Onward to 2012
The beginning of every new year gives pause for both retrospective and prospective thought. We celebrate the new year as we take a look back at the year that was and get a glimpse of the year that will be.
Looking back at the year that was
Creativity, Innovation and Inspiration – three words I will remember best from 2011. The platitude “hard work pays off” rang true this past year with the great work done in our little project. Nooku development literally moved ahead at warp-speed in 2011.
Growing the Nooku Platform
- Nooku Framework grew to an awesome RESTful framework for web development and especially for rapid development of powerful custom Joomla solutions.
- Nooku Server. We saw the birth of Nooku Server, a multi-site web application platform. Based on lightened core of Joomla 1.5 and optimised for performance and scalability.
- Nooku Components. Lot’s of innovation happened with the development of new re-usable components: com_files, com_activities, com_debug, com_groups, …
A year in a few numbers
Three years ago, we were not much more then a handful of people with a vision. Today, Nooku is:
- 29 contributors from all over the world, of which 21 contributed in 2011
- 20 partners from enterprises, governmental organisations, and non-profits
- 475 subscribers in the developer’s discussion group
- hundreds of websites powered by the Nooku Platform
Nooku was present and accounted for during many events throughout the year:
- We attended/sponsored and presented Nooku on the Dutch Joomladays and Joomladay Sydney, we partied and won awards at Jandbeyond.
- Switzerland, Sweden, Brazil, Germany, Philippines, Belgium witnessed Nooku magic. 6 Nooku Jams in 3 continents together with our community!
Code metrics are not a good measurement for the size or quality of a project, but they do help to indicate progress. In our official repositories, we have:
- 4400 commits for Nooku Framework
- 1400 commits for Nooku Components
- 400 commits for Nooku Examples
- 3300 commits for Nooku Server
Looking forward to the year ahead
Nooku is not a product, it’s a project. We think different, we work different and in 2012 we are also going to release different.
Nooku is a never-ending river of change. The alpha/beta/stable nomenclature expects an end point of changes that is captured in final form called “stable”. Then, the cycle renews itself into the next stable version. This cycle doesn’t fit with our Nooku manifesto.
Nooku is about change. The projects mission is to manage that change; not release a product. And that’s what 2012 will be all about !
No more alpha’s, just releases
In 2012 we will introduce 4 month release cycles. First release will happen 30th of January, and will be numbered 12.1 (year.release number). Second release of 2012 will be 12.2, and so forth.
The flow of a release will look like this :
- 0 months : Start release in development branch
- 4 months : Merge release into trunk
- 8 months : Tag release
Total cycle for a release will be 8 months. Work in trunk and development is done at the same time so there will be a release every 4 months. Developers can contribute at any point during those 8 months :
- (0 – 4m) development : new features, API changes etc
- (4 – 8m) stabilization : bug fixes, documentation etc.
No backwards compatibility
There will be no backwards compatibility between releases. The changes between versions will be documented. Each version will have a development cycle of 4 months and a stabilization cycle of 4 months.
Developers releasing public/commercial Joomla components on Nooku Framework MUST update every 4 months. The 4 month stabilization cycle ensures developers have enough time to do so.
Upcoming Nooku Jams
We will continue building the Nooku community with three project organised Nooku Jams a year, one at the end/beginning of a release cycle.
In 2012 we will organise 2 Nooku Jams in Leuven Belgium at FlandersDC. The first Jam will be somewhere in May, more details will be announced early February.
A happy Nooku Year !
In 2012 we will continue to do what we do best : making change happen ! I wish everyone a creative, innovative and inspiring Nooku year!
Impressions from Nooku Jam Leuven
The recent Nooku Jam Leuven can be easily summed up in 2 words – incredibly inspiring!
Twenty six attendees discussed, collaborated and shared ideas on the 26th and 27th of November at the FlandersDC Creativity Lab in Leuven, Belgium. The Jam, sponsored by Moyoweb, Beyounic and Timble, was an inspiring weekend for the Nooku community.
The recipe : great ideas, creative people, lots of food and Belgian beer and an inspiring venue! Check the photostream of David Deutsch for the evidence of the inspiring weekend.
Looking Back
One of the rules of the Nooku Jam is : “You blog about the Jam” and that’s exactly what some of the jammers did.
Nooku Jam Manila 2011
Following up on the success of the first Asian Nooku Jam in Manila last September 2010. This year’s jam, was held in the heart of one of Metro Manila’s CBDs – Ortigas, where we were kindly given the run of the TechBar in the headquarters of Exist Software Labs.
Jammers from all over
Demonstrating the global reach of Nooku, two of our Jammers hailed from the foothills of the gods – Nepal. Nischal Pradhan, founder and CEO of a software development firm in Nepal that utilizes Nooku technology, was in Manila when he found out that Mr. Nooku himself was going to be in town, he and some of his team, jumped at the chance to be part of the Jam.
The other 13 Jammers were local Filipino IT professionals mainly working for private commercial companies and the academe.
Sticky notes
The Jam kicked off with a free form sticky note session, where participants wrote questions and ideas they were interested to find out about Nooku. The sticky notes were then posted on a whiteboard and Johan used this to structure the agenda for the day – very unconference style!
Behind the desk or in front of the best
This is a guest post from Jelle Munk, of Stoel de Munk, attendee of the Nooku Jam Leuven 2011.
I was a web developer who worked anonymously behind my desk using open source software but I did not like where I was going:
- I did not share;
- I did not collaborate;
- I did not contribute code.
Something had to change, I felt working with free and open source software was more than this.
Picture of Jelle from the ‘Making Nerds Look Good’ photostream by David Deutsch.
