Mauro Pirrone | Blog

A few months ago I have discovered the new Microsoft technology called Dynamic Data. It is a web development framework which is suitable for rapidly building data-driven websites (or web applications).

The main feature of Dynamic Data is definitely the scaffolding feature. It works in conjunction with either LINQ to SQL or LINQ to Entities. It adopts the “Don’t Repeat Principle” by using what are called page templates and field templates. Everything is modular and you can easily re-use components. It is much like Ruby on Rails! We have to admit that Ruby on Rails is more complete and it supports MVC out of the box. On the other side, the nice thing about Dynamic Data (unlike RoR), is that everything is integrated within our friend Visual Studio :).

In general I believe Dynamic Data is suitable for building small web applications where performance is not an issue or if you are not dealing with huge amount of data. Personally I found Dynamic Data useful for rapidly building customised content management systems. Although, I had a learning curve it was worth it and will be using it in future projects.

We expect Dynamic Data to improve in future. There are also companies such as Telerik which are already creating controls for Dynamic Data. If you would like to find out more check out the offical website.

If you have used Dynamic Data and you would like to share your experience, feel free to leave a comment.

It has been a long time since I’ve updated my blog. Since my last update, I launched some new websites. If you’re interested to find out more, please check my website here: http://www.pirronedesign.com

At the moment I am working on a couple of new and interesting websites and I am currenly doing research on data clustering for my B. Sc. IT (Hons) final year project.

I will try and keep my blog up-to-date, so please check back later

Click here to visit website

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Small but informative website about Joe Spiteri Sargent has been launched. The purpose of this website is to promote award winning Spiteri Water Pump (SWP).

[ www.joespiterisargent.com ]

A new real estate website has been launched. More info regarding this website coming soon. Any comments are more than welcome

[ www.rsb.com.mt ]

ShrinkSafe is a JavaScript compression utility which can practically reduce file size by a third or more. The idea behind this is very simple…faster web page download!

Start shrinking your JavaScript files:
http://shrinksafe.dojotoolkit.org/

Here’s a link which points out the best practices to have exceptional performance websites:
http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

Here’s also a library which helps solving some of these rules:
http://code.google.com/p/minify/

Flickr is an image and video hosting website. Luckily enough, they provide a web service to access your photos and use them in any way you want. To get you into perspective, here’s the Flickr photoset which I am using, and here are the customised photo gallaries which I created using PHP:

• Photo gallery using Lightbox
• Photo gallery using PostCardViewer

Although I’m showing you how to integrate Flickr with Lightbox and PostCardViewer, this technique works with any photo gallery including the commercial one SlideShowPro.

Step 1

Downlaod the phpFlicker library from http://phpflickr.com/

Download Lightbox or PostCardViewer (or any other photo gallery).

Step 2

To access Flickr using a web service, you need an API key. You may get one from http://www.flickr.com/services/api/keys

Step 3

Get the photoset ID. In this case I am using photoset id ‘72157605353756648′. Note that the photoset id is part of the URL. For example, http://www.flickr.com/photos/26262208@N07/sets/72157605353756648/

Step 3

Step up your php script.

require_once("phpFlickr/phpFlickr.php");
$f = new phpFlickr("your api key");
$photoset_id = '72157605353756648';
$photos = $f->photosets_getPhotos($photoset_id);

Step 4

Loop through each photo in the photoset and you’re done! The following example uses the Lightbox photo gallery.

<ul>
<?php foreach ($photos['photo'] as $photo): ?>
<li><a rel=”lightbox[roadtrip]” href=”<?= $f->buildPhotoURL($photo, ‘medium’) ?>” title=”<?= $photo['title'] ?>”><img src=”<?= $f->buildPhotoURL($photo, ’square’) ?>” alt=”<?= $photo['title'] ?>” title=”<?= $photo['title'] ?>” /></a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

Notes

• You may easily change the file size by specifying either square, thumbnail, small, medium, large or original. For example: $f->buildPhotoURL($photo, ‘large’)
• You may programmatically get the photoset ids by using the API call photoset.getList (or photoset_getList method)
• You may also use API calls to get comments, upload photos, and so on
• For the complete API documentation visit here

Source Code Download

• Lightbox Example
• PostCardViewer Example

MVC which stands for Model View Controller is an architectural design pattern used for building modularised web applications. The main idea behind this model is to separate the business logic from the user interface. As a result, the application would be easier to manage and maintain since any changes in the business logic will not affect the user interface.

MVC consists of:

• Model which consists of the application’s data and the business rules (methods) used to modify the data.
• View is the application’s presentation layer which consists of text, buttons, and other objects.
• Controller which uses a model to invoke methods for data processing and views to output the results.

As with regards to the PHP programming language, there are many open-source frameworks which you can use including the following:

Zend Framework
Zend Framework is well designed and specifically targeted for PHP5. The nice thing about ZF is that all modules are self-contained. Practically should can take any module from this framework and plug it into your application. Video Tutorial

CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter works with PHP 4 and 5. CI is very easy to use and it is very well documented. Video Tutorials

CakePHP
CakePHP works with PHP 4 and 5. It is feature-rich and has built-in support for ORM (Object Relational Model) and Ajax. Video Tutorials

Symfony
Symfony is much like Ruby on Rails since you have to use a command line. Video Tutorials

All the above frameworks support MVC but there are some differences when it comes to the framework’s functionality. I would suggest trying them out!