Tag Archives: Multi-tenant

Rapid application development & web frameworks

Rapid Development

Over the last decade, there has been a massive growth in the number of web-based applications. For every category – email, collaboration or knowledge management to name a few – there are a large number of applications available, and new ones on their way. This has created extreme competition in the market with each application claiming to be better than the other. Even if a new concept exists that is strong enough to drive the market, time-to-market is a crucial factor that will decide the success of the product.

To address this, a rapid application development strategy needs to be in place so that the product and incremental features can be delivered at the expected rate which is dictated by the market & customers. Besides this, development needs to also follow an agile model so as accommodate ever-changing business requirements. This is especially true in the case of product development, where a single product must fit multiple customers with varying business requirements, and the classic waterfall model can lead to complete failure.

Web Application Frameworks

A web application framework (‘framework’ hereon) is a software framework that is designed to support the development of dynamic websites, Web applications and Web services by providing core, non-functional features out-of-the-box. A framework streamlines application development by automating many of the patterns employed for a given purpose and thus resolve the overheads associated with common activities performed in web development.

A framework also adds structure to the code, prompting the developer to write better, more readable, and more maintainable code. It promotes code reuse through the use of libraries for database access (using ORM), template engines, session and user management, logging, internationalization, etc.

Framework selection (we’ll elaborate this in the next post) is thus crucial in delivering the required functional & non-functional requirements within stipulated timelines. Non-functional are the primary influencers Continue reading Rapid application development & web frameworks

Converting CSV/Excel data to Doctrine YAML fixtures

I had done some research on this topic and found that some script was available in Python. With no knowledge of Python execution, I sought help from stackoverflow & got the answer there pointed to the same Python script 🙁 I decided I had to do something on my own! Ensuring the right no of spaces in the YAML could be a real pain – I haven’t found the error messages to be very friendly.

My challenge was to be able to generate a YAML for a table/schema using the nested-set behaviour in Doctrine. Instead of losing my mind on devising a human-readable format, I reverse engineered. I checked the resulting schema in the database and used that as the base for my CSV. Following this I wrote a simple macro that will output in the required format. This has evolved over a week or so, and has been thoroughly tested. I am sharing this file with 2 examples: one for the JobeetJob schema & other from the Hierarchical Data page on Doctrine.

Let me know if this helps! Vote for the answer on StackOverflow.

To start using:

  1. Download the ZIP file CSV/Excel to YAML Generator v2 & unzip it.
  2. Change the model name Continue reading Converting CSV/Excel data to Doctrine YAML fixtures