GFMorris.org

In developing ShowInfo, I’ve been following the database design process laid out by Michael J. Hernandez in his text, Database Design for Mere Mortals™. [Readers of my regular Weblog will note that I picked this book up some time ago].

Hernandez’s first step is to develop a mission statement and mission objectives for the database being developed. He explains his rationale as follows:

The first phase in the database design process involves defining a mission statement and mission objectives for the database. The mission statement establishes the purpose of the database and provides you with a distinct focus for your design work.

– pg. 79, Database Design for Mere Mortals™

I’ve seen too many projects out there that seem to have never had an initial focus, instead choosing to hack around and then let the focus develop as time and code pass. I’m prone to that myself, so I’m being regimental in holding myself to this standard.

As such, I’ve developed the following mission statement for Show Info:

ShowInfo Mission Statement

The purpose of ShowInfo is to maintain show information, allow users to indicate their presence at a show and view those attending, and to facitilitate sharing of concert experiences after the show.

ShowInfo Mission Objectives

• ShowInfo must maintain data pertinent to attending concerts.
• ShowInfo must allow users to indicate shows that they will/might attend, as well as shows that they have attended in the past.
• ShowInfo must allow users to maintain setlist and concert photo data.
• ShowInfo must create reports of future shows.
• ShowInfo must archive data about previous shows.

The second step in the ShowInfo development process will be developing the preliminary table and field lists.

This idea expands on something originally done by MooKitty: Comment Backgrounds Hack. Kitty was directly inputting a background in wp-comments.php, but I realized that it made more sense to use an if/else statement and create two classes, comment-even and comment-odd, that could then be styled however the user wished. My end result is like so:

    35  <?php if ($comments) { ?>
    36  <ol id="commentlist">
    37  <?php $i=0; foreach ($comments as $comment) { ?>
    38       <li id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>" <?php if($i%2) {echo 'class="comment-even"';} else {echo 'class="comment-odd"';} $i++ ?>>
    39          <?php comment_text() ?>
    40          <p><cite><?php comment_type(); ?> <?php _e("by"); ?> <?php comment_author_l
ink() ?> &#8212; <?php comment_date() ?> @ <a href="#comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>"><?php c
omment_time() ?></a></cite> <?php edit_comment_link(__("Edit This"), ' |'); ?></p>
    41          </li>

Using i=0 as a starting point for the counter allows the logic of if / 2 to work as one expects; the first comment is <li id=”comment-blahdiblah” class=”comment-even”>, etc.

I personally would suggest this as a code change for 1.3+.

[Thanks to Carthik's WordLog for pointing me to MooKitty's hack in the first place.]

ShowInfo is now a hosted project at SourceForge.net: ShowInfo.

I’ve upgraded GFMorris.org to the latest stable version of WordPress, 1.2-mingus.

Per-category feeds are available; click on a category in the sidebar and add “rss/” or “atom/” to the end of the URL in your browser’s location bar to get such feeds.

I’d like to announce ShowInfo, the concert information database that I’m working up to power the [rocksmyfaceoff.net] family of band fan-sites.

I’ve submitted a request for hosting on SourceForge, and I’m working through the database design with the help of Michael J. Hernandez’s Database Design for Mere Mortals™. I should have a mature database design within the next month; as I complete interim steps in Hernandez’s design process, I’ll be posting that data here for any who might be interested.