Phluor is a project which wants to make easier the creation of a website based on different modules (“bricks”) working together. You can find a presentation video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcnikpOa8ng. (I’m sorry, it’s a bad quality video, and in french, but I will publish an english version soon, and I’m trying to see how to get a better quality)
Phluor is mainly based on these bricks. The idea is to have a modular system : a brick must be easy to create, each brick can use others bricks or Ocaml modules as dependancies to work. A brick must be really easy to install: running a simple command should be enough to install and configure it.
Moreover I’m sure that the documentation is one of the main point of a project, so each brick should have a good documentation and should be easy to use.
For the moment the base skeletton works. Specifically, here are the working functions :
- Compilation of several libraries in server and client part
- Libraries can have dependances with other libraries
- The dependances are auto-detected with an automatic recursive dependance search
- All the libraries needed are included (in the right order) in the configuration file which is used by ocsigenserver
- Each library can have a static folder where it can put pictures, files…
- Each library has a part (especially used by service definition) which is build before others libraries and can be include in them very easily. It’s usually usefull to provide links (services) to others libraries
- The server configuration file is autogenerate and can be configurated from every brick. Moreover each library can write in this file where it want with a powerful system of anchor (see doc for more details)
- The server can be launch at the end of the compilation or when you want with a simple command
- Each brick can be configurated by modifying a simple file
If you want more details please read the doc in the doc folder, especially doc/00_Quickstart.org.
Just go in the doc folder, there is lot’s of documentation (It’s easier to read them with org-mode enabled (emacs), but you can read them with any text editor).
Here is the naming convention of the documentation :
- 0xx -> Doc for a classic user
-- 00x -> Basic things to know
-- 01x -> Things related with the use of bricks
- 1xx -> Doc for programmers
Here are some ideas or small tasks to do to improve this program :
In the phluor_basic templace
- Auto-copy config files in config/… AND KEEP THE OLD CONF
- Write interface files for readability (.mli)
- Give the possibility to “pack” the modules in a brick in one module in order to avoid colision between several brick names. (play with the -pack/-for-pack option ?)
- Documentation (options during qdico parsing + update some parts)
- Find an easy and powerfull way to use translation in a website (for example with gettext, but I think an other way should be use for client part)
- Deal with database (in the ideal a general bricks which could choose several database backend, and there should exists a way to create/update a local database for small configuration, such as a local postgresql one)
- Create a brick which deals with pathnames : it must be possible to upload files in the persistant folder www/static/var/<brick name>/ (which is a symlink to var/) easily
Brick idea :
- Database + translation brick
- A Lorem Ipsum brick, giving an easy access to long texts (client and server part)
- Editor : could be used by other bricks to display some advanced editor such as Tinymce, elRTE, textarea with an help option…
- A blog brick (maybe the translation/database problem should be solve first)
- A wiki brick (same as above)
- A website brick (same as above)
- A forum brick (same as above)
In phluor_tools
- Add a way to add some bricks from the internet or archives (Github, tar.gz for example)
- Check that Ocaml libs are installed, and why not linux programs (API findlib : http://projects.camlcity.org/projects/dl/findlib-1.5.2/doc/ref-html/c1040.html)
- Add a way to remove a brick –> Remove conf, brick code and in bricks_depends.txt
- Add a way to easily package a brick –> The structure is quite easy to package by hand, it should be hard
- Documentation
For the moment I’m the only one in this project, so if you want to join me it would be a pleasure. I’m an auto-didacte so I may do some things with a bad methods but I try to be as clean and proper as possible. If you want to join the project, you can contact me from github, on IRC (tobiasBora, often on #ocsigen, #ocaml…), or with my email : tobias . bora <at> gmail . com