Annotated 1.5 Component

[Narcissus]

Hi all,

As per the thread I started at http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?topic=137174 , I would like to present the following attachment as my first attempt at helping the documentation process.

Essentially, the idea was to 'annotate' an existing component so that developers with a basic understanding of Joomla! can read through the code and with my notes understand the basics of how things may operate.

At the moment, all I've done is the administrator side of the weblinks component. When I get a chance, I'll go through the front-end portion of the component, too.

In the attached ZIP you will find two directories: the first is the original com_weblinks directory that is found under the administrator/components directory (I am using the 1.5 Beta release). The other directory is called com_weblinks_annotated and contains my comments in the same files. All of my comments / notes are marked with 'DEVNOTE:' at the start of them. You can either run a diff program to see my exact comments or hopefully just be able to read through the files and by paying special attention to my notes be able to understand a lot of the basics of building a component.

This is my first effort and it only represents what I *think* is correct... so I'm happy to be told if I got something wrong! At the same time, I have left out certain things that I found self-explanatory.

The target audience is definitely not a novice PHP programmer... maybe closer to an intermediate PHP programmer with a basic understanding of Joomla!

Please, feel to make comments etc.

Thanks,
Lincoln.

[Chris Davenport]

Hi Narcissus,

I haven't had time to digest it thoroughly yet, but I like what I see. 

Give me some time to think about how we might use this.  I'll get back to you in a day or two.

Thank you very much for your contribution.  It really is appreciated. 

Regards,
Chris.

[brian]

I've added this to the current issue of Joomla Weekly News to see if it gets any extra interest for you there

[Narcissus]

Hi all... just wanted to give a quick update. As noted previously, the version I annotated was 1.5 Beta. I finally got around to installing one of the nightlies and realised that the Weblinks component has now been done in MVC form.

I will get around to redoing the notes but I just wanted anyone who was looking at this to understand that there have been some massive changes in this particular component since Beta. Having said that, my notes still stand for a lot of it and so I believe it's still a decent start... just not as good as the one that will be available once I get time to tackle the latest version

[ianmac]

Sorry that you didn't get a reply more quickly, Narcissus.

There have certainly been a lot of changes made to the way components are done.  Let me know if there is anything we can do to help support you!

Ian

[Narcissus]

Hi Ian,

Thanks for the reply... to say that there have been a lot of changes is an understatement, but it's great to be able to watch the evolution of the Joomla code.

At the moment, I'm neck-deep in doing some work in J1.5 so for the time being, at least, I'm going to stick with the old school way of doing things until I actually get this work out of my hair. Once that's done, I'll start looking into it all again.

Again, thanks for the reply. Cross your fingers for me and hope I win the Lotto... if I do, I can get back to this a lot sooner. It'll be a win for everyone!