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I stopped working on the Osm Admin project, for financial reasons. Did it hurt? A lot. Was it necessary? Unfortunately, yes. This post is a short retrospection on this matter.

The goal is to be the most productive and focused on the most important things, both personally, and (later) as a team.

After maintaining the "done" log for several months, I decided to improve my estimation accuracy, and here is how.

Before diving into what should be in the docs, let's define what you should more or less know before using Osm Admin.

There are four types of people who will read the docs: power users, developers, vendors and contributors.

Here are my thoughts on product backlog and roadmap.

Last two weeks were about implementing initial version of an Osm Admin grid, integrating it seamlessly with the editing form, and enabling mass-editing of multiple objects.

After finishing it, I realized that Osm Admin had become bigger than Osm Framework! To keep up, I started writing docs for it.

And now, you have a step-by-step guide for creating a project, adding Osm Admin to it and a practical example of an admin area that you can copy to your project and try it out locally.

Recently, I implemented mass-editing in Osm Admin. It allows you to view and edit multiple objects in a single operation.

This article describes mass-editing of products in a typical e-commerce application.

The last 4 weeks were mostly a vacation. It's been a time for reflection, but still, I delivered some new features.

In Osm Admin, forms already allow creating new objects and saving them to the database, and editing one or several existing objects.

I've also implemented URL query filters that are applied to the underlying database query and that can be displayed in the user interface.

From now on, Osm Framework and all projects built with it - can be installed and developed under Apache and on Windows.

In the user interface, you can narrow displayed data using grid column filters, or filters displayed in the sidebar. To enable that, apply #[Filter\*] attributes to class properties.

Applied filters appear in the URL query parameters, for example, .../edit?id=5+16+19, and on the page.

You can apply filters not only to a grid page, but also to a form page - to mass edit all matching objects, or to an action URL (edit, delete, or custom) - to perform the action on all matching objects.

In the same way, you can apply filters to the API URLs in order to retrieve or modify matching objects in a script.

In Osm Admin, I've finished indexing. It means that whenever you modify an object in the database, the changes are automatically propagated to all dependent indexed properties in the database.

I've also introduced a grid/form pair as the main user interface concept that is optimized for performing operations on multiple objects. There is also a programming interface (API) that will internally work in the same way, but without visuals. I implemented a part of this interface - an object creation form.

Osm Framework and all projects built with it - including this website and Osm Admin - are upgraded to TailwindCSS 3.0.

Today, I finished implementing an object creation form.

It works according to the specs on Interfaces and Forms. Currently, it only supports string and integer input fields; later, there will be a lot more.

Let's review how it works.

In Osm Admin, a form is an integral part of the class user interface. It's a very specific kind of HTML form.

In this article, I'll review what's in a class form, and how it's reflected from the application code.

Yesterday, I described a user interface pattern for managing data of a certain data class using a grid/form pair. Let's call this grid/form pair class interface in the admin area.

In this article, I'll examine what moving parts are inside a class interface.

So far, I've been concerned about how application data is modeled, stored and handled internally.

Yet, the final objective a user interface for viewing and editing it visually.

Let's dream a bit about how it might look like.

Yay, indexing works!

It's changed quite a bit, so let's review how it works from the very beginning.

For the last two weeks, I figured out two core features that will allow Osm Admin to stand out from other CRUD applications:

1. It will allow mass editing of data objects.
2. It will automatically propagate data changes throughout the database.

The foundation for the mass editing feature is data queries. Data propagation will be ensured via indexing.

I've been working on the Osm Admin indexing engine, and it's still in progress. While working on it, I reworked the inner working of data queries. Finally, I've achieved a very clear separation of various Osm Admin concerns, and documented it.

In Osm Core, I added reflection over class methods.

I'm still working on indexing, and it seems to get one more refactoring. But more on that later.

Meanwhile, let's review Osm Admin modules, their responsibilities and dependencies.

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.

Throw the NotImplemented exception in any code path that is not implemented yet, and configure the debugger to stop there whenever the code path is executed.

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.

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.

Readers of osm.software blog can search the blog for a specific phrase, and narrow down listed articles using multi-select layered navigation. Let's see how it works under the hood.

osmcommerce.com (now osm.software) blog got multi-select layered navigation, category management, FontAwesome icons, Tailwind CSS Typography. Osm Core allows debugging accidental assignments of the computed properties.