The Rock Says

ctrl + s hangs the shell, then press ctrl +q to resume

2012-01-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

Many of you who are familiar with Emacs(ctrl +x and ctrl +s) or Windows (ctrl +s), have an habit of pressing ctrl+s often. If you are in a shell and type ctrl +s, the shells freezes and does not allow anything to be edited.

To unfreeze the shell, press ctrl +q instead of closing the session.

Hope this helps

Day 3 at Drupalcon

2011-03-10T18:50:00.000-08:00

Day 3 also i attended more BoFs, met different project managers discussed about planning, tools, estimations, etc

I went to every booth, collected stickers, T-shirts from different companies.

Overall, the experience of Drupalcon is great as i get a chance not only to meet drupal developers across the world but also there are many new things that i come to know and learn.

There are popular drupal distros such as atrium, open public, open publish available which are being used by so many people across the world. For testing, automated testing being used using selenium, walter , automated deployment using hudson/jenkins

Next Drupalcon is going to happen in London and after that it is going to be in North America (Denver).

Day 2 at Drupalcon

2011-03-10T18:24:00.000-08:00

On Day 2, i participated more in BoFs as we can always view the sessions online. Discussed with different people, attended day stage.

Day 2 was quite fun and exciting as i got a chance to talk with different drupal core developers and contributors.

Me and Angie Byron (Webchik)

Me and Angie Byron (this pose was suggested by Webchik)

Me with Core Drupal developers

Me and Atrium core developer (Jeff)

Me and Pantheon Core Developer

Day 1 at Drupalcon

2011-03-10T17:42:00.000-08:00

The day started well with Dries keynote. View Dries keynote here.

http://chicago2011.drupal.org/keynote-dries-buytaert

Dries discussed about D8, co-maintainer, roadmap of D8, etc.

After that, i got a chance to get hold of Dries for a minute. Had an quick talk with him on Drupal 8, object orientation of drupal, new features in D8 and his visit to India. Took a quick snap with him :)

1st Day in Chicago

2011-03-06T07:43:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, Landed in chicago last night along with prajwala to attend the Drupalcon. For those who don't know what is Drupal, here is a small writeup.

"DrupalCon is the twice-yearly gathering of Drupalers to learn about, discuss, and advance Drupal, and to network with other Drupal community members. There, you will have the opportunity to meet Drupal community leaders, top developers, your favorite module maintainers, dojo trainers, members of the Drupal association, potential business partners, and future employees!"

Travel was quite okay with no hiccups at London or at immigration in US. It was smooth than expected.

By the time we come out of immigration it was past 10 pm and we have been welcomed with cold weather, heavy winds and snow :)

Checked in hostel, got settled. Was feeling hungry. Thought both us of make a maggi. As you all aware, it is the most easiest food to prepare :) But unfortunately it was not the case with us :)

We screwed up 2 maggi packages by making some part of it overcooked and some part of it semi-cooked. Result, no food. Had few snacks which we bought from home.

Today, will go out , check out chicago and get use to the weather.

Keep you updated about drupal and my adventures :)

Drupal 7 Release party, Hyderabad in The Hindu newspaper

2011-01-14T06:14:00.000-08:00

Folks,

We got our event published in The Hindu Newspaper dated 13th Jan 2011.

http://www.hindu.com/mp/2011/01/13/stories/2011011350670100.htm

Drupal 7 Release party in Hyderabad Jan 8th 2011

2011-01-08T23:00:00.000-08:00

Today, We had great time celebrating the release of Drupal 7 on the boat.

No. of people attended: 70 (approx)

Event Sponsor: Azri Solutions (http://www.azrisolutions.com/)

The event started with Venky giving an inaugural speech on open source, Drupal and the hyderabad community.

After that I had given a brief introduction to Drupal and how drupal evolved in last 4-5 years. Heard few good comments from professors and students.

Then we had a cake cutting (see image below).

We have given all the people a simple chit containing letters A1, A2, etc. We have selected 7 people who got the letters (A7, B7, C7, D7, E7, F7, G7) and had cake cutting with them.

After having the drupal cake, snacks and cool drinks, we have divided all people into 3 groups (Community, Learning and Code).

Community group has been lead by me. We discussed different ideas with students and professors of different colleges on how to increase the community participation, career opportunities and how best we can conduct workshops.

Code group has been lead by Prajwala where all developers meet and discussed technical details related to drupal, opensource, etc

Learning group has been lead by Rahim.

We had 1-1 sessions with students, discussed in groups and collected various ideas on how to increase the community participation, workshops, trainings and internships.

Azri has distributed Drupal 7 release stickers to all the participants who have attended the event.

At the end, we had 1 big group photo which we are expecting to get it published in the Hindu Newspaper.

Thanks to everyone who has accepted our invitation and made the party a huge success.

We will keep you posted about upcoming events very soon.

Asif

So many Azrians born in November :)

2010-11-26T08:47:00.000-08:00

PFlame

Goteti

_rcp

New Module BMI contributed to Drupal

2010-06-08T03:35:00.000-07:00

In one of the projects, there was an requirement where user can input the weight and height and system will give the BMI value. I looked out for drupal modules and did not see anything available which meets my requirement.

I googled to check the functionality of BMI and i got few links which calculates the BMI. The forms are very simple with texboxes to enter weight and height and dropdown to select the unit values. Once the user enter the values and click submit, the BMI values displays and there is some text explaining the meaning of that value.

