Author Archive

symfony’s sfGuard plugin and LDAP

A while ago I needed to hook up symfony's excellent sfGuard plugin to some LDAP functionality. There are a couple of issues with the plugin and the readme which I think need fixing. In particular, there is no support for checking both LDAP and standard sfGuard passwords. This is absolutely essential (eg an admin user or guest users who aren't in LDAP), and I'm somewhat amazed that there's no provision for this. Moreover, the plugin structure generally makes it seemingly impossible (or if it is possible it's just too horrible to contemplate) to write your own checkPassword() which does do both sorts of checking[ READ MORE ]

Matrix GUI, asset builders (and mums)

After fun and a few frustrations sorting out designs in MySource Matrix in my last post (probably mostly caused by me not knowing what I was doing, and with limited time to sort things out), I’ve been looking at the overall user interface for editors. The interface is possibly a tad intimidating for some (could you imagine [ READ MORE ]

MySource Matrix design

I’ve been playing around with mysource matrix on my laptop recently, as an early development stage to our pilot while we’re waiting for the server hardware to be set up. One of the first things I’ve been looking at has been setting up designs, and I have to admit it’s been a somewhat mysterious process. OK so [ READ MORE ]

mini symfony

I recently read this post by Francois Zaninotto (recently an ex-core symfony developer) about modifying symfony to make it lightweight enough for ajax calls. As he puts it: That’s when the idea of a “small symfony” comes. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get access to the model layer, the configuration, the autoloading, the user object, [ READ MORE ]

XCRI project

XCRI (Exchanging Course Related Information) is a JISC-funded project to get HE institutions to produce course data in a universally exchangeable format, so it can easily be accessed and used by other institutions, end-users, and aggregators. It’s a bit like an RSS feed for courses. Kent University have a JISC-funded mini-project to produce an XCRI feed, [ READ MORE ]

Zaninotto

Looks like Francois Zaninotto, one of the core symfony developers, has quit the team. He was largely responsible for the documentation, and co-authored the excellent symfony book, published by Apress. One of the key successes behind symfony was the documentation. The fact that there was human-readable documentation, and not just an API, was a remarkable thing [ READ MORE ]

The Squiz Licence

Squiz have developed what looks like a good CMS. They provide the software for free, but make their money out of support, design, and training. They also develop a number of extra modules, which they sell to non-educational and non-governmental clients. But because the software is free, it isn't necessarily truly open source. Their SSV licence (essential if you want to use the system to its full potential and do serious stuff with it) means Squiz end up owning any changes you might make. I'm no lawyer, but it even seems like any modules you might develop end up being theirs too. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, at least if you feel it's unlikely that you'd do a massive amount of development yourself. And it's important to know that any changes you do make end up being incorporated into the product, so other Matrix users benefit. It feels like a collaborative situation where everyone gains (including the finances of Squiz!). Is this bad? I don't think so[ READ MORE ]

symfony admin generator

The symfony admin generator is one of the best features of the framework. With just a couple of commands and a few changes to a config file, you can have something pretty close to a database access interface. There's a simple built in security module, and sfGuard is fairly simple to understand if you need a more complex security module[ READ MORE ]

symfony redirect vs forward

OK, so basically a submitted form should be redirected by the action (as opposed to doing a forward). In other situations where you're calling part of your own application, just use a forward(). Maybe I've missed something, but this seems pretty straightforward (pun unintended) after all[ READ MORE ]

MySource Matrix and Squiz

I’ve been looking recently at an open source enterprise CMS called MySource Matrix. It’s written in PHP5, and unusually for open source CMS actually seems to be able to cope well at enterprise level. It’s built from the ground up on an asset basis. Everything is an asset: users, content, permissions, workflow. The whole lot. This [ READ MORE ]

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