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I waited for this day too long. Today, I've tried out GitPod, and made it work for a project based on Osm Admin.

Today, I reiterated on what's left in this iteration, and finished the side menu view, and created a trivial home page for the admin area.

After getting the main branch all-green (tests pass, CLI and UI works as expected), I decided that from now on, I'll keep it always green, and use feature branches for all major development.

Then, I started implementing the main menu of the admin area.

Yesterday, I created a template for new projects powered by Osm Admin.

This way, you can create and publish a project in minutes, just follow the README. Yay!

Yesterday, I tested the instructions for installing Osm Admin locally as a contributor.

Yesterday:

• Osm Admin in-browser functionality was fully restored after creating search index in the indexer.
• All test suites started passing again, and being run automatically on git push.

Yesterday started as usual, planning new iteration, and then BAM! - one folk - Saif - joined the project. It made me correct the course a bit, and take care of potential contributors:

• README explains what the project is about, and how to get started as a contributor;
• I'm fixing things to make the project actually runnable just after installing it.

Yay! After implementing invalid data conversion, I finished the iteration #18 dedicated to diff-based migrations!

I must say, it's a bit disturbing to implement the same thing for the third time. Still, the goal is to get it finished, and have it sustainable.

After the effort, the code has become su much easier to read!

I continued working on property diff algorithm that plans all the migration details.

Yesterday, I finished implementing data conversion for int and string property types.

Then, I started refactoring it.

Last time, I pushed through string property migrations and created a migration log.

Today, I continued solving data conversion issues.

• I finished implementing string property migrations.
• Migrations have got a meaningful log explaining what migrations take place, and why.
• Along the way, I fixed numerous issues.

Yesterday, I finished writing int property migrations. True, testing it is still a todo.

The major part of the code (type change, nullability and other attribute handling) will be reused in other property types.

I refactored Property::migrate() using additional Migration classes. It's so much more convenient to compare property definition versions and generate migration SQLs!

New code structure already handles property explicitness changes.

After enumerating what kind of changes can happen to a property, I started implementing the most hard one - changing property type.

Estimating projects is hard. Here is my approach for getting better at it.

It's based on a concept of a "primitive problem" - something non-trivial that you can solve in one go.

You can use primitive problems as story points in agile project management.

The Query::bulkUpdate() method is implemented in the TDD way.

I came with an idea of much cleaner Osm Admin data class "markup", and more straightforward architecture, and I decided to give it a go in a separate experimental branch v0.2, and to see if it's viable.

After three weeks of implementation effort, I can say that it is viable, and it's so much better! And it's not a completely new effort, I mostly copy code from v0.1 and some parts of osmphp/framework:old_v4, and adapt it.

You can already define data classes using new markup, generate the database tables, and query it using new formula syntax. I really wanted to come with some UI working, but there wasn't enough time for that. It stays my priority for the next iteration.

My current goal is to get some minimum Osm Admin user interface and API working - just for one property, one data type, one UI control type, and then improve.

And there is a lot of space for improvement. The main areas are listed in this document.

I'd really appreciate a helping hand, so if you are into this sort of things, DM me on Twitter.

I feel that both attributes decorating data classes, and object model parsed from it are too complex.

Let's have a fresh look at Osm Admin. If I had to start from scratch, how would it be?

After 3 days of intensive work, I've got dot syntax working!

Along the way, I refactored the query internals once again, which reminds me a heuristics saying that you've got to implement something three times to get it right :)

New query implementation uses the concept of formulas - SQL-like expressions used for selecting, filtering and sorting data. Currently, formulas are quite limited, but with time, they should be a really powerful feature.

I decided to support selecting, filtering and ordering by properties of a related object using dot syntax: product.price, parent.level. This syntax will automatically join the table that stored related objects.

I realized that implementing joins requires a better query model than my current naive wrapper around Laravel query. This article describes the new query model.

This article is about running SELECT and INSERT queries on data objects stored in the database.

In short, use the query() function. It runs on top of Laravel Query\Builder. It handles the mapping of data class properties onto table columns, and initiates the computation of indexed properties.

Currently, you can only SELECT and INSERT, other operations are coming soon.

Today, I implemented computation of indexed properties during insert. The implementation dictated some changes in indexed property definitions compare to the initial design, and how indexers are reflected into the data schema.

Also, I implemented a table query class working on the top of Laravel Query\Builder. More about it next time, for now I'll review how indexed properties are computed during INSERT operation.

I had two weeks full of meaningful, productive work. I started with sketching Osm Admin grid and form pages, and implemented a very basic, but working home page, and success/error messages. To enable that, Osm Framework now have extensible Blade templates, and a nice JavaScript solution for capturing user input into a modal dialog box, or into some picker component.

