JoshSweeney

March Atlanta PHP Meetup Recap

Speaker of the Month

This months meeting centered around Jonathan Freeman’s Model Baker Product. Model Baker is a Mac OSX product that enables a user to rapidly build fields and relationships that will be used on a new web application. Once they build the fields and relationships they can deploy the application which will automatically create the MVC portions of the application. Here is a blurb from the Model Baker website which provides a little more information.

“ModelBaker – a remarkable application that delivers point and click development so you can do amazing things for your business, your customers, organization and school. Rapidly build a corporate intranet from scratch. Create custom client web applications based on templates you’ve created. Place your classroom online and offer your students mobile access from an iPhone, iPod touch or Google Android. “

As you can see it also has the ability to deploy views that work on the iPhone, iPod, or Android. These views are options that are set with the click of a checkbox.

The ModelBaker client is a Mac only client the is written in Objective C. The deployment and creation of the application is accomplished using the CakePHP and EXT JS frameworks. The current version does full server side validation but only stubs out code for client side validation. Jonathan mentioned that full client side validation is on the way.

Another upcoming feature that was discussed was the ability to take and existing database and create the MVC application around it. I have seen a few applications that do this but most were prototypes that were not ready for production use.

To complete the meeting, Jonathan generously supplied all attendees with a free license to the ModelBaker package. If you would like to get a demo or read more about ModelBaker you can head over to WidgetPress.

More Meetup Information

At this months Meetup we did something a little different with part of the time. Even though we were near record attendance we went around the room and had everyone introduce themselves, tell us what they did, and what future topics they would like to have presented. Although it takes a while to get around the room it was enjoyable to find out what each persons job and interests were. This way if you needed some assistance or wanted to organize a group around a specific topic then you could quickly identify who to speak with.

With each Meetup we also go over local events, new, and upcoming conferences.

News:

Zend Server CE Released

The PHP consulting company launched – thephp.cc

PHP 5.2.9 Released

Zend Server Beta released

The PHP QA book is in the works – qualityassuranceinphpprojects.com

Ibuilding launched TechPortal – techportal.ibuildings.com

Conferences happening now that you can follow

PHP Quebec

Twitter Hash: #phpquebec

Web: http://cond.phpquebec.com

DrupalCon DC dc2009

Twitter Hash: #drupalcon

Web: http://drupalcon.org

Upcoming Conferences

PHPtek – tek.mtacon.com -Chicago

International php conferences – Berlin

DC PHP – dcphp.com – Washington DC

Dutch PHP – phpconference.nl

OSCON en.oreilly.com/oscon2009

EXT JS – Orlando

Upcoming PHP related events are also tracked on the PHP Community Calendar http://calendar.phpcommunity.org

Local Happenings

A new Atlanta Javascript Meetup has been organized.

Asterisk Install Day

Atlanta PHP Specific

Atlanta PHP recently became an LLC and as is looking to rebrand. The goal is to raise $300 and host a contest on 99designs to get a new logo.

The group is also looking to host a PHP Day which will be a day long seminar all about PHP. If you are interested then please let the organizers know so that there is a better change of making that happen.

Atlanta PHP is planning on putting together an event to support the PHP QA test fest. For more information on test fest visit TestFest 09

The new Atlanta PHP wiki is up and awaiting your entries.

You can follow Atlanta PHP happenings and updates on Twitter: @AtlantaPHP