SahanaPy Workout @ FOSS.in/2009

SahanaPy is having a week-long workout at ​FOSS.in 2009

Description

SahanaPy is an example of ​HFOSS (Humanitarian FOSS). It is a RAD framework for developing Emergency Management applications. ​Sahana has been used to help support most major disasters since the Indian Ocean Tsunami including localised versions for floods in India (Bihar 2008 & Andhra Pradesh/Karnataka 2009). You can check Sahana's History ​here & ​here.

The core team will all be physically together in in one place for the week to really push our framework to the next level. We'll be extending a warm welcome to any Python/JavaScript programmers who wish to join in throughout the week. We will be polishing up our back-end REST/XSLT-driven XML/JSON controller & developing new front-end UI tools - flexible layouts with advanced widgets (based on ​ExtJS &/or ​jQuery ​dataTables/​jEditable) & Growl-like notifications generated programmatically by the easy to use, lightweight & powerful ​Web2Py. We'll also be looking at improving our GIS functionality using Javascript toolkits like ​OpenLayers & ​GeoExt/​MapFish. We'll also be fixing our Testing framework, based on ​Selenium.

How will people benefit from attending?

• Get acquainted with a new python web framework ​Web2Py
• Use advanced JavaScript functionality
• Get a sense of fulfilment from contributing to HFOSS

Audience, Pre-requisites

• Installation, Developer & Framework Guidelines
• Participants should be familiar with Web technologies such as JavaScript & Python Frameworks. ​Web2Py, ​OpenLayers/​GeoExt/​MapFish &/or ​Selenium experience a plus.
• If people can get time to familiarise with the codebase before the session then this would be extremely helpful, but isn't required.
• If there are people with skills in Usability they are welcome even without programming skills.

How to Communicate?

• ​Developer Mailing list can be used prior to & after the event.
• ​IRC allows real-time group & 1-1 communication using low-bandwidth text
• Pastebin allows people to share code snippets
  • For jQuery/HTML: ​http://pastebin.me/
  • For Python: ​http://paste.pocoo.org/
• ​GoogleDocs can be used for collaborative document authoring before copying results to this Wiki
• ​Dabbleboard provides an Online Whiteboard for sketches
• An audio channel can be added, if necessary, using ​GTalk or ​Skype
• ​Log tickets here in Trac
• Alternate options: ​Dimdim or ​CoPilot

NB If you have problems accessing wiki.sahana.lk, then add this to your hosts file:

• 222.165.133.43 wiki.sahana.lk

What are we going to do?

Fran

1. Ext

• We're starting by hand-crafting Ext pages which interact properly with the back-end.
• Later we are looking to generate these programmatically to restore RAD.
• Trying different approaches:
  1. Add a new format=ext representation to the REST controller which uses ext versions of the default layouts which inherit from layout_ext.html
     • This seems very slow to load the different components (header, footer, content) into the Ext Viewport
     • Have optimised the model to reduce overheads here, but it still doesn't seem to be an optimal approach
  2. Ext forms embedded inside the standard layout
     1. Done: Start with the login form (downside is that browser can't save login/password)
     2. Done: Need to get the Web2Py form.custom to integrate with Ext
     3. ​EditorGridPanel to replace dataTables
     • ​Paging
     • ​checkbox & horizontal scrolling
     • ​Filters
     4. Menus
     5. Popups
     6. Hyperlink buttons converted to Ext style
     7. Could add the ​Ext.ux.PasswordMeter to the register form :)

2. GIS

• Display Feature Details in Popups
• Upload Photos - with GPX Track & use timestamps to place associated features onto the map
• Make Features Editable from the Map
• Export Features as GeoJSON (using S3XRC with an XSLT)

Ajay & Michael

1. Logistics Management Module

Lifeeth

Messaging Module

1. Done: Autoprobing of Modem added to PyGSM
2. Get Sahana to make use of AutoProbing
3. Add SMS Gateway API providers

Ideamonk

1. Done: Finish integrating the ​GPS coordinate converter into the GIS Location input form

Surya

1. Backups

Newcomers

Whilst any BluePrint is fine, suggestions for areas suitable for a newcomer:

1. Volunteer Management Module
2. Appliance
3. ​CSS:

• Provide a layout which allows tables to be scrolled when they exceed the width of the display
  • Less important with an Ext Grid with horizontal scrollbar
• Provide an Ext theme