Initially i thought of just putting this in my custom module and provide the required functionality. But considering scalability in mind, i decided to write a separate module. Then later i have provided settings functionality where admin can mention the text for each BMI value and contributed the module to the community.

The project is available on durpal at this link http://drupal.org/project/bmi

Thank you all for reading the post. Please review the module and provide your comments.

Drupal Hyderabad workshop Feedback and success party

2010-05-17T00:08:00.000-07:00

Saturday, 15th May 2010, we had a drupal hyderabad group meetup and discussed the following points.

Feedback on the Drupal workshop which has been conducted earlier in this month at VNR VJIET college in Bachupally, Hyderabad.
Road map for Drupal Hyderabad portal

Regarding workshop, there are many +ve feedbacks received from students of different colleges. There are proposals from students asking to conduct workshops in their respective colleges. It is really a good sign. We have also discussed about the overall process of organizing the workshop and identified few of the important points that need to be addressed in the next workshop.

Pre-requisites to attend the workshop has to be mentioned clearly on the website.
Students of the college where the next workshop will be conducted has to ensure beforehand that all systems have required softwares to run drupal smoothly. During the workshop, only drupal installation will be shown.
A micriphone has to be arranged during the sessions so that speakers don't need to shout :)
Venue address along with directions from 2-3 main points has to be clearly mentioned on the site.
Speaker has to submit their sessions (pdf material) before a week and session timings need to be followed as per the schedule.

After the discussion on workshop feedbacks, the next point in our agenda is the road map for drupalhyderabad.com site. Presently the information we have on the site is more related to the workshops. So we have decided that we will make the existing site a subdomain of drupalhyderabad.com and will have all information related to workshops available there.

Drupalhyderabad.com will contain the following information.

Aggregation of drupal posts from drupal.org and groups.drupal.org
Aggregation of blogs from members of drupalhyderabad
Events
Meetups Information
Case studies
Voices
About the Group
drupal-hyderabad irc channel embedded on the website
Team page
Photo gallery

After the discussion, we all went to Paradise and had a lunch together to celebrate the success of the workshop. Below is the image taken from my mobile. People Attended are

Ramaraju, Mahesh, Suresh, Asif, Sravan, Ipsita, Aruna, Siva, Hari, Srujan, Rahman, bhuvan and Venkatesh.

Thank you for reading the post. Comments are welcome.

Developers checklist

2010-05-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

When we buy anything from store, we check the product 1-2 times to ensure that the product is as per our needs. We do the test run of the product and if we find any defect, we will not only take it but will also give low ratings and bad reviews.

But when it comes to software development, how can we forget that the functionality we develop will also be tested by millions of users out there? They can also leave bad reviews and ratings on the company or developer who has developed the portal.

Hence as developer, we need to have a basic checklist which will help us to write better quality code and helps us not to miss few basic things. Below are few points which will help the developer during development.

Is the feature developed as per the specifications given?
Will my code pass through all the test cases? Write test cases and execute them.
Will my code covered all the use cases? Identify the use cases and test them.
Is my code written as per the standards?
Will my code work in all browsers?

Drupal Hyderabad Workshop

2010-05-05T11:53:00.000-07:00

Day 1

Started at 8 AM from home and met Siva, ipsita and few others at paradise around 8.30 AM. On 1st day, we have arranged a mini bus. We picked up prajwala and few others from Azri and reached the venue at 10.30 AM.

The day started with few talks from professors of VNR VJIET college, kiran chandra generaly secreatry of swecha.

Then we had a Tea break and the actual sessions started at 12.

The first session was on "How to customize core modules" and it was by me followed by talk from prajwala on Advanced theming. Then we break for lunch. After lunch, the talks started with ipsita on multi site installation, followed by prajwala on jquery in Drupal and Drupalcon SF meet. Then We had a tea break. After Tea, i started the talk on Coding standards and Internationalization.

Then we had an interesting debate on cloud computing. The debate took time to get started as there are not many having knowledge on cloud computing and few took time to understand the actual debate. Once people get hang on debate, i felt it could be never ending as the debate on cloud computing can be done for hours together.

Most of the sessions on Day1 are monologue as there are not many drupal developers attended the workshop. Most of them are newbies, students and php developers. We tried our best in explaining the concepts as simple as possible so that non drupal devs were also able to understand with lesser effort.

Day 2

The Day 2 started by Medhamsh on web development basics or rather i should say networking basics. The session is more about networking commands, setting up the domain, etc. The next session is by Ramakrishna on Introduction to drupal followed by drupal installation by Srujan. This was the fun part.

Since day 2 is more of hands on sessions, everyone has to install drupal in their systems. Srujan is guidingg the students through the projector and telling the commands. We all (volunteers) were helping the students whoever are facing the issues.

There are few students who have not used ubuntu before and there are few systems which does not have required packages installed. Moreover while installing drupal in 50-60 systems, we have faced diff. issues of installations which we have not seen before. The session went for more than 1 and a half hour to get drupal installed successfully on all the systems.

Then we break for lunch. During lunch, we have taken a group photo.

After lunch, the session started by me on Drupal core modules and configurations. I tried my best to cover the basics of drupal and at the same time give them an idea of what drupal is capable of. I have shown how to manage content, users, permissions and modules.