Hello Community
I heard about the Nooku Framework and watched the talks Johan has been giving about the framework. More importantly, what really got my attention was his philosophy about open source development.
I saw an upcoming event called the ‘Nooku Jam Leuven‘ and felt it was a good way to force myself to learn more about open source. Taking the next step, I signed up!
The Nooku Jam comes home to Belgium!
The biggest Nooku Jam of the year is happening this weekend in Belgium. With the theme “Creativity, Innovation and Inspiration”, the Nooku jam is coming home (technically a few miles from Nooku HQ). Nooku Jam Leuven brings Nookuers from all over.
Everyone who signed up for the Nooku Jam Leuven in the FlandersDC Creativity Lab will be treated to a day of intense presentations, discussions, brainstorms, workshops, and hackathons around specific areas of the Nooku project.
Dissecting the Nooku Jam
There always seems to be a Nooku Jam event in some part of the world. We have had Nooku Jams in three continents the past year! So what exactly happens in a jam?
A Nooku Jam is an open, participatory workshop-event, whose content is provided by participants. The concept is very similar to a barcamp.
The magic of primary and unique keys
It’s all in the schema
If primary and unique keys are properly defined in the database schema, it is possible to retrieve an item without writing any line of code. In com_harbour’s boats table, harbour_boat_id is a primary key, and slug is a unique key. It is possible to get the same boat by using any of these keys:
index.php?option=com_harbour&view=boat&id=4 index.php?option=com_harbour&view=boat&slug=queen-mary-2
There is an important thing to note here. If an identity column exists (an auto increment key), the name “id” is used for it in the framework. So for example the column harbour_boat_id is accessed as $boat->id.
A look under the hood
Let’s look deep into how this works under the hood. In the first step, the database class fetches column and index information from the database. In the second step, the model requests the parsed information from the table class and creates a state for each key.
Form validation with Nooku Framework
Responsive validation feedback on forms is no longer a “nice to have” feature in modern web apps, it’s a standard that users have come to expect to be there.
In Nooku Framework Alpha 3, we added a new API that loads the forms validation library in MooTools More for you. And we implemented it in Nooku Server Alpha 3 to improve the usability of refactored components.
Today I’ll show you how easy it is to get started by simply adding CSS classes to your form inputs. Then I’ll show you how easy it is to create your own input validators for when you need to validate something custom.
The magic of file uploads with com_files
In my last blog post, I wrote about the awesome new file manager that made its way into Nooku Server Alpha 3. In this blog post we are going to dive a little deeper into how to re-use com_files in your own components. Meet my new friend : com_uploads!
This is a proof of concept component that demonstrates two distinct features:
1. A custom file upload controller that handles file uploads
2. A full featured interface for managing files in your special container
Nooku 0.7 Alpha 4 released
It has been a busy summer in the Nooku Project ! We have been working very hard on to get Nooku 0.7 Alpha 4 ready for release. Sticking to our 12 week release cycle I’m both proud and excited to announce that Alpha 4 has been officially tagged in all our repositories on the Nooku Developer Portal.
Nooku community rocking !
This fourth alpha follows in the footsteps of alpha 3 with more then 2000 commits made by not less then 10 rockstar developers from all over the world. Thanks everyone!
For Nooku Server specifically we made more then 1000 commits, surpassing the 3000 commit mark, while Nooku Framework surpassed the 4000 commit mark. Divided by 12 weeks that’s an average of 165 commits/week, or 25 commits a day! Simply amazing!
Overview of the changes
The progress made in this release is mind blowing. This release packs a wealth of changes to make your live easier and coding more fun. We closed more then 75 tickets spread over the different spaces. That’s almost 2x more then Alpha 3. It’s impossible to fit all the changes in one blog post. I’ll give you some of my personal highlights:
A Nooku November
It happened in September, and it is going to happen again next month – the Nooku flag is up in two continents in November! Nooku finds its way back to Asia and is going back to its roots in Belgium! Presenting the second Nooku Jam Manila and the first Nooku Jam Leuven.
Manila – Philippines
Following a very successful Nooku Jam Manila in 2010, Johan is back to give developers another whirlwind experience with the Nooku Framework. Israel and Myra, Timble’s Manila team, will also be around to help facilitate the event.
Nooku Jam Manila will be held on Friday, November 4, 2011 at the Exist TechBar in Ortigas, Metro Manila. If you are a passionate Joomla/PHP developer, join us for a day of technology, hacking and fun. And the hard work will pay off at the after party at the end of the day to start the celebrations for a great Nooku year.
The techbar can only hosts 20 developers. We expect to sell out quick so make sure to register early!
Leuven – Belgium
With the Nooku headquarters just a few miles away, the Nooku Jam almost comes home on the 26-27th of November in Leuven, Belgium. Our friends from FlandersDC will host the Jam in their uber awesome Creativity Lab which will be opened for us specially during the weekend.
Except not one day, but a full weekend of intense presentations, discussions, brainstorms, workshops, hackathons, … around specific areas of the Nooku project. And offcourse in good Nooku tradition there will be a Nooku Party!
This Jam is a great opportunity for Nookuers to meet in person, to put a face on a lot of quirky mailing list and IM nicknames, and to spend some quality time together!
The Nooku Jam is organised together with community partners (Timble, MoyoWeb, Pincoding, Beyounic, FlandersDC). We are still looking for companies to help sponsor the event. Interested? Get in touch.
If you are a Nooku, Joomla or PHP developer this is a Jam not to miss ! The Creativity Lab of FlandersDC can host a maximum of 50 people. Don’t wait to register!