Then, I undertook a major refactoring of Osm Admin, including moving lots of pieces of code to their new places, stabilizing the underlying object model, rewriting database migrations and sketching future effort on data indexing. During this effort, I implemented generic object hydration and reflection over named subtypes.

I've already shared most of this information on Twitter, so if you are reading this, consider following me on Twitter and getting daily updates.

It's often needed to compute, or index, data in database tables based on data in other tables.

This article is the first sketch of a consistent indexing solution.

I've finished refactoring how Osm Admin stores data objects in the database. Also, in order to support multi-website, multi-vendor, multi-language applications, I've introduced the concept of scopes.

Most reasoning from the first version is still valid, so let's take a fresh look of what's changed.

I developed dehydrate()/hydrate() functions for a very practical need - storing the data class schema:

• in cache - to reduce processing time spent on reflection;
• and in database - to compare current and new database schema, and only add new tables and columns.

This article describes the information stored in the schema, and unit tests that I prepared in order to be sure that schema classes are property hydrated.

I had two very productive weeks. #buildinpublic works wonders.

Most effort went into my new project, Osm Admin. I sketched how data classes look like, generated database tables from class attributes, and started working on the Admin UI. It's very fulfilling to see how an abstract idea gains shape.

As described in Migrations, most data objects of the same class will be stored in a database table.

But what about subclasses? In an e-commerce application, bags, dresses, and digital products, collectively known as subclasses, are all products stored in products table, and they may have bad-specific, dress-specific or digital product specific properties that should also be stored there.

This article describes how subclasses are defined and stored in Osm Admin.

Different data classes have repeating structural patterns. For example, most data classes stored in database tables have the auto-incremented id property. Use PHP traits to effectively introduce the same properties to different data classes over and over again.

I partly implemented data schema migration. It takes data class definitions, and incrementally creates or alters underlying database tables.

The article below describes how schema migration works, and what's not implemented yet, but most probably will be.

Note. This topic is continued in the new article.

The project repository, osmphp/admin, follows a typical Osm Framework-based project structure. However, this repository is going to be a reusable Composer package, and has important structural differences presented in this article.

This article introduces the core project concepts: data object, data class, data query, and data schema.

I'm super-excited to announce that I'm starting a new project codenamed "The Big Red Button". It's about defining application data structures and logic in PHP code, pressing the big red button (hence the codename), and getting fully functioning Admin Panel and API.

This sprint was dedicated to writing Osm Framework documentation, and indeed, there are 8 new in-depth documentation articles, 4-5 minutes long each.

Despite documentation focus, I kept improving the website. From now on, you can assign a canonical URL to a blog post or a documentation page, and use GitHub friendly relative URLs in documentation.

But the most important thing - I started sharing progress and insights daily on Twitter.

osm.software website. From now on, Osm Framework documentation resides in the docs/ directory of the osmphp/framework repository, and it is displayed in a separate section of osm.software website. New data source indexing engine allows running complex interdependent data synchronization with a single command, osm index. New Placeholder class simplifies dynamic Markdown content generation.

Osm Framework. Apply dynamic traits within the same file using #[UseIn] attribute. Implement fast dynamic routing using new DynamicRoute class. Generate URLs using new $osm_app->base_url property.

This website got a completely new look. There are new blog posts diving into core Osm Framework features. Osm Framework itself offers more convenient page layout, website-wide header, footer and <head>, customizable error pages. The themes support theme-specific CSS styles and JS scripts not bound to any module. New projects come with a handy bin/install.sh script that simplifies installation on Linux. From now on, run osmh without any parameters.

From now on, this website is deployed on push, and by the way, you can easily play with the website copy locally. In the Osm framework, new Osm_Project application allows reflecting over modules and classes regardless to which application they belong. New experimental project is aimed at quick creation of the Admin UI.

After pushing changes to GitHub, osm.software website is updated without any additional manual action. On push, GitHub executes the deployment script on the production server. Most changes are done to content only, and in this case, the deployment script only updates the search index. Otherwise, with the website being on maintenance, it additionally updates Composer and Node dependencies, builds JS and CSS assets, and runs the database migrations.

This article describes our package release process before v1.0.0. In short, every change is released as soon as it's ready, and all dependent packages are updated at the same time.

This article provides a practical example of contributing changes to Osm Framework and other osmphp/* GitHub repositories. It's based on the Osm_Project application pull request.

Today, osm.software reached an important milestone - 100% Lighthouse score.

This article explains how to manage and assign blog categories.

Osm Framework introduced production mode and maintenance mode. osm.software website went live.

Osm Framework introduced JS controllers, and JS unit tests. osmcommerce.com website project was renamed to osm.software, it finalized the post rendering, and introduced a tool for checking broken links.