The next session is by Saitanay on Cck and views. This was one of the sessions which had been bouncer for newbies. Nothing against the speaker, he did his best in explaining the things. But the problem was since drupal got installed only couple of hours before on student systems, the contriubted modules cck and views were not available in their instances. So they were unable to follow the settings which saitanay is showing on his instance.

Then we had a tea break.

After tea break, prajwala took session on basic themes followed by ipsita on community support and usage of irc channels. After that, siva collected the feedback from students and we had a valedictory session.

Overall the 2 days of workshop is satisfactory and i felt that the effort spent over the last 5-6 weeks by drupal hyd group members have paid off.

Thank you for reading the post. Comments are welcome :)

The night before Drupal Hyderabad Workshop

2010-05-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

It was early morning arund 1.30 AM i.e. when i returned home after watching the balakrishna movie Simha with my friend. So all telugu film watching people by now would have understand the state of my mind. Fortunately it was not so bad and this movie is better than his old movies Vijayendra varma or Chennakesava reddy :)

Feeling sleepy, but I have to 2 sessions on the 1st day of the workshop. Moreover, the first session of Day 1is by me and i have not yet prepared anything. I opened my laptop bag just to realize that i forgot my laptop charger in office. Disappointment and frustration. Soon i remembered that i am using my new laptop battery which i got it just 10 days before from US. It gives good 2-3 hrs of backup. That much of time is more than enough for me bcoz i knew i just need solid 45 mins to 1 hour to make the presentation.

I opened the laptop and then another shock. I don't have microsoft powerpoint as i have started using Open office from last 6 months. I never used openoffice Draw before. I am using openoffice word and it is more or less similar to MS Word, so i was confident that i can make a presentation in open office.

So i opened Open office Draw. 30 minutes gone and still i am on the 1st slide. I am unable to create new slide or make regions in the slide. It has plain 1 blank slide. Tried to use it as much as possible and finally gave up. Again frustration as the time is already 2.30 AM.

Then i realize that there is a desktop of my brother-in-law which got MS office installed. So immediately i went there and this time no shocks. The system was super fast and i am able to create the presentation in 30 mins. 3 AM, i am done with my 1st presentation. Do not worry about 2nd presenation, i did not made that. I went to sleep. I prepared the 2nd ppt in the workshop :)

Thank you all for reading the post. Comments are welcome.

Note: Even though msoffice is licensed and proprietary, the software rocks. It has addressed the usability in the best way it is possible. Open office is way too behind for that.

Drupal Hyderabad Group

2010-05-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

It was month of Feb 2010 when i got an thread notification from drupal hyderabad group about the drupal meetup. Later i have received few more notifications of other members showing interest in the meetup. One of them was ipsita whom i know from long time. We both tried to conduct drupal meetups in 2009, but during that time we did not find any drupal devs. One meetup happened where myself, ipsita and few more azrians met and discussed abt drupal.

After that there was no meetup again for almost an year.

So it was surprising and happy to see the drupal devs showing interest in this year 2010. So i decided to attend the meet. Dates keep getting postponed form last week of feb to 1st week of march to 2nd week off march. Finally we had the 1st meet on 13th March 2010.

There are around 15-20 people who attended the first meetup. I was very happy to find so many drupal devs. We had introduced ourselves and discussed about each other for an hour on drupal support, irc channel #drupal-hyderabad, hyderabad portal drupalhyderabad.com and many other things. During the discussions, i come to know about Siva, Sarath and Medhamsh. Siva is the drupal developer, Medhams is more a system admin guy where as Sarath is the drupal hobbyist :).

At the end of the 1st meet, the group of hyderabadi drupallers are formed with the members being Siva, Sarath, Ipsita, prajwala, Medhamsh, Myself and many more students.

Few things about your browser

2009-12-10T00:14:00.000-08:00

How to apply my stylesheet to browser.

This is required when you have a problem in viewing particular colors or have problem in reading content which is more bright then this would be helpful. Not every site will be built with our wanted colors but we can choose every site be displayed in my own style.

This can be done by applying my own stylesheet to the browser.

For example, if i want to see all content with background of web page being white and foreground being black, then i will create a simple css with the following code and save it on my desktop.

* {
color: #000 !important;
background: #FFF !important;
}

If i am using IE browser, then i will open IE, go to Internet Options -> General -> Accessibility -> User Style sheet.

I will select my style sheet and i will see that all the web pages are changed.

If using Mozilla, then you need to put the css with name userContent.css in chrome directory under your profiles.

Reference: http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/user-style-sheets.html

Sometimes, you will be facing issues with particular form or link being styled different in different browsers. You can remove this by visiting the Mozilla Folder -> res

under res folder, you will see the forms.css, html.css and quirk.css which are the basic 3 important css files which styles the page in a particular format. If you remove then, then you will see the entire web page being Unstyled.

Usage of !important

2009-12-01T05:30:00.000-08:00

As you aware, when multiple styles are defined then the concept of specificity helps to determine which style to be applied.

Similarly, when you want to diagnose why a particular style is not being applied, then you can use !important.

For example, i want all h1 text to be in upper case. and i use this style

h1 {
text-transform:uppercase;
}

When i reload it is not working, because there was a style already defined saying this somewhere in my style

#content h1{background-color:green;
text-transform:lowercase;
}

Since this style is having higher specificity value (0101) compared to earlier style (0001), this is being applied. It is easy to debug, bcoz my css file is smaller and the style i am applying is a simple one.

