Review: The SilverStripe Book

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

I’ve recently been working with Silverstripe, which was relatively new to me, so I got the book. This post is a review of the book “Silverstripe. The Complete Guide to CMS Development” by Ingo Schommer and Steven Broschart; I wanted to share my thoughts about this title.

When I say I’m working with SilverStripe, I mostly get blank looks. Few people have heard of it, even amongst PHP developers; so firstly what is SilverStripe?

SilverStripe is an open source CMS which ships with the MVC framework (called Sapphire) that it is built on. Development started in 2005 in New Zealand with the first stable release in February 2007. The product has grown in popularity and is rapidly gaining a foothold in Europe. It won ‘Most Promising Open Source CMS’ in the PacktPub awards in 2008 and was joint runner-up in 2009 for their ‘Open Source CMS Award’. Ibuildings became SilverStripe partners in Spring 2009 and I have been working on SilverStripe projects since joining Ibuildings in late 2009.

With the combination of CMS and framework it is possible to build complex web applications that can be managed by non-technical users through an admin interface remarkably quickly and easily. The product’s website has an API (sadly not always up to date) and a few very introductory tutorials. However once you have worked your way through those it is not easy to know what can else be achieved and how to approach further development, which is where this book comes in. With most technical topics there is a shelf-full of titles to choose from, but with SilverStripe this book is a first, which makes it very significant, and with no other options it is just as well this book is pretty good!

The book has been produced through the collaboration between a developer of the product, Ingo Schommer who works for SilverStripe Ltd, and an experienced user, Steven Broshart who works for German online marketing agency Cyberpromote GmbH. It is a combination that works well. The book is convincingly authoritative but also down to earth; it is a practical guide from people who know what they are talking about and can explain it clearly citing realistic examples.

The translator, Julian Seidenberg grew up in Germany but has lived in the UK and now New Zealand where he started to work for SilverStripe Ltd in 2009. He has a PhD and has also published other titles.

The book was originally written in German and published in February 2009. It was then modified, extended and translated before being published in English in November 2009. The translation has been done very well; apart from in one small section in the Recipes chapter where the language is cumbersome, it does not feel like a translated book but like one written in English and for a technical book is very readable without being dumbed-down in any way.

As SilverStripe is written in object oriented PHP to be able to produce more than a website with very straightforward content pages, you need to be a PHP developer who understands object-oriented programming. So not surprisingly the book is aimed at PHP developers, although it claims to have some value for non-technical readers. I was recently talking about SilverStripe with an experienced front-end developer and the subject of the book came up, he had not found it helpful and felt it was because he didn’t have more than a very superficial understanding of PHP.

The book starts with some introductory chapters on the product, installation and a useful explanation of the underlying architecture and concepts.

The meat of the book for me is chapters 4 to 6 which work through implementing a sample application, starting with using out-of-the-box features, gradually extending it to involve ever more complex elements. These chapters are of most value when they are read in sequence. The explanations are accompanied by code snippets and screenshots of the expected output. The code is also available to download from the companion website. The projects described makes an invaluable springboard for generating ideas of how to do things and perhaps most importantly inspiring the reader with ideas of the possibilities of the product and how to harness the Sapphire framework.

This is followed by freestanding chapters on important issues like security, maintenance, testing (SilverStripe comes with its own unit testing infrastructure based on PHPUnit and SimpleTest) and localisation/internationalisation. Then a selection of recipes (how-to’s) and finally how to extend the product by producing your own extensions, along with an introduction to a number of useful modules other developers have contributed.

A full list of the contents can be found on the publisher’s website (http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470681837.html).

The book is sub-titled “The Complete Guide to CMS Development” which is a very big claim! Does it live up to this? No, as it doesn’t consider other CMS systems at all. Even to be the complete guide to CMS development using SilverStripe is a lot to ask. It does not succeed in that either but I am not sure a book twice the size would appeal to many people! Hopefully there may be future cookbook style books to carry on where this book leaves the reader.

