22 May 2010 9 Comments

Introducing DevKit for EE 2.0

I’ve spent the last 8 months developing modules (and templates) for EE 2.0. Pretty early I got annoyed by some of the redundant manual tasks I had to do over and over again .. so I started creating some addons to help me out. Now I’ve bundled (some of that) functionality in this thing I’ve named DevKit for EE 2.0, download it here: zip / github page.

For now it contains functionality to generate the skeleton of a new EE module – you just give it some details (name, description, etc.) and an installable EE 2.0 module will be generated. It will add some helpful functions as well. Then it’s up to you to fill it with business logic ;-)

Also it has a one-click load of snippets and global variables from the filesystem. Personally I like to use the built in EE functionality to add that to the main navigation at the top, so that when updating the global variables in my files I just hit that button and they’re all updated.

And then there is a YAML 2 dbforge generator that will help you out when you have a lot of database tables you need to generate (this is handy for the upd.yourmodule.php install() and uninstall() functions). Personally I’m too lazy to write dbforge code, YAML is quicker (see the screenshot). This is very basic, but it works.

Here are some screenshots:

DevKit: Create new module


YAML 2 dbforge Code Generator


Update/Import snippets/global variables from disk


Like it?

I hope that other EE developers find this helpful. If you do, please let me know, and also – if you’d like to contribute / help out improving this DevKit let me know and I’ll add you to the project on github so you can commit code to it.

This is a small step for EE, and a humble start, but maybe this can evolve into an awesome tool / framework for EE 2.0 development.

Download: devkit.zip

9 Responses to “Introducing DevKit for EE 2.0”

  1. Brandon 22 May 2010 at 20:55 #

    Looks fantastic. I can’t wait to test it out! Any chance of posting a quick tutorial for creating a very simple module?

  2. Martin Luff 23 May 2010 at 06:59 #

    Thanks for the work on this. Looks very interesting…

    Just out of curiosity, did you try using the ‘Hermes’ add-on from Solspace before going down this route?

  3. Bjørn Børresen 23 May 2010 at 12:24 #

    Brandon; creating a simple module is only a matter of filling out the form ;-) .. but yeah, writing a newbie tutorial is a pretty good idea.

    Martin; yeah I recall checking out Hermes a while back – but that’s only for 1.6.x … DevKit is for 2.0.

  4. carvingCode 28 May 2010 at 22:20 #

    Right in the nick of time! Thanks.

  5. Todd 29 May 2010 at 00:49 #

    Nice work! I, too, would love to see a tutorial of this in use. Maybe even a screencast? Thanks so much!

  6. Bjørn Børresen 24 June 2010 at 17:28 #

    I just uploaded a demo video here for those interested:

    http://www.vimeo.com/12828566


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