I am not doing any complex things like setting up margins, paddings which is difficult to identify. But imagine, when you are working on a project with many css files being included and you are doing complex things, you may be in a dilemma whether the style you have written is having an error or is it the problem with other styles overriding.

To overcome this , you can use !important like this
h1 {
text-transform:uppercase !important;
}

This will override any other style irrespective of whatever the specificity value is and will make the text in h1 to uppercase. This would eliminate one of my doubt of syntax or style being wrong.

If you are using !important and still you don't see any effect, then it means that there is a error in your style syntax, may be you would have misspelled the element descriptor or Id or Class.

This way, the !important will help you diagnose the issue.

It is advisable and very important to avoid using !important for styling. You should use it only for debugging purpose. For example, the above one can be achieved by giving the same specificity value or writing this style in the same place where it is defined earlier.

Otherwise, later you may have to override this again and you will end up mentioning many !importants in your style.css

Also, Remember if you see !important in your style, then it means you are getting lazy ;)

Hope this may help some of the developers .

All the best

Understanding Specificity

2009-11-28T03:23:00.000-08:00

Recently, i started going thorugh few css tutorials as i am facing lot of design issues in my project. While going through css tutorials i came across the concept of specificity which is very interesting and simple. Till the time i don't know specificity i use to play around with firebug and modify all the styles for N times to get a particular style fixed. Now i know how specificity works and hence i can debug the issue fast.

Basically, when multiple styles are defined on a particular element, then the concept of specificity comes into picture. The specificity is a simple 4 digit number which identifies which particular style to be applied.

The specificity contains a 4 digit value with each digit separated by comma. #,#,#,#

Starting from right, The 1st digit stands for the number of element descriptors. If you had given style for 1 then the specificity value is (0,0,0,1). For example

/*The specificity of below li is 0,0,0,1*/
li {background-color:red;
list-style-type:square;
font-style:italic;
}

Similarly if you had styled like (body li {background-color:red}, then the specificity value is 0,0,0,2. When these 2 styles come in the same css, then the higher the specificity values wins and that particular style applied. IT means that the red color backgorund will be applied, bcoz it is more specific than only li.

The 2nd digit form right stands for number of classes defined

The 3rd digit from right stands for number of ids defined

The 4th digit from right stands for inline styles. Hence inline styles will overwrite only conflicting styles. The other styles defined to that element will still be valid

Here are few more styles with specificity values

/*The specificity of below li is 0,0,0,1 because only 1 element descriptor is present*/
li {background-color:red;
list-style-type:square;
font-style:italic;
}

/* The specificity of below style is 0,0,0,2 because 2 element descriptors are present i.e. body and li */
body li {background-color:red;
list-style-type:square;
border:1px solid yellow;
}

/* The specificity of below one is 0,1,1,1 because content is a id and hence 1 mentioned in 2nd digit place, 1 class present hence 1 mentioned in 3rd digit place and 1 element i.e. li and hence 1 in 4th digit place */
#content li.third {background-color:green;
list-style-type:circle;
}

/* The specificity of below one is 0,0,1,3 because the there are 3 element descriptors body, ol and li and 1 class*/
body ol li.third {background-color:purple;
list-style-type:square;
}

/* The specificity of below one is 0,0,1,1 because 1 class and 1 element descriptor is present */
li.third {background-color:yellow;
list-style-type:square;
}

BUT Remember only when more than 1 style applied, then only specificity comes. Otherwise, it won't. For example, if li contains other styles such as font-size, font-style which are not present in body li or any other style of li, then those styles will get applied as there is no conflict.

I hope my small explanation of specificity will help you in understanding and fixing design issues.

Common mistakes in development

2008-03-12T06:43:00.000-07:00

If you don’t put enough time during the design (Tech) of the project and not monitored correctly, then you have to put your entire lifetime in fixing the issues that will come out later. Below is the list of points which needs to be monitored during the course of the project development and correct it as and when you identify a mistake. Delaying the correctness of mistake leads to more mistakes and it will become impossible to correct at one point.

1. Indentations: It is a very easy to read but when you are writing long lines of code, it is very important to indent your code properly. Not doing so will lead to put in lot of time to understand the code later and more time to debug for any kind of syntactical errors.

2. Long lines of code: Always avoid having long lines of code. Developers will feel proud when they write lengthy lines of code. But at one point, that much amount of code is unnecessary and also not required to achieve that particular task. Always remember to shorten the code as use functions wherever required. Please note that not using functions or writing the same block of code at more than one place is a very bad way of programming.

3. Poor database design: Poor database design could be like having many tables, improper table names/column names, not having primary keys or references. Initially while developing the project, the data model could be small and you may skip having references. But always remember to have proper references as the database is the backbone of the project and it will only increase and not decrease. So always spend more time during the database design.

4. Improper variable names: Developers are lazy and always intend to have shorter variable names. There is no wrong in having smaller variable names but you always have to understand that a project will be developed and maintained over a span of years and it is impossible to have the same developer working. So it is very important to have meaningful variable or function names and should be able to understand easily by looking at the code.

5. Not writing comments: Most developers write lengthy comments which are unnecessary at one point. Always remember to have comments where it is required and not at every line of code. It is important to write comments which explain the use of the code and not what the code does. As a developer, anyone can understand the code but not able to understand the business view behind the code. So it is very important to write the comment which explains the business view.

