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JudoGeek Blog

DojoList 0.7.0 

Last night (23 August 2010), I released DojoList v 0.7.0 via the http://dojolist.org website. DojoList is my Open Source Judo club database system I have been working on for a while now.



V0.7.0 is the first update since 0.6.0 back on April 20th. It has been slow progress as other projects have taken much of my time. All the code as I have written it has been powering http://dojolist.org so I am fairly happy with the stability. So far I’ve not had any big data loss incidents.



In the DojoList 0.7.0 release I have added:



* Sorting of the data
* Data Validation
* Draggable marker on map (during create and edit)
* Ability to delete and replace in edit club logo
* GUID for each dojo
* Source url for each dojo in XML data
* RSS feed of updates
* SW Version embedded in XML data file



I also fixed some bugs:



* 4: XML data file too popular in Google
* 6: Dojo test causes <Dojo/> artefacts
* 9: Unable to click on map markers
* 10: Accented characters in dojo name prevent edit
* 12: RSS feeds do not update properly



In the next release I plan on adding the following features:



* Improved data validation
* Update date field on each dojo record
* Training session rating of level
* Ability to upload photo of the coach



Of course there will be bug fixes, both of those found already and those that will no doubt show up.



Summary:

It has been a slow development iteration this one, but it’s been a good one for me personally. I have learnt a lot and found the system even better. The system now incorporates data from http://judoworldmap.com and also from the rather rubbish British Judo Association “Find a Club” database. I can now finally find a club easily in Britain when I am travelling on business.

I have started planning on how to sync data between installations, that will I think be the main feature added in the eventual v1.0.0 release as it will require a lot of work.

In this release I enjoyed working out how to do the draggable map markers, which now update the latitude and longitude of the club. Data validation is proving interesting; it needs more work, but has been interesting to explore. The system has both server and client side validation. The PHP code checks for valid data and I am using the jQuery validation plug-in to make the validation experience a bit nicer on the client side (server side was painful as it was rather user unfriendly).



In the next few months I want to improve the installation process. To make it less manual and to check that all the pre-requisites are there. Preferably to adjust to cope with systems without all the modules required. Specifically this may be relevant for the internationalisation code.



The aim originally was very much to make the system work on pretty much any cheap hosting package. The initial versions I think retain that, but I know that 0.7.0 for example does not work on one of my target servers (cheap IIS hosting). And I have struck problems on another server too.



Finally, the big change I want to see happen with the project is that it goes from being a one man band to being a community developed project. To this end I added some basic info about the project on the ABOUT page of the website, created a mailing list too. Of course all the source code, bug tracking and planning was available freely online. But I want to go beyond “available” to a point where there is two way traffic. I push code and pull code from others.




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