Hi Steven, hi Geert,
I must say that feel exactly the same way as Steven and most of the time
when I want to learn something new with RIFE, I end up reading sources
for hours. By now, I can almost always tell the year some code was
written, just by looking at the RIFE-features it utilizes. :)
However, I understand why it is that way and Geert and other rifers
deliver awesome support here on the list, so it can be learned. What I
often miss about the docs are two things: 1) A complete syntax manual
for all XML config files and 2) Some best practices to save other people
from making design mistakes that have already been made. If I can find
the time, I'd do (1), but (2) is definitely something for some more
experienced guys.
Regards
Stefan :)
Geert Bevin schrieb:
Hi Steven,
I'm sorry that you're bumping into this block.
I agree that documentation is lacking in some areas, mostly for code
that was initiated earlier than three years ago. We've tried to fill
in the Javadocs holes and I think that in the areas that we did cover,
we're doing an excellent job at this. In contrast to what you're
saying, there have been many compliments about the quality of the
current documentation (even though there are lacunas). Also, since
three years, no public APIs get committed anymore without Javadocs.
Additionally, as you probably saw, each release contains extremely
detailed release notes with examples that are afterwards aggregated in
the wiki's cookbook. I think that there is no open-source project out
there that does this as extensively. Stating that documentation is an
afterthought thus feels really very harsh to me. A project with the
momentum of Spring, with their amount of contributors and commercial
companies behind it, is of course able to provide a lot more in terms
of books and user guides. There's only so much that a small team of
motivated developers can do for free in their spare time. However, if
you do feel that some areas need to be improved quicker, you're always
welcome to contribute to the effort and document your findings either
in articles or Javadoc additions that you can send to me as patches.
I'm working on a series of three short books for O'Reilly though, so
soon there will be a source with more centralized information.
You're right that database authentication isn't documented in detail
and it really needs to receive some love since imho it's *the* area
that is the most confusing to people. I think that you can find what
you need here though:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.java.rife.user/2767/focus=2767
Other posts on the mailing list cover this too. You don't really have
to be following the list for a long time, since a simple search should
reveal all the posts that are relevant to you.
With regards to the query building, the methods of the Select class
are mostly the same as the SQL methods and should need little
documentation if you know SQL. I agree though that there should be
Javadocs there. It's one of the missing parts of early code that never
received the documentation care that it deserves.
One of the points of the query builders is that the order is not fixed
at all. The real statements are only created when the SQL is obtained
from the builder manually, or when it's executed. This also means that
you can partial query builder objects that you prepare in one location
of your code and complete elsewhere.
I hope this information lets you climb out of the dip you're in and
get back up to speed. Otherwise, feel free to mail the list with any
additional questions you have, you'll see that a lot of people here
are very helpful.
Best regards,
Geert
On 18 Jun 2006, at 10:20, Steven Grimm wrote:
I feel like I'm fumbling around in the dark with RIFE. How are other
people coming up to speed on this framework? I'm finding myself
spending five times as long searching (often fruitlessly) for
documentation as I'm spending actually getting work done. (It's the
"fruitlessly" part that really irks me.) Right now my bugaboo is
database authentication; there seems to be very little documentation
on how it actually works in practice, just an example element
configuration in the user's guide.
I've written a blog entry on my experience so far:
http://www.plaintivemewling.com/articles/rife-with-frustration
Hopefully nothing too unwarranted there; sorry if it raises anyone's
hackles, but I'm not a very happy RIFE camper at the moment.
--
Geert Bevin
Uwyn "Use what you need" - http://uwyn.com
RIFE Java application framework - http://rifers.org
Music and words - http://gbevin.com
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