Forum OpenACS Development: Classified ads package

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1: Classified ads package
Posted by Roberto Mello on 04/24/03 05:31 AM
Hi all,

I've been modifying the classified ads package written by Deds Castillo and Paul Doerwalds (hope I spelled that right). It's still a work-in-progress, but other folks in the community have asked about it, so I thought about committing it to CVS so others can work on it too.

So where should I commit this to? contrib or the main tree (head?).

Deds and Paul did a great job on the package, but there are some loose ends to tie. Here's a list of things that need to be done in the package that I have gathered so far (Deds, feel free to correct me if I misjudged something):

- Needs User interface
        + Need to display categories better
        + Need to give user an interface to create ads
        + Needs a page that shows ads in a category with custom fields
        + Same for editing ads
- Needs to do categorization better
- Needs to fix several "FIXME" left in the code, especially some                                                                                              inneficient queries
- Probably other stuff that I'm forgetting.

-Roberto

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2: Re: Classified ads package (response to 1)
Posted by Deds Castillo on 04/24/03 06:06 AM
Roberto,

If my memory serves me right I think you've hit the nail right on the head.  Regarding these 3 though:

        + Need to give user an interface to create ads
        + Needs a page that shows ads in a category with custom fields
        + Same for editing ads

I do think I have those already.  Can you mail me a tarball of the package before you commit it to CVS?  I'll just see if what I have will still fit in to any modifications you and Paul have done.

Thanks.

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3: Re: Classified ads package (response to 2)
Posted by Roberto Mello on 04/24/03 07:16 AM
Deds,

AFAICS, the interface currently on the package to create ads is only present on the admin pages, and they are created under no category. Maybe you added other stuff since?

So I adapted part of your admin ad-new pages to take on categories and display an interface. I'll send you a tarball.

-Roberto

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4: Re: Classified ads package (response to 1)
Posted by Peter Marklund on 04/24/03 08:44 AM
Roberto,
I can't really make the call on whether to put the package in contrib or packages. From the sound of this thread though I would put it in packages. We can always move the package to contrib later if it turns out it is too broken. I prefer to take the optimistic route...
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5: Re: Classified ads package (response to 1)
Posted by Peter Marklund on 04/24/03 08:47 AM
Roberto,
I forgot to ask - how does this new classified ads package relate to the current adserver package?
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6: Re: Classified ads package (response to 5)
Posted by Roberto Mello on 04/24/03 05:47 PM
Peter,

As far as I know it doesn't relate to the adserver in any way.  I am not sure if you mean "descendant of" or "interfaces with" by relate.

But adserver integration would be good. The classified-ads packages uses the CR.

I'd be ok with committing this to HEAD (since it's really not complete enough yet to go into oacs-4-6) but then there are several things in oacs-4-6 that I'd like to use that are not in HEAD...

-Roberto

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7: Re: Classified ads package (response to 5)
Posted by Deds Castillo on 04/25/03 08:55 AM
Peter,

Roberto is right in saying that it doesn't relate to adserver in any way.  Classified ads have provisions for extensibility via custom fields so it's aim is to be generic as possible.  This means that you can use it to accomodate real world scenarios where there are categorized products.  I used it for an apartment rental site where the ads are the available rooms, Paul Doerwald used it for a Jobs Posting package and I think Roberto aims to use it for a hierarchical catalog of books.  Notice that each have their own unique properties but also share a common trait -- they being products that can be categorized.

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8: Re: Classified ads package (response to 1)
Posted by Peter Marklund on 04/25/03 09:50 AM

Roberto, Deds, could you please update the package inventory document to indicate when to use the new package and when to use the adserver package. Which one do we recommend. Plans, maintainers? Is adserver made obsolete?

Roberto, we are merging stuff from 4.6 to head soon so should have the features that you need from there.

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14: Re: Classified ads package (response to 8)
Posted by Roberto Mello on 07/16/03 11:16 PM
Peter,

I added the classified-ads package to the package inventory, added information to the adserver package and a few other packages.

-Roberto

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15: Re: Classified ads package (response to 14)
Posted by Samuel Feterman on 12/03/03 01:47 AM
Roberto,

We want to install the classifieds package in Openacs 4.6.3, but the package asks for acs-kernel 4.6.7.

What do we have to do in order to run it in our 4.6.3 version?

Thanks in advance for your help

Samuel

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9: Re: Classified ads package (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 04/26/03 07:34 PM
How did you implemement categorization?  Using the built-in CR categorization tables and types? (I hope? :) :)

This raises a side issue that you don't need to think about now ... Timo's introducing a generalized categorization facility based on his experience working on the Siemen's ShareNet project and eventually we'll want everything to tie into that I do believe.  Right?  Timo?

This sounds like a great package, very useful, good work guys.

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11: Re: Classified ads package (response to 9)
Posted by Deds Castillo on 04/27/03 04:25 PM
Don,

When I was writing it, docs pointed to cr_keywords for categorization of cr-based modules so that's what I used.  Hope that was what you meant by "built-in CR categorization tables and types"? :)

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10: Re: Classified ads package (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 04/26/03 07:40 PM
BTW I agree with Peter - put it in the packages directory, not contrib, this is generally useful.  Since you need some stuff in the 4.6 branch you might just want to wait until after we get HEAD cleaned up in the next two weeks.
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12: Re: Classified ads package (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 04/27/03 07:22 PM
Yeah cr-keywords that's the one.
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13: Re: Classified ads package (response to 1)
Posted by Roberto Mello on 07/16/03 07:00 AM
Hi all,

I imported the classified-ads package to the contrib section of the CVS repository.

The package is not quite there for end-user usage yet (but it's very close), so that's why I decided to put it in contrib. Since a release of oacs-4-6 is due soon, I did not want to delay it and I didn't feel like the package should go on HEAD either (nor do I know if it'll work under HEAD).

Deds, sorry about not sending you the tarball before committing to CVS. I forgot that you had asked me to do that. At least now you can check it for yourself.

Deds, I made some changes to how ads are created, so that ads could be added with a category, instead of added with no category then assigned to one.

I will be working in this package heavily in the next few days, so expect the things that need fix under www/doc/index to be worked on. Contributors welcome.

-Roberto