HTML to PDF

2008-03-09T22:55:00.000-07:00

The Dompdf application written in PHP is used to convert from HTML to PDF. Even though there are some constraints to it, but a normal html with CSS can be converted easily to PDF.

http://www.digitaljunkies.ca/dompdf/

The above link has provided detail information about how to use the application. We have implemented this in one of our project where we had converted a html which consists of header, table, logos and images to PDF in 3 different formats (Landscape, Horizontal and Portrait).

The advantage of the above application is either you can execute this on browser or on shell. We have executed on shell since our application is written in RoR.

Steps to convert to PDF

1. Have the html file ready which you want to convert to PDF.

Note: The PDF generated will be similar to the HTML. So make sure to have everything in HTML which you want to show in PDF.

2. Execute this command to convert to PDF

/usr/local/php/bin/php -f “/dompdf.php” -o "landscape" -p "landscape" -b ""

Example:

/usr/local/php/bin/php -f /export/home/mortal/devel/eco-audit/dompdf-0.5.1/dompdf.php 52_horiz.html -o "landscape" -p "landscape" -b "/export/home/mortal/devel/eco-audit/public/papers/"

The –p option is used to tell the dompdf the size of the pdf it has to generate. By default there will be some sizes available in this file /include/cpdf_adapter.cls.php. If you want your own custom size, you can add/edit the existing in the above php file. In our above example, we have included 3 sizes to the existing array in the php file.

The –o option is used to mention the orientation of the file. It is used to specify either “landscape” or “portrait”

The –b option is used to specify the directory of the input html file. If you are already in the existing directory, then you can skip –b option.

The –f option “dompdf.php” is the file to which all the above options will be passed as arguments.

3. The above 2 points will be enough to generate a PDF file based on the given html file. If you want the new fonts to be included, then you have to do the following changes.

· In , you will have all the fonts that will be used while generating pdf. If you want any new fonts to be used, specify the font in your html file and copy that font into your directory.

· Once you copy the fonts, check the permissions on the fonts.

· Then open dompdf_ font_family_cache file in lib/fonts directory. You will see an array with the fonts in this fashion

'sans-serif' =>

array (

'normal' => DOMPDF_FONT_DIR . 'Helvetica',

'bold' => DOMPDF_FONT_DIR . 'Helvetica-Bold',

'italic' => DOMPDF_FONT_DIR . 'Helvetica-BoldOblique',

'bold_italic' => DOMPDF_FONT_DIR . 'Helvetica-BoldOblique',

'times' =>

array (

'normal' => DOMPDF_FONT_DIR . 'Times-Roman',

'bold' => DOMPDF_FONT_DIR . 'Times-Bold',

'italic' => DOMPDF_FONT_DIR . 'Times-BoldItalic',

'bold_italic' => DOMPDF_FONT_DIR . 'Times-BoldItalic',

),
Now to use your font which you had already copied to lib/fonts directory, mention the font name in the above mentioned file in the same way as it is mentioned for other fonts. You have to understand that for every type of font “normal”, “bold”, “italic”, “bold-italic”, you will have a separate file in lib/fonts directory and you are pointing that file in the array and this array will use the pointed file while conversion

4. Apart from this, there is a file "dompdf_config_inc.php” which has all default configuration of the dompdf. You can specify the default paper size, default font, default DPI, etc.

Is Drupal Easy?

2008-01-09T10:52:00.000-08:00

Yes, Drupal is easy if you understand the architecture of the system. If you don't understand it then it is the most unwanted thing for you. I am listing down certain points which I had noticed while exploring Drupal.

Most of the things can be managed through administer screen. It is just a matter of exploring all the available options. Some of the important features you need to be aware are categories, content types, Blocks, Menu, themes, Modules, Access control, Roles and module wise configuration.
Access control is a very important feature where in you can define the permissions, which user can see what specific pages. You can also create your own access permissions for your custom modules. I will talk about custom modules little later.
If you know that there are different roles in your website, I would suggest you to create roles and access permissions based on it.
When you install Drupal, by default you will have 3 content types (Blog, Story and Page). You can also create your own custom content type by choosing content types option under content management in administer screen.
When you install Drupal, there are some basic modules will be available. Drupal is being used by many users and everyday there are lot of modules being contributed. Visit http://drupal.org/project/Modules for a list of modules that are available in Drupal.

If you want to use any specific module, download the tar file, untar it and copy it into the modules directory of your Drupal installation. Go to Administer screen->site building->Modules. You will see your module in the list with a Checkbox. Select the module and save it. Now your module should appear in the navigation bar. Do not forget to give permissions on the module to users using access control. Otherwise, normal users will not have access to new modules.
Themes are very simple and powerful feature of Drupal. Themes are none other than different layouts for your website. There are plenty of themes available such as 2-column, 3-column, fixed width, etc. If you had created your own theme or downloaded, copy it into themes directory. Go to administer screen->themes and you will see your new theme visible. Enable and select as default to apply the theme.
Clean urls are used basically to help Google in indexing our pages and also to have the urls look clean. This can be done by enabling rewrite module in httpd.conf file of apache and then enable clean-urls from administer screen.
Basically the content in Drupal is referred to as node. Whatever content we create using create content is referred to as node.