I have found this book enormously useful in bringing SilverStripe to life and have fed a number of ideas from the book into the projects I have been working on. It is readable without being jokey and patronising, and its understandable and inspiring style makes it score more highly than many technical books I have read

Inevitably there are things you wished they’d covered or key details for implementing something that has been left out. In particular I hate the sort of tutorial books for complex systems that say something like ‘once you have completed steps x, y and z you should see…’, because they never say what to do if having completed the steps you don’t see the expected output. Many of these applications have aids to debugging built into them and SilverStripe is no exception, but there is little coverage in the book which I think is a shame.

Sadly as is common with technical books it will date as new releases are brought out and I hope they are already working on the next edition.

Is it worth having? Undoubtedly, even if you have been developing in SilverStripe for a while, as you are likely to find fresh inspiration and it is a must for those who are new to it.

SilverStripe London Feature Talk, Nov 4th

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

On Nov 4th GPMD will be hosting the first Feature meetup which will include a talk demontration realting to an aspect of SilverStripe.

From the page on meetup.com:

"The format for the UK SilverStripe meetup has changed slightly. From now on we will host a feature meetup every 3 months (this will have a talk / demonstration etc..) each subsequent meetup will remain as an informal gathering of users wishing to have a few drinks.

The November meetup will include a talk from Jamie Neil, Technical Director of GPMD Ltd. Jamie is going to demonstrate the Nesta Creative Credits project and explain a little about how GPMD approached the development.

Take a look at the site and bring along your questions for Jamie. http://www.creative-c..."

So if any of your are fellow Londoners I look forward to seeing you there!

When

Wednesday November 4th, 2009 at 6:30pm

Where

Counting House Pub
50 Cornhill Rd
London EC3V 3PD

Google map >>

Submit your own snippets directly to SSBits!

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

You can now submit your own snippets directly to SSBits! Simply register and then go to the Snippet Submission page where you can create your own post and submit it for publication.

I am hopeful that this will enable you all to use SSbits as a tool to document descoveries you make, whether a new way to do something or a previously unknown feature that you think might help others or even just a simple line of code that was harder to write than it could/should have been. Whatever it is, if you think it would have been helpful to you, post it!

So what are you waiting for, get snippeting! :)

10 Super Useful SilverStripe Documentation Pages

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Since I started learning SilverStripe I have come across a number of very useful documentation pages which were not very easy to find (at least not as easy as they could be). So here is a list of 10 official documentation pages which I always find myself referring back to.

Page-Types
Explains the principles behind a page type and how to use them to structure your data into a Model and Controller. It also covers adding/removing inherited CMS fields.

Form Field Types
An index of all the different types of form field you can use within SilverStripe without any custom modules. It's a great resource that makes creating CMS fields and forms a simple copy and paste affair.

Built in Page Controls
Ever wondered what variables & methods you have available to you when building a template in SilverStripe? Well this page lists them all and also provides a pretty comprehensive explanation of the most commonly used, such as $LinkingMode and $CurrentMember.

Customising the Hierarchy
Gives you a list of all the different options you have to control the structure of the hierarchy, such as setting default child pages or defining create permissions.

GD Functions
This page lists all the functions you can use to manipulate images, both in the template and in your controller.

DataModel
Goes through the principles and the implementation of DataModels in SilverStripe, an essential concept if you want to do anything beyond a basic site.

DataObjectDecorator
Covers the very powerful and useful topic of decorating a class, where by you add database fields and CMS fields from an external class called a DataObjectDecorator.

ModelAdmin
This great new feature in 2.3 allows you to create a custom interface for managing large numbers of DataModels. This page will get you started.

Recipes
A great resource for short tutorials and code snippets. Lot's of cool stuff in there from adding pagination to building a site tree style menu.

