public can download and install this on their own Joomla websites. With our DeveloperGuide, we hope that any developer can tweak it to achieve their own requirements. There's a lot of things to do so it's time to do work son!

-David Joel Lazaro

Joomla module madness

Wow this has to be the most challenging milestone so far. After learning that there's no pre-made module out there that would satisfy the UseCaseActivity, we had to come up with our own component. Unfortunately we didn't satisfy every single requirements for this milestone but I feel like we still accomplished something because our team had to create the component from scratch. So without further ado, lets do a quick tour of what I worked on for this milestone. By the way, before I continue, most of the work I've done was for the back-end of the system.

The first screen shot shows the back-end login screen. Here we have two login modules. One can login with a regular Joomla username and password, and the other uses UH's CAS login service. The UH CAS login module will probably be the main module used for logging in. I just left the other module on so that if the CAS service is down, I'm still able to login to the system. I also finally managed to fix the bug that won't delete the cookie that stores the CAS login information. Now whenever someone logs out of the back-end, they would be prompted to sign in again by UH CAS service.

The next screen shows the back-end's home page. Our main focus here is the addition of Activity Manager in the components menu. Clicking that menu item will take us to the component's main page.

So here is what we have so far in terms of the admin side of the component. Shown here is the main page of the UseCaseActivity component that we created. We have preloaded some sample activities as show in the image. Most of the menu button at the top works except the publish/unpublish buttons. Those are still a work in progress. So far, this component is able to create, edit, and delete an activity. We made the activities in the table linkable so that if we click on one of them, it will take us to the edit page where we can change the details of the activity.

Here is the page with all the forms that we need to fill out to publish an activity. This part was a real pain in the butt to create because the tutorial I was following is outdated. For some odd reason, the Joomla class that I was using was renamed in the new API update. After that problem was fixed it was smooth sailing.

In this screen shot we see the database part of the component. I had to create the table that would hold the information we submit from the forms page. The administrator would never deal with this part of the website. I'm just showing it to show that the component is indeed saving the information the right way.

This last screen shot shows our updated DeveloperGuide. We've added information about our current component development. There's still many things to do and a lot that we can improve for this Joomla prototype. My hope is that we don't get shuffled around and continue developing for this project. *Crossing fingers*

-David Joel Lazaro

Joomla Modules: Time to Program

After last week's meeting, it was clear that our group was taking the wrong approach for our goal this milestone. We have the UseCaseActivity all laid out for us but were trying to implement it the wrong way. Our group was looking for modules that would implement most if not all of of those requirements. The problem is, there is no such module that would take care of the whole use case for this milestone. Realizing this two weeks before the end of milestone, I feel our group is way behind now because of our wrong approach to the problem.

Now to start catching up, I've been reading up and watching tutorials on how to develop our own Joomla module that would support the use case of activities. I've been reading up on Joomla API and brushing up my PHP so that we can start ASAP. Android development will have to wait until I'm done with this semester's projects....

Done with Spring Break...

That break went by super fast! Can I get a rewind? Home (Maui) was super relaxing. It was a great time to chill and hang out with family and friends back home. But now it's time to get back to business and continue working on the Dorm Energy Competition website. As I mentioned, I will now be working with Nate as a group. Our main focus for this milestone is to figure out how the activities and goals are carried out for the competition. So far we came up with a bunch of "activity manager" type of modules that we will be testing for the next coming days.

On a side note, I've downloaded the Android SDK last week. Being a phone geek, I want to start learning how to develop mobile apps. I currently have an iPhone but Apple requires a fee to to be a developer. Android is free and is really picking up since it first came out. Didn't have the time to set up everything on my machine yet but I will soon. I'll blog about it later once I have everything set up and running. That's all for now.

-David Joel Lazaro

Milestone 3: Time to collaborate!

Milestone two came and went and now we are halfway through the semester. Our Joomla prototype has come a long way since the project started but there's still a lot of work to do. We are down to two CMS for this milestone. Our group dropped Silverstripe and dotCMS to focus more on Drupal and Joomla. My partner, Nathaniel Ashe, will be working with me to continue development for Joomla. Our plan is to continue adding features needed for the competition and combining them together at the end.

For this milestone, our focus shifts from mockups to actually developing the more necessary features of the competition like commitments, activity, and goal processing. This week, we plan to work on the illustration of kukui nuts accumulated by each floors. By the way, Kukui nuts is the point system used for the competition. So the more kukui nuts you have, it means the more points you accumulated. We are looking at using Google chart APIs for this part of the prototype. Lots of work needs to be done but collaboration should ease up the work for us a little. Stay tuned for more updates later.

-David Joel Lazaro

End of Milestone 2

Here we are finally at the end of milestone 2. This version of the Joomla mockup site is better and contains some new useful features for the dorm energy competition. Let's start by having a tour of the updated mockup site.

Here we see the homepage that the general public can access. Currently it contains a featured youtube video, a chart that shows the energy usage of the dorms, a slideshow, and a little description of what the website is about. Also on the left is the Login button that uses the UH CAS login for authenticating the participants.

The user will be taken to this page once they click on the Login button.

If the user tries to login is not listed as a participant, they will be redirected back to the homepage with an error message. Before I forget, if you look at the right side of the top menu, a random tips ticker is displayed. A new tip is displayed every time a page is loaded.

This is where things change depending on what type of permission the user has. The screen shot on the left shows the homepage for an administrator while the one on the right shows the homepage for a regular participant. There are some noticeable differences. The administrator will have an extra item on the top menu named Admin. This takes the user to the admin page where they can modify the website.

The admin also has extra items in the user menu on the left column of the page. These extra options are for adding content to the site. You'll also notice a bunch of edit buttons in the homepage. This is because the administrator have the ability to edit these items. Those edit buttons are hidden for regular participants.

Remember the error that shows up when a non-participant tries to login? Joomla actually creates a user for them but by default they are disabled. The administrator has the ability to grant them access by enabling them or the admin can also delete the user.

Nothing new with the forums page so moving along.

This page provides users with a brief overview of a Dorm Energy Competition. There are videos which will allow individuals to browse through several videos pertaining to Dorm Energy. It also contains links to other universities doing dorm energy competitions. The Resources menu contains three submenu pages, Dorm Energy, Energy Hub, and Have Fun. Only the Dorm Energy page is implemented in this mockup.

Next is a work in progress stoplight page. This page is mainly to test the stoplight group's google gadget app.

This page shows the user information about the Dorm Energy Competition.

Next is a work in progress stoplight page. This page is mainly to test the stoplight group's google gadget app.

The kiosk serves as the billboard page that will be displayed in tv monitors. This gives people a general info about the dorm competition at a glance.

This is the help page of the dorm competition website. It includes contact info incase users run into problems using the website.

This page shows upcoming events related to the competition. This menu item only shows up once the user logs in successfully.

The last two screen shots shows how the user can edit their personal info. They also have the option of posting a profile picture.

For more information about this project, please visit Google Project Hosting. There's info on how you can download and give this mockup site a testdrive on your own server. You'll also find the current status of the project there (ie. what works and what doesn't work, bugs, etc.). I will continue working and improving this prototype website.

-David Joel Lazaro