Workflow
All the code will be written in modules. In every module directory, you will have .module file which contains all the business logic. Everything will be in the form of functions. To understand the flow, always check for _menu() function. It basically contains the items[] array, which contains the list of main functionalities that can be accessed through links or from URL. All other functions will be called from these functions. Here is basic example of chatroom.module menu

function chatroom_menu($may_cache) {
$items = array();
$items[] = array(
'path' => 'admin/settings/chatroom',
'callback' => 'drupal_get_form',
'callback arguments' => array('chatroom_admin_settings'),
'title' => t('Chat room'),
'description' => t('Configure chat rooms.'),
'access' => user_access('administer chat rooms')
);
$items[] = array(
'path' => 'chatrooms',
'callback' => 'chatroom_page',
'access' => user_access('access chat rooms'),
'title' => t('Chat rooms'),
'type' => MENU_SUGGESTED_ITEM
);
$items[] = array(
'path' => 'chatrooms/kicked',
'callback' => 'chatroom_chat_kicked_user',
'access' => user_access('access chat rooms'),
'type' => MENU_CALLBACK
);
return $items;
}

Now there are 3 elements declared in items[]. The path in the items[] is basically the one used in the URL. Whenever that particular path is accessed, the callback function will be called with arguments (if present). Title and description are explanatory to the menu items. Through access, you can restrict the permissions of the user. There are 3 types of menu values that can be given in items[]. MENU_NORMAL_ITEM, MENU_CALLBACK, MENU_SUGGESTED_ITEM.

MENU_NORMAL_ITEM: Normal menu items show up in the menu tree and can be moved/hidden by the administrator. This will be used for most menu items. It is the default value if no menu item type is specified.
MENU_CALLBACK: Callbacks simply register a path so that the correct function is fired when the URL is accessed. They are not shown in the menu. This will be used when you want some function to be called when someone access the particular URL but does not want to show it anywhere. Then you can use MENU_CALLBACK.
MENU_SUGGESTED_ITEM: They act just as callbacks do until enabled, at which time they act like normal items. Administrator will have option either to enable/disable the item from menu.

So whenever you want to know the flow of any particular module, check for module_menu() function and then check the items array. If you want to add also, just modify the items[]. Please note that anytime you change anything in items[], you need to disable and then enable again to get the modified one working.
To create your own custom module, copy any module file and modify the changes to module_menu(). Remove unnecessary functions. There are 3 main things that you have to be aware of while creating our own module.

mymodule_help() will basically contains any help material for that particular module. Whenever you go to administer screen and click administer by module, for each module, you see some help text. This help text will be generated in this section only. So while creating, add your own text to mymodule_help().

mymodule_perm() is another important function which will help you to determine the access permissions that this particular module will have. If you go to Administer->user management->access control, for each module, you will see different permissions. To define permissions for your module, you need to write it in this function only.

function mymodule_perm() {

return array('access chatroom', 'edit own chatroom', 'administer room');

}

This will create 3 permissions for our module and will be displayed in access control page under your module.

Now write mymodule_menu() which defines the items[] as explained above.
If we are creating our own module, it means that basically we are going to create forms, validations, submissions, database queries, etc. Drupal provides a flexibility of creating custom forms very easily. Here is basic form in Drupal to be used

function mymodule_form($id)
$form['mymodule_form']['name'] = array(
'#type' => 'textfield',
'#title' => t('Name'),
'#required' => TRUE
);
$form['mymodule_form']['description'] = array(
'#type' => 'textarea',
'#title' => t('Description'),
'#rows' => 3,
'#description' => t('Describe'),
);
$form['mymodule_form']['id'] = array(
'#type' => 'hidden',
'#value' => $id
);
$form['mymodule_form']['submit'] = array(
'#type' => 'submit',
'#value' => t('Okay')
);

return $form;
}

The above creates a simple form which contains one text field, text area and a submit button. When we create a form, we need to validate it and also have to write code in submit block. To validate a form, you need to write a function which has same name as form function appended with "validate". Here is a example

function mymodule_form_validate($f_id, $f_values) {
$rid = $f_values['id'];
$name = $f_values['name'];
if ($name =="admin") {
form_set_error('mymodule_form', t('A name called %name already exists.', array('%name' => $name)));
}
}

Whenever you submit a form, a validate function will be called. $f_values will basically contains all your form values and $f_id will be your form id. So using $f_values['name'] will give you the value input by the user in name field.

Here is the sample function for onsubmit.

function mymodule_form_submit($f_id, $f_values) {
global $user;

$created = db_query("
INSERT INTO {mytable} (id, name, description)
VALUES (%d, '%s', '%s'')
", $f_values['id'], $f_values['name'], $f_values['description']);
if (!$created) {
drupal_set_message(t("There was an error creating your room"), 'error');
}
drupal_goto('mypath');
}

There are different ways of executing sql queries. I will discuss some of them here. Before discussing that, let me tell you about drupal_goto. It is similar to redirection in any other language. After the form is submitted, you want the form to be redirected to home age. Drupal_goto will do the same.

