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Need help building a new eve app
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Dunpeal Hunter
Zervas Aeronautics
#1 - 2015-03-24 01:20:13 UTC
Hello. I want to make an eve online application, but i could use some help with certain things.

The application i want to build will look a lot like https://www.evething.org, but with more of an emphasis to industry, asset management and market orders and analysis. The application will be only for private use.

I know exactly what i want, how i want it, but the problem is that i don't know how to code! Is there anyone who can tell me what an easy to step in development code program is that has a large library of preferably video tutorials on how to work with the program in easy to understand English or Dutch language?

I want to work with one of the programs of http://www.turnkeylinux.org since that seem most easiest to use on my own pc without spending money on a subscription to a webhost.

I also off course want to make use of the API's that Eve has, so a website with tutorials (again preferably with videos in either English or Dutch) on how to integrate the API with the application, or a API library that has sufficient documentation for newbro's like myself would be a big help.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I dont know if this is important or not, but i have chickens.....
Selaria Unbertable
Bellator in Capsulam
#2 - 2015-03-24 11:18:46 UTC
Dunpeal Hunter wrote:
Hello. I want to make an eve online application, but i could use some help with certain things.

The application i want to build will look a lot like https://www.evething.org, but with more of an emphasis to industry, asset management and market orders and analysis. The application will be only for private use.

I know exactly what i want, how i want it, but the problem is that i don't know how to code! Is there anyone who can tell me what an easy to step in development code program is that has a large library of preferably video tutorials on how to work with the program in easy to understand English or Dutch language?

I want to work with one of the programs of http://www.turnkeylinux.org since that seem most easiest to use on my own pc without spending money on a subscription to a webhost.

I also off course want to make use of the API's that Eve has, so a website with tutorials (again preferably with videos in either English or Dutch) on how to integrate the API with the application, or a API library that has sufficient documentation for newbro's like myself would be a big help.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


This will be a rather long post, but I do write from my own experience as a hobby programmer. My first question is: Do you have any programming experience at all? If not, this seems like a rather ambitious project. Not impossible, but a lot of learning, experimenting, failing and more learning.

Starting with a web application is quite brave. There are a lot of different things coming together. There is HTML/CSS for layout and design, databases for storing information from various sources (not necessarily only the EVE API), and a programming language that allows for viewing and manupulating the stored data. I'll try to cover those three fields briefly:

HTML and CSS
Don't bother with trying to do this yourself, especially the CSS part. HTML itself isn't that difficult, if you understand how it works. CSS on the other hand... I suggest using a library for that, like bootstrap, which provides a lot of easy to use css classes as well as javascript functions that add some additional fancy stuff. It's way easier to work with that than trying to write everything yourself.

Database/SQL
This is a big thing. Designing tables the right way, choosing the right keys and writing SQL queries that connect different tables from different databases is kind of an art. I've done this for the last year for my own application, and I still have "Heureka!" moments. The database dump provided by CCP isn't very good documented, although in most cases you can ask around here, there are some good programmers in this sub forum that can help you with specific questions.

The programming language
Depends on your experiences, whether you have programmed before or not. If not, any language may or may not be good for you. For web applications, PHP is probably one of the most common ones. Lots of tutorials, lots of libraries. All you need is a good editor and a testing environment, and you're ready to make your first steps. Which brings me to the last point...

Development and testing environment
Depending on the language you choose, you'll need a good editor for that language, preferably one that also supports javascript, html and css.
For the database server I suggest the community edition of MySQL. It's free, and most languages have an API for it.
A web server of your choice (for PHP you can use Apache with the php module) and that's it. There are packages combining these programs, like XAMPP.
You could also think about setting up a virtual machine on your desktop, for experimenting as well as installing the servers you need. Easier to fix or reinstall a virtual machine than your desktop, too.


Oh, and programming isn't really writing code and being pleased that it works exactly as it should... Programming is mostly like this: http://i.imgur.com/x8vdMEF.jpg ;)
Dunpeal Hunter
Zervas Aeronautics
#3 - 2015-03-25 07:43:48 UTC
Thanks for the info! I appreciate it.

Perhaps i should clarify though that i do know certain stuff, like mysql, apache and linux. I know how to install them, and use them in a basic way. I am not a pro at them in any way, but i know enough to for example install evething on a private server :)

I dont know if this is important or not, but i have chickens.....
Louis Vitton
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#4 - 2015-03-26 01:57:54 UTC
Vagrant is also a good idea if your going to be doing constant dev and you can easily keep the code on your PC not the VM so you can edit it locally and use the VM for database and web services.