[raptor93]

Add-on Frontend Web Development

Name: Ashish Verma

Forum nick: raptor93

E-mail: [email protected]


Summary:
The current Kodi Add-on frontend is amazing, though it lacks some important features. This project intends to add some necessary features to the add-on frontend to make it much more developer and user friendly. This might ultimately attract even more add-on developers and users! Also, the entire PHP based front-end needs to and will be migrated to a suitable PHP framework to ease the management and development of the frontend.


How will I achieve this:
This will be achieved by:
1) Migrating the frontend to a PHP framework (Symfony)
2) Implement a user authentication system
3) Add all the features on top of this developed platform
A solid and flexible database design would be one of the main focus throughout the project.


Benefits:
All the add-on developers and users would benefit from this project. The result would be an easier way for developers to submit and review their add-ons, and users would be able to browse the add-ons in a much more easier and efficient way. This might even attract more add-on developers and users!


Goals:
This project will be carried out in more of a continuous manner, developing small parts of project in each step so that there is transparency, and bugs can be rectified easily.

The core goals would be to:
1) Migrate the frontend to a PHP framework (Symfony)
2) Implement a user authentication system

Main features to be implemented:
1) Add-on version history and changelog
2) Filter add-ons by the Kodi version
-- Milestone for mid-term evaluations. --
3) Add screenshot and demo video support
4) Add-on ratings (along with rating statistics)
5) Post comments/reviews (which would be rated as helpful/not helpful)

Extended list of features. These would be implemented as the time permits. GSoC and beyond...
1) Implementing a developer/admin portal and a method of add-on submission via the add-on frontend itself.
2) Latest add-ons and Featured add-ons section
3) Platform icons for add-ons
4) Developer info for the add-on (email, other add-ons by the developer, etc.)
5) Social networking 'share' buttons


What does it touch in Kodi:
This project will touch the PHP code and underlying database structure behind the add-on frontend.


Requirements:
A nice knowledge of PHP, MySQL DB and other web technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript is essential for this project. I have a fair bit of experience building websites/web-applications and working with PHP based frameworks and applications.


Possible mentors:
da-anda, zag


I'd love to have feedback and suggestions for my proposal.
Thanks!

[da-anda]

proposal sounds good to me. I added myself and zag as mentors. Do you have some reference work/website that you worked on to show? And do you have plans for a particular template engine? Twig?

[raptor93]

Thanks!

I have few websites that I developed that are still live:
- http://srijanism.org/mun/ismmun2014 (website for my college's Model United Nations; archived)
- http://ashishverma.me (my own webpage)

Most of the PHP based work that I've done has been closed source in nature. I interned last year at a firm where we (me along with my team of four) developed a PHP based payslip management and generation system for a third-party.
However you can view one of the projects I did for my university here. The system is developed in CodeIgniter PHP framework and uses Bootstrap responsive framework for frontend UI.

Yes, I will be using Twig template engine, as it is inbuilt in Symfony framework.

[colek42]

Using a python framework might integrate better with XBMC, no?

[da-anda]

this is about a website running on a webserver, not an Add-on

[colek42]

this is about a website running on a webserver, not an Add-on

I understand....

[Kib]

More specifically, this is about a feature add / rewrite of http://addons.kodi.TV

[raptor93]

Submitted my proposal a day ago. Really excited!

As of now, I've been hacking around the existing add-on frontend codebase and building a small application using Symfony to familiarize myself with it.

[da-anda]

@raptor93 - don't look too much on current codebase - it's a mess