TrickJarrett.com

Database Victory

FINALLY.

I have spent far too long trying to resolve the database issues for Wyrmling, my collection management tool. It now appears to finally be done correctly. I'm using Laravel as the PHP framework and it has a fantastic tool for defining database structure so that it can be stored in git. It took me far too long to sort out the database definitions, but tonight it all ran successfully, including setting up the foreign keys.

Now that the database is setup, I can finally move on to building the remaining 99.5% of the app.

Behemoth morning code

I woke up at 5 this morning and so I decided to finally start implementing stuff on Behemoth, rather than just getting it framed and basically styled.

So, this morning, I figured out login and registration in Laravel. It was overall pleasantly easy. Though I made my life harder as the default identifying field is 'name' with the framework. Because I changed it to be 'username' in the table it didn't work right away. I had to trace through code and update it which took a little longer. That said, I had it all sorted and working in roughly 40 minutes.

I suppose I could have just reverted the table's column name but that breaks the naming structure I have defined so I'd have to go through and update table details.

So, it's fixed and working. Now the real fun can begin.

Behemoth Coding Update

The biggest obstacle to me starting on Behemoth, my collection management software, has been the database. I've had the schema concept for over a year; but, now that I have finally started to sit down and code it I've begun to find issues with it. They are, thus far, all addressable and largely just oversights from the simplistic schema. One example is that I had not fleshed out how exactly I'd track the collection-specific entry details in such a way that would enable the flexibility of the system I envisioned.

I am convinced the idea is sound, it just is proving to require a bit more nuance than I had originally conceived.

As I write more, I am more and more excited to be learning Laravel. Its power has been immediately obvious. Comparing the experience from the work on web apps I've coded entirely on my own for pathing and models, as well as their implementation of database management for deployments, etc. It is just obviously powerful and robust.

Additionally, I'm learning Tailwind CSS. It's an interesting concept which entirely assigns elements to objects rather than adopting the semantic CSS concept where you define larger classes, etc. I will say I'm not yet convinced by it, the way I am with Laravel. But we'll see. Perhaps the simplicity of it will convince me.