You can have sql query being stored in the string and using db_query($sql) can execute the query and store it in $result variable. For example,

$sql = "SELECT name FROM {mytable} WHERE name = '%s' ";
$result = db_query($sql,$name);

$name will be substituted in the query above in place of %s. Once the query is executed, it is store in $result variable. We can check whether the query returned any values or not by checking

if (db_num_rows($result) > 0) {

}

Once it is true, then you can write within if condition to get the values. such as

if (db_num_rows($result) > 0) {
while($user_det = db_fetch_object($result)) {
//values can be accessed like this.
$name = $user_det->name;
$desc = $user_det->description;
}
}

Now you understand the creation of form, validation, submission, control structures and handling database queries. The main thing you need to understand is about rendering the form which you had created earlier. Everything here is functions. So this function has to be called somewhere and also to be rendered in as an HTML form.

function mymodule_create() {
$output = '';
$sql = '
SELECT max(id) as id from {mytable}
';
$result = db_query($sql);
if (db_num_rows($result) > 0) {
$ud = db_fetch_object($result);
$id = $ud->id + 1;
} else {
$id = 1;
}
//the below if condition checks whether the logged in user has access permissions 'administer mymodule' or not. If you uncheck the permission access for logged in user from access control, then the below if condition will be false.
if (user_access('administer mymodule')) {
$output .= drupal_get_form('mymodule_form', $id);
}
return $output;
}

Everything that gets dispalyed on the page will be stored in $output variable. The function drupal_get_form will basically takes the form name and the argument as id. so basically the above code has to be declared in items[] with the path as "mymodule/create". So whenever a user accesses the link, the form gets rendered and displayed.
With the above knowledge, you can play around with Drupal. There are some other small things that can be useful such as sending mail, adding JavaScript and css.
To send mail, there is a function drupal_mail('mymodule', $to, "subject", "Body",$from) ;
To add javascript to your module, drupal_add_js((drupal_get_path('module', 'mymodule') .'/myjavascript.js');
To add css to your module, drupal_add_css(drupal_get_path('module', 'mymodule') .'/myfolder/style.css', 'module', 'all', FALSE);

Importance of Refactoring

2007-12-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

We continue to use and reuse code that is no longer maintainable because it still works in some way and we are afraid to modify it. When we remove redundancy, eliminate unused functionality, and rejuvenate obsolete designs it means we are refactoring. Refactoring throughout the entire project life cycle saves time and increases quality. Refactor allows you to keep your code clean and concise so it is easier to understand, modify, and extend. Make sure everything is expressed once and only once.

Why Refactoring?

Refactoring allows a rapid development process and simple code structure while maintaining clean, scalable, and modular code.

1. The meaning of the code should be obvious to anyone reading it. Comments can be added as well for providing additional explanation to the code, but one should try to make the code itself clear enough to understand.

2.Eliminate redundant code: Refactoring is the time to recognize patterns and factor them out of your code. Similar and redundant classes and code blocks should be combined, and unnecessary functions and variables eliminated.

3. Modularity and Scalability: Code should be easy to extend or modify, and be able to scale without adding complexity

Implementation issues

Refactoring means having to go back over one's own code. Especially when deadlines loom, working code is often assumed to be good-enough code. Refactoring can become another post-process like internal documentation that everyone recommends but that few programmers actually have the time to perform. As Cooper puts it in Extreme Programmming vs. Interaction Design, "There's enormous cost in writing code, but the real cost in writing code is that code never dies. If you can think this stuff through before you start pouring the concrete of code, you get significantly better results."

This can be addressed through several means. If code is kept simple, then going back over and having to understand everything again is significantly easier and the programmer is more likely to do it.

References:
http://www.exciton.cs.rice.edu/comp410/XP/refactoring.html

Requirements Change and Agile

2007-12-28T11:18:00.000-08:00

1. Requirements are ought to be changed. What might be a good set of requirements now, is not a good set in six months time. Even if the customers can fix their requirements, the business world isn't going to stop for them. And many changes in the business world are completely unpredictable.

2.It does not mean the predictability of software development is impossible. But it requires a lot of ceremony, plenty of time, a large team, and stable requirements :)

3. Most of the time, this is not the case. So how to overcome or control an unpredictable process? this can be done with the help of iterations. These small iterations (working systems and as short as possible in time) are short on functionality, but should otherwise be faithful to the demands of the final system. They should be fully integrated and as carefully tested as a final delivery.

4. Iterative development makes sense in predictable processes as well. But it is essential in adaptive processes because an adaptive process needs to be able to deal with changes in required features. This leads to a style of planning where long term plans are very fluid, and the only stable plans are short term plans that are made for a single iteration. Iterative development gives you a firm foundation in each iteration that you can base your later plans around.

5. The important and interesting question comes here is, if the software development is unpredictable, then how can we make cost estimations? A fixed price contract requires stable requirements and hence a predictive process. Adaptive processes and unstable requirements imply you cannot work with the usual notion of fixed-price. Trying to fit a fixed price model to an adaptive process ends up in a very painful explosion and this will put both the software development firm and the client in loss. But it does not mean you can't fix a budget for software up-front. What it does mean is that you cannot fix time, price and scope. The usual agile approach is to fix time and price, and to allow the scope to vary in a controlled manner.

6. Adaptive process leads to good advantages to the customer.
a. Client receives much more responsive software development.
b. A usable, although minimal, system can go into production early on.
c. The customer can then change its capabilities according to changes in the business and also from learning from how the system is used in reality.

7. In the adaptive approach, you need to to develop a process where the people involved are replaceable parts. With such a process you can treat people as resources who are available in various types. You have an analyst, some coders, some testers, a manager. The individuals aren't so important, only the roles are important. Btu at the same time you have to make sure that people are not completely treated as resources, and they have to be mentored and you have to make them realize that there are very important to the project.

