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Noob Developer Advice?
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Timballisto
Prometheus Academy
#1 - 2012-04-16 15:43:51 UTC
Hi all,

I've been reading around the stickies and I would like to try and develop my own tools.
My first step will be to try the stickied Tutorial.

My second step will be to create my own basic wallet monitoring program that can plot some pretty graphs. This will allow me to monitor my expenses/earnings with relative ease.
This will initially run locally on my Windows XP machine.
This could possibly be extended into a web hosted service and/or an Android app once I learn how to do that too (but these come much later)

So onto my questions Question :
1. Can my 2nd step be done easily as a noob? (or at all?)
2. Based on my above goals should I write the program in Java or PHP or some other program/mix of programs? (Examples?)
3. How often can I query my wallet API?

Cheers,
Tim
LifeHatesMe
LifeHatesUsAll
#2 - 2012-04-16 16:26:09 UTC
If I where you, I would reccomend a easy to use LAMP program for development on "localhost", then a text editor like notepad++, or dreamweaver.

Then, I would reccomend using mysql server, and import the entire database, you can do so from command prompt, or you can use a php script that will do the insert in partitions. (The eve database is very large.. around 73mb compressed, around 500mb uncompressed.)

Once you get used to the way data is stored inside of the eve database, you can choose a API to use for what your looking for. In this case.. I would reccomend one that has database caching.. one of the most prevalent API's is YaPeal.

My 2 cents :)

(Also hosting can be had pretty cheap, I would probably reccomend something like domain.com if you want a shared web hosting plan.)
Desmont McCallock
#3 - 2012-04-16 17:15:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Desmont McCallock
Go with PHP as you want to make it a web app. So you have to go with MySQL as your DB. HTML/CSS/jQuery/AJAX are essential for web apps. Some javascript knowledge may also be needed for client-side scripts.
As PHP editor I strongly suggest PHPStorm.
Billy Bob Hatfield
#4 - 2012-04-16 18:37:27 UTC
Best advice, choose the language you are most comfortable with and go with that, just make sure you know how to parse XML in that setup.

If you are comfortable with Visual Studio then stick to that. The CCP dump is in SQL server which fits right in with Visual Studio. I have been working on a MS Access database template with the VBACode to pull info from the EVE API and will make it public when I clean it up (and there is interest in it). This is better suited for players who don't want to run a full database setup.

I have also done the open source LAMP setup as well. PHP and MySQL are more than enough to do any sort of data pull and analysis. I don't know if it's updated frequently but I have been using the EVE development network site a lot as a reference (http://wiki.eve-id.net/Main_Page). There are enough people who have converted the CCP dump to MySQL that you use that and avoid SQL Server entirely.

I've even developed some SAS scripts to pull market and corp API data on the servers at my work and do some over the top analysis. I doubt you want to go that far (Dear boss, if you read this it was for research purposes only, honest!).
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#5 - 2012-04-16 19:09:51 UTC
If you check on my site, there are some instructions on how to set up XAMPP (apache, php, mysql, on windows) along with YaPeal (handy way to get API data into your database.

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter
Dragonaire
Here there be Dragons
#6 - 2012-04-17 03:56:01 UTC
Steve Ronuken wrote:
If you check on my site, there are some instructions on how to set up XAMPP (apache, php, mysql, on windows) along with YaPeal (handy way to get API data into your database.
I personally find Bitnami's version of WAMP server easier to work with. http://bitnami.org/stack/wampstack as it's better configured out of the box IMHO for most people and what I recommend to people using Yapeal but any of them will work.

Finds camping stations from the inside much easier. Designer of Yapeal for the Eve API. Check out the Yapeal PHP API Library thread.
Timballisto
Prometheus Academy
#7 - 2012-04-17 19:59:48 UTC
Hi all, thanks for the great & helpful replies.

So far I've tried the tutorial but kept making lots of silly mistakes so have put that on hold.
I think I like the look and feel of PHP so I'll start off with that for now.
I need to start from the basics of PHP and move back onto tutorial once I know what most of the tags are doing.

I've downloaded NetBeans IDE to help me track the development of the projects and Notepad ++ for any quick edits. (Highlighting is a life saver! Lol)

In addition to this I have XAMPP installed with Apache and MySqL running.
Now comes the hard part...... learning Roll

Tim
Dragonaire
Here there be Dragons
#8 - 2012-04-18 03:37:25 UTC
I'll have to agree PHPStorm is a great editor but if you want a good free editor Komodo edit is also good I used it and the full IDE version for several years before starting to use PHPStorm for the last 6 months or so. I'd also suggest picking up a couple books on PHP from either O'Reilly or Sitepoint as it's usually much easier to read it and try their examples than just working from stuff online.

Finds camping stations from the inside much easier. Designer of Yapeal for the Eve API. Check out the Yapeal PHP API Library thread.
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#9 - 2012-04-18 04:16:34 UTC
Oh, something /seriously/ worth getting.

A versioning system. Git, svn, something along those lines.

If you don't mind the source being available to others, there's github. if you'd prefer it to be private, there's bitbucket. (or work up something local) some clients are http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-windows-git-clients-git-job/

Just check in your code, when you're happy with the state (intermediate states, not just 'finished')

That way, if you screw up, you can revert it back.

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter
Dragonaire
Here there be Dragons
#10 - 2012-04-18 07:11:06 UTC
I'd say Git or Mercurial and just work with a local repo should be enough until you're ready to make something generally available. Both even let you export to others and accept patches/pulls etc so no real need for anything public except if you feel a need to.

Finds camping stations from the inside much easier. Designer of Yapeal for the Eve API. Check out the Yapeal PHP API Library thread.
Desmont McCallock
#11 - 2012-04-18 08:55:13 UTC
VCS (version control system) is mandatory when developing. Enough said.
Khorkrak
KarmaFleet
Goonswarm Federation
#12 - 2012-04-18 13:43:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Khorkrak
Check out http://flask.pocoo.org/ for an easy way to develop web applications with well written tutorials in a superbly designed scripting language, Python. I also highly recommend PostgreSQL over MySQL. A fine example is EVE Central Source written in clean, well tested Python code and running on PostgreSQL. They're switching to Scala which is another excellent language.

Developer of http://www.decloaked.com and http://sourceforge.net/projects/pykb/
Osku Rei
Pixel 6
#13 - 2012-04-18 15:02:31 UTC
http://www.assembla.com/

Is good for free, private /public source control (SVN, Git or Merc). 1GB of space per repo (unlimited repo's I think) and unlimited (?) contributes.

Next generation of lottery tracker coming soon! http://evelotterytracker.com/

Please like my post if it has helped you :)
Jim Luc
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#14 - 2012-04-18 23:59:12 UTC
Aptana is a great editor if you're making a web-based front-end application (PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript). It also has a convenient console for ssh & ant scripts. And it also is free.

Eclipse also benefits from the huge amount of plugins available. PHPStorm is also great though, I used to use it quite a bit for JS dev.