Frank Korf: Professional Optimist

Reporting In!

It’s been a while, so I figured it was time to report in. So here I am, reporting in. Where has Frank been? What has he been up to? At the moment, my time is filled with 3 projects.

Rosy

Let’s start with the day job. I am working full-time at Floydware, building Rosy, which is a business application for salons and spas. It’s a scheduler, a POS system, an inventory manager, a client database, and a whole lot more. My role (at the moment) is designing/implementing user interfaces. This is a fancy way of saying that I’m working to make it more attractive and easier to use. My contributions are making their way into the codebase, but none of them are live yet. I’ll let you know when you can visit the site and see my handywork.

Project T

Project T has an actual name, but I’m not certain I have the authority to reveal it just yet. I’m working with a small team on a web application. I’m the interface guy, so my focus is again on making the app attractive and easy to use. This project is slated for launch at the end of the month, at which point I will divulge more info and a link.

Thickt

Thickt (pronounced “Thicket”, like a small bundle of trees and shrubs) is my personal project. It began as an attempt to better organize my other projects. I wanted to create a reference system that made it easy to track my thoughts and ideas on multiple projects. I also wanted to easily upload files and link to resources around the net. That simple project quickly spun out of control and became Thickt. Why Thickt? Because Thicket.com was taken, and (apparently) I make questionable decisions at 2:00 am. When will Thickt be done? Maybe soon, but maybe never. I have some neat ideas, and the prototype is shaping up well, but if I don’t finish it I’m not going to be too upset.

Other Projects

In addition to these, I’m also (sort of) working on a few other projects. The most notable of these is a MMORPG idea that Doc and I are developing. We’re still in the brainstorming phase at the moment, which is good because I don’t really have the time to devote to development. That said, this project is one I’m very excited about, and will (hopefully) become a bigger priority in the near future. But first, I have to get through February.

I’ll leave you with a music video. This song has been in my head for a little over a week, and now it can be in yours.

Enjoy that.

-Fk

ORM, MVC, and PHP Frameworks. Acronyms FTW!

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of projects using the CodeIgniter framework. It saves me a lot of the setup code involved in a new project, and allows me to just dive right in and build an app. Fun. Unfortunately, starting a project, while easier, still requires re-writing a lot of the same code.

CodeIgniter enforces the MVC (Model - View - Controller) design pattern. Models can be thought of as tables in a database. Each model has an associated series of data fields. An address model might contain fields like street, city, state, and zip code. Additionally, models have methods with which to perform actions with the data. Still with me? All user input goes to a controller. The controller parses the input, and performs operations utilizing the various models. The model pulls data from the database, saves to the database, or simply does some computation. Data returned by the model is then passed, by the controller, to the view, which displays the data in a usable way.

Pretty straightforward, right? The problem is that most of the models I have been working with are the same. Which means that most of the code is the same. I’ve grown weary of re-writing the same c.r.u.d. methods (create, read, update, delete) for every model. Moreover, I’ve grown weary of updating both code and database whenever I want to edit the structure of an object. So, I have decided to try my hand at a simple ORM-inspired class that will handle these functions for me. That’s right nerds. It’s project time.

PROJECT TIME!
(Heck Yeah!)

Project goal: Write a simple php class that will

• Allow me to design simple objects for use in projects
• Take care of the c.r.u.d. of said objects
• Generate HTML forms to edit the objects (This may be just laziness on my part, but I’m sick of writing forms.)
• Update DB tables when the structure of the object changes.
• Allow me to build custom methods for each model

Total work time: I’m thinking it would take a few hours, minus the database updates. Automatic DB updating would be as cool as Hoth, but I think it would be the most time consuming, and frankly the redundancy of updating code and database simultaneously doesn’t bother me. For now.

Anyway, if I actually follow through, I’ll post the code. If not, we’ll always have the memories of a php class that could have been.

-Fk