Friday 23 May 2014

Week 1 - A new beginning

The official coding period for GSOC started on 19th May 2014.With regard to my Final Exams getting over on 23rd May,there was a very little I could contribute this week.But nevertheless the excitement level got me coding whenever I had free time.
Progress this week:

  1. Updated installation to dev-master,understood how composer works for downloading packages.
  2. Set up a Basic Flow Package with Slot Service to listen to the publishing process and write all the contents of the respective node.
  3. Used composer to download the library files of Facebook PHP SDK to the Flow Package.
  4. Set up Package.php for the Package to configure the wiring between signal and slot ,and other dependencies. 
Issues/Problem experienced:
  1. Trouble with enterprise level concepts of PHP likes Aspect Oriented Programming.
  2. Trouble initializing objects of library files in the slot.
Next week Goals:
  1. Set up objects of Facebook class in the slot service,and communicate with the Facebook SDK.
  2. Display appropriate messages in the backend.
  3. Handle Exceptions.
Follow the repository on https://github.com/hybridNeo/Rahul.SocialConnect

Monday 19 May 2014

Google Summer of Code @TYPO3

Google Summer of Code was something I heard about in the summer of 2013,with some research about the program I was fairly motivated to apply for the 2014 season.It was February when I got serious thanks to some info sessions by some seniors at college who spoke about the program and its various perks.GSOC was like one of those double decker biscuits .First, we get to code for an open source organization which is amazing knowing the fact that open source is the way of the future,almost every software which is used from my Operating system on my Laptop/Mobile to the Media Players I used were all open sourced,It was high time I gave back to the system.Secondly, while people struggle to get internships at small companies you get to boast around with something that is sponsored by Google,and puts you on their payroll indirectly with a hefty cheque for a student.

My past skills in the field of computer programming included languages like C,Java and PHP,But PHP was my favourite language thanks to it's C like syntax and library support for tools.So while going through the Accepted Organization list found TYPO3 a popular Content Management System to be most suited for my skills.Immediately I contacted the mentors and went through the ideas page,within no time I had set up the working environment for all three flavours of the CMS and liked the futuristic Neos the most,One of the ideas was a multi-channel connector to simultaneously publish posts from the Neos installation itself.I tried building a plugin which would do the same and went through the code-base.One important thing I learnt was that in open-source the main challenge is reading and understanding code written by others.With this in mind and a couple of week of sleepless nights hanging out in the IRC I was able to write my proposal and submit it.

I was very happy when I came to know that my proposal had been accepted and now I had something productive to do in summer other than sleeping all day.I instantly got in touch with my mentors and set up all the required version control softwares and started work.

At the point of writing this post it is the first day of the coding period for GSOC and you can catch all the activity on Github link

I hope to have a productive summer for me and the whole Neos community.