Forums | Mahara Community
Developers
/
Dev info
03 April 2009, 7:03
Hi,
I am really new to Mahara. In the future I should support the mahara translation. I would like to know some dev stuff about Mahara. Is it build using any PHP framework? I saw that it is using adoDB and Selenium for testing but nothing more. Is it available any UML diagram, DB schema or stuff like that? From the directory structure I see that there is not any appartent MVC pattern. What convention have you used?
Sorry for putting togheter so many questions.
Cheers,
Riccardo.
03 April 2009, 22:21
Hi,
Mahara is written in straight PHP - there's no framework like drupal behind it. We borrowed a bunch of third party libraries, like ADODB as you saw, to do some things. But the rest is all written by us.
The schema is "documented" somewhat in the various install.xml files around the file tree, but they're hard to look at and don't really explain what each column and table is for. It would be easier to install Mahara, then examine the database via the command line or some kind of admin tool.
Mahara's also not designed as a strict MVC framework like you might know with something like Rails. There are smarty templates for splitting the View away somewhat, but mostly each PHP page queries the database for the exact data it needs and passes that along to smarty.
Hope that helps get you started.
06 April 2009, 8:58
Riccardo is a developer very prepared and I was encouraged to join the project Mahara. My idea, as I said in other circumstances, is to build a good Italian team's development and advice to users.
The first work was the translation that already made available, is in the process of refining and updating to the latest versions of software released.
Riccardo want but understand clearly the structure of the software and it is essential to initiate any development process that will enable us to give the Mahara project a more important contribution.
Let me clarify this so that you can define a valid operating mode.
I am convinced that the preparation and experience of Riccardo could be very useful to grow even more Mahara. I state, even if it were needed, that I believe very conceptual architecture of Mahara and I have ideas to expand its use even for users not necessarily linked to the world of school.
06 April 2009, 17:12
Thanks Fiorentino - and welcome Riccardo! You might find it useful to join the #mahara IRC channel on freenode, we can discuss things there (forum conversations are a bit cumbersome when trying to learn quickly).
07 April 2009, 7:59
Hi again.
Where I work I have irc blocked. I will try at home.
Cheers.