What is Phluor ?

Phluor is a project which wants to make easier the creation of a website based on different modules (“bricks”) working together. You can find a presentation video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcnikpOa8ng. (I’m sorry, it’s a bad quality video, and in french, but I will publish an english version soon, and I’m trying to see how to get a better quality)

The philosophy

Phluor is mainly based on these bricks. The idea is to have a modular system : a brick must be easy to create, each brick can use others bricks or Ocaml modules as dependancies to work. A brick must be really easy to install: running a simple command should be enough to install and configure it.

Moreover I’m sure that the documentation is one of the main point of a project, so each brick should have a good documentation and should be easy to use.

What can I do with Phluor right now ?

For the moment the base skeletton works. Specifically, here are the working functions :

• Compilation of several libraries in server and client part
• Libraries can have dependances with other libraries
• The dependances are auto-detected with an automatic recursive dependance search
• All the libraries needed are included (in the right order) in the configuration file which is used by ocsigenserver
• Each library can have a static folder where it can put pictures, files…
• Each library has a part (especially used by service definition) which is build before others libraries and can be include in them very easily. It’s usually usefull to provide links (services) to others libraries
• The server configuration file is autogenerate and can be configurated from every brick. Moreover each library can write in this file where it want with a powerful system of anchor (see doc for more details)
• The server can be launch at the end of the compilation or when you want with a simple command
• Each brick can be configurated by modifying a simple file

If you want more details please read the doc in the doc folder, especially doc/00_Quickstart.org.

I like that, where could I learn how to use it ?

Just go in the doc folder, there is lot’s of documentation (It’s easier to read them with org-mode enabled (emacs), but you can read them with any text editor).

Here is the naming convention of the documentation :

- 0xx -> Doc for a classic user
-- 00x -> Basic things to know
-- 01x -> Things related with the use of bricks
- 1xx -> Doc for programmers

What should be done now ?

Here are some ideas or small tasks to do to improve this program :

In the phluor_basic templace

• Auto-copy config files in config/… AND KEEP THE OLD CONF
• Write interface files for readability (.mli)
• Give the possibility to “pack” the modules in a brick in one module in order to avoid colision between several brick names. (play with the -pack/-for-pack option ?)
• Documentation (options during qdico parsing + update some parts)
• Find an easy and powerfull way to use translation in a website (for example with gettext, but I think an other way should be use for client part)
• Deal with database (in the ideal a general bricks which could choose several database backend, and there should exists a way to create/update a local database for small configuration, such as a local postgresql one)
• Create a brick which deals with pathnames : it must be possible to upload files in the persistant folder www/static/var/<brick name>/ (which is a symlink to var/) easily

Brick idea :

• Database + translation brick
• A Lorem Ipsum brick, giving an easy access to long texts (client and server part)
• Editor : could be used by other bricks to display some advanced editor such as Tinymce, elRTE, textarea with an help option…
• A blog brick (maybe the translation/database problem should be solve first)
• A wiki brick (same as above)
• A website brick (same as above)
• A forum brick (same as above)

In phluor_tools

• Add a way to add some bricks from the internet or archives (Github, tar.gz for example)
• Check that Ocaml libs are installed, and why not linux programs (API findlib : http://projects.camlcity.org/projects/dl/findlib-1.5.2/doc/ref-html/c1040.html)
• Add a way to remove a brick –> Remove conf, brick code and in bricks_depends.txt
• Add a way to easily package a brick –> The structure is quite easy to package by hand, it should be hard
• Documentation

I want to help !

For the moment I’m the only one in this project, so if you want to join me it would be a pleasure. I’m an auto-didacte so I may do some things with a bad methods but I try to be as clean and proper as possible. If you want to join the project, you can contact me from github, on IRC (tobiasBora, often on #ocsigen, #ocaml…), or with my email : tobias . bora <at> gmail . com