Modules: DataObjectManager
This fantastic new module created by Aaron Carlino adds a wealth of new features to the ComplexTableField. It really is an essential module to consider when building a site with any sort of DataObject relationship. This page takes you through setting up the different types of manager their their related Objects. There are also a couple great new form fields that become available when installing the module, including a popup HTML editor field and a jQuery calendar field.

jQuery Expanding Menu Plugin

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Demo >>

Overview

Having looked around for a simple expanding menu and finding nothing I liked, I decided to make my own using the fantastic jQuery javascript framework.

jQuery is a great way to add another layer of usability to a site and give it some flare. There is so much good about jQuery that I won't go into it here, but to summarise it's fast, easy to use and x-browser compatible. It also has great documentation and a rich set of tutorials, all found at jquery.com.

It pretty much does what it says on the tin, but hopefully you will find it elegant and easy to implement.

Usage

Note. these instructions are for a static site, a tutorial on implementing this menu in SilverStripe will follow shortly.

To get the menu working all you need to do is link the relevant files, add the initialisation code and then ensure your HTML markup is correct. So first add this to the bottom of your page, just before the </body> tag.
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.color.fade.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.expanding.menu.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { $().ExpandingMenu({ speed: "slow", colorFade : true, colorClosed: "#30AAE9", colorOpen: "#444444", event : "click" }); }); // </script>

You will notice that I am using Google's AJAX library to link to jQuery. This is a good idea for several reasons outlined in this post on Encosia. It would still work just as well having your own hosted jQuery library which you can download from the jQuery site.

There are a few variables you can set; speed, colorFade, colorOpen, colorClosed and event. Here is a quick explanation of each:

Speed ("Fast", "Slow" or a value in milliseconds such as 1000) The speed at which the menu expands.
colorFade (true, false) Enables or disables the color fading of the holder link as the menu expands. If false then colorOpen and colorClosed are ignored and the links will be styled by their CSS styles.
colorOpen (hex color value such as #000000) The color of the holder link when the menu is open.
colorClosed (hex color value such as #000000) The color of the holder link when the menu is closed.
event (any event, such as "click" or "mouseover") The event that triggers the menu to expand.

Then you simply need to create a set of nested <ul>s looking something like this:
<ul> <li> <a class="holder" id="Section1" href="#" >Section 1</a> <ul> <li><a class="" href="#" title="Go to page 1">Page 1</a></li> <li><a class="" href="#" title="Go to page 2">Page 2</a></li> <li><a class="" href="#" title="Go to page 3">Page 3</a></li> <li><a class="" href="#" title="Go to page 4">Page 4</a></li> </ul> </li> <li> <a class="holder" id="Section2" href="#" >Section 1</a> <ul> <li><a class="" href="#" title="Go to page 1">Page 1</a></li> <li><a class="" href="#" title="Go to page 2">Page 2</a></li> <li><a class="" href="#" title="Go to page 3">Page 3</a></li> <li><a class="" href="#" title="Go to page 4">Page 4</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul>

If you want to have any of the sections open at the start simply add the class "open" to the holder link. This class is added to the holder links each time their section is expanded allowing you to style the open and closed states of the menu.

You may also want to hide the section links initially by adding ul ul {display:none} to your CSS so that they do not appear then disappear as the page loads. However the downside to this is that the section links will not be accessible if javascript is disabled.

An Example CSS Framework

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

A CSS framework is a set of pre-prepared style sheets that can be used as a starting point for any project. Using a framework allows you to skip all the tedious parts of getting the basics right and lets you start working on what makes your site different from the beginning.

There are numerous advantages to using a CSS framework, including cross browser compatibility, increased productivity and improved consistency between projects. The framework provided here is aimed at those developing sites using the SilverStripe CMS, but is just as useful for anyone developing a CSS based layout.

The files included are:

test_page.html - Sample HTML 4.1 strict page for use testing and developing the CSS. This will later form the starting point for making your templates.
layout.css - This is the core layout and contains all the wrappers, menus and page elements styling.
typography.css - This contains all the content styles for elements such as fonts, links and headers.
form.css - Contains all the styles for forms. This file is the same one as is included with the silverstripe blackcandy theme in v2.3.
ie6.css - Holder for any future (inevitable!) Internet Explorer 6 fixes. Conditionally included into the template HTML file when the browser is IE6.
ie7.css - As above but for the slightly improved yet still temperamental Internet Explorer 7.