8. Developers needs lot of discipline to execute the process. Developers must be able to make all technical discussions. Such technical leadership requires a sharing of responsibility where developers and management have an equal place in the leadership of the project. Management still plays a role, but recognizes the expertise of developers.

9.Technical people have to recognize that entering management means their technical skills will wither rapidly. Ex-developers need to recognize that their technical skills will rapidly disappear and they need to trust and rely on current developers.

10. Agile teams cannot exist with occasional communication. They need continuous access to business expertise. Furthermore this access is not something that is handled at a management level, it is something that is present for every developer. Since developers are capable professionals in their own discipline, they need to be able to work as equals with other professionals in other disciplines. A large part of this, of course, is due to the nature of adaptive development. Since the whole premise of adaptive development is that things change quickly, you need constant contact to advise everybody of the changes.

11. A project that begins using an adaptive process won't have the same process a year later. Over time, the team will find what works for them, and alter the process to fit.

The first part of self-adaptivity is regular reviews of the process. Usually you do these with every iteration. At the end of each iteration, have a short meeting and ask yourself the following questions

* What did we do well?
* What have we learned?
* What can we do better?
* What puzzles us?

These questions will lead you to ideas to change the process for the next iteration. In this way a process that starts off with problems can improve as the project goes on, adapting better to the team that uses it.

While both published processes and the experience of other projects can act as an inspiration and a baseline, the developers professional responsibility is to adapt the process to the task at hand.

References:
http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/newMethodology.html

What are the things require to go for Agile?

2007-12-28T11:10:00.001-08:00

1. The first step is to find suitable projects to try agile methods out with. Since agile methods are so fundamentally people-oriented, it's essential that you start with a team that wants to try and work in an agile way. Not just is a reluctant team more difficult to work with, imposing agile methods on reluctant people is fundamentally at odds with the whole notion of agile development.

2. It's valuable to also have customers (those who need the software) who want to work in this kind of collaborative way. If customers don't collaborate, then you won't see the full advantages of an adaptive process. Having said that we've found on several occasions that we've worked with customers who didn't want to collaborate, but changed their mind over the first few months as they begun to understand the agile approach.

3. Some people advise picking a project with little business impact to start with, that way if anything goes wrong then there's less damage. However an unimportant project often makes a poor test since nobody cares much about the outcome. I prefer to advise people to take a project that's a little bit more critical than you are comfortable with.

4. Perhaps the most important thing you can do is find someone more experienced in agile methods to help you learn. Whenever anyone does anything new they inevitably make mistakes. Find someone who has already made lots of mistakes so you can avoid making those yourself. Again this is something true for any new technology or technique, a good mentor is worth her weight in gold.

So where should you not use an agile method? I think it primarily comes down the people. If the people involved aren't interested in the kind of intense collaboration that agile working requires, then it's going to be a big struggle to get them to work with it. In particular I think that this means you should never try to impose agile working on a team that doesn't want to try it.

Open source vs Closed source software

2007-12-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

Opensource software is a software where users will have access to the source code. Users can view the code and modify according to their business needs.

Regarding Closed source software, you never know what kind of code had been written. Users will not have access to the source code. Users can only have access to use the software.

Is access to source code generally required?

Mostly No. Not most of the users bother to view source code. They need the application working.

But what if the user wants to change colors or wordings,?

In this case, having source code is defnitely an advantage. Access to source code defnitely gives you points over not having source code at all.

What if user tries to modify the source code without having full knowledge of it?

The application corrupts and may not work. There is a channce that your application is corrupted by changing code without an idea. You need to make sure the access to source code is restricted to only to those people who have knowledge of it. This is nothing but one sort of closed source in open source software.

Overall, No one scores over other. Closed source software is something which is there from the beginning or popular from long time. Open source software is the innovation or something which is upcoming now. Comparing both these is not actually a good idea, because one is opposite to other. Disadvantages of one is advantages of the other one. So there is no question of comparison. Both are good and useful in their own ways.

SCRUM Process

2007-12-28T11:01:00.001-08:00

Some information on SCRUM processes.

SCRUM is like an agile process for developing software. It mainly focusses on delivering the work. SCRUM is ideally suited for the projects where the requirements were changing rapidly. The SCRUM values are mainly derived from the agile values of software development.
SCRUM process mainly runs through these 4 steps. Every task/tasks in the project will go through these 4 steps.
1. Develop
2. Wrap
3. Review
4. Adjust

The SCRUM process has 3 main phases

1. Planning
2. Sprint Cycle : This cycle will be of 3-4 weeks. This is the period where actual development takes place. At the end of the cycle, it will be reviewed and adjustments are made to the project, if necessary. This will be continuing until the project is completed.
3. Closure: Project/product development will be closed and the product will be released.

In SCRUM process, there will be a SCRUM Master, who is a team leader and also one of the member of the team doing the project.

SCRUM process also states to have daily meetings. It would be good and ideal to have meeting after the lunch break. Since all the members have already started work in the morning, the team will be more focussed on the task and can get more inputs/comments. Meeting will be mainly focused on 3 points
1. What had we achieved
2. Any obstacles
3. Next team objectives

Related links:
http://www.codeproject.com/gen/design/scrum.asp
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/
http://www.controlchaos.com/about/