Re: [Keelgroup] What could be a good example to read for a newbie ?

Arnaud,


> I am really new to Keel, I read about it a few weeks ago in the 
> article about adding services to Keel (jazzy), and as I was getting 
> desperate on Monday (writing my first J2EE app without any framework 
> at all: writing ugly "presentation and logic mixed" jsp, plus beans 
> with SQL code all over the place), I recalled this article, spent 
> all day reading about the philosophy of the "meta framework" and got 
> a go from my boss to try it.
> 

Welcome aboard!  We have realized many times that the initial Keel experience
could be made better, your's and others' feedback is helpful for improving
that.  I am CC-ing the user list, so we could get folks like Machiel who said
the same thing recently get involved in this discussion.

> Starting early from tuesday, I read the wiki, the HandsOn,pdf and 
> the manual (which is a very interesting read btw, but whereas the 
> philosophy is well detailed, the "Writing a Keel application" part 
> is nearly empty). However, it took me 3 days to accomplish the real 
> basics: getting a Hello World message and making Keel work on a 
> "test" mysql database (The worst part is probably that I feel more 
> proud than ashamed about it... I didn't find it simple).
> 

Since Keel is quite familiar to me, I sometimes don't see the newbie problems
right away (and I bet the other developers are the same way).  The entire goal
of the HandsOn tutorial was to enable a quick start to Keel, as a supplant to
the hetting started tutorial on the Wiki.  Bteween those, what exactly would
have helped you get started sooner? We have discussed spending less time on
new services and trying to make the new user experience better, so provide
some examples of what you think is missing.

> Anyway, at that point, I am left wondering what would be the best 
> example of a "simple" application accessing a database and 
> displaying the content. Should I read one of the app-* provided ? If 
> yes, which one ? Does someone have a dummy little program showing 
> basic interaction with Struts and Persistence via Keel ?
> 

How about app-register?  It is a little meatier than app-hoj, but not as big
in scope as app-poll.  It was written quite a while back, and may need some
small amounts of cleanup, but I think it could serve as a good example.  Have
a look at it, and I'll help with more documentation on it if needed

> I also wanted to know what was the default persistence service used 
> by Keel.
>
By default, Keel uses Keel persistence.  That is only a configuration setup,
no source code needs to change for you to switch transparently to Hibernate.
 
> Finally, I wanted to thank all the developers of Keel. The start is 
> a nightmare (for instance, a problem with the ant version right at 
> the beginning, because I downloaded the latest Ant to *avoid* 
> problems with Keel 2.0), but if I manage to do my application with 
> Keel, and if this works as advertised, I'm gonna be a fan...
>

I thought 1.6.1 was the latest Ant, and I use that personally.  What problems
did you have with it? Versions older than Ant 1.6.0 will have a problem right
away because those don't support the "import" element, so, before you can even
check for the Ant version, the build errors out.  What do you suggest we do
about this.....is documentation enough?  We can fix by putting in a build.xml
that doesn't use 1.6 features, but then uses "antcall" to invoke the real one
...but we have too many l;evels of indirection already.  

In anycase, what would turn the nightmare to a dream....give us a list
(inviting all newbies here).  Not saying we'd get to all of them, but we will
make an attempt to address this.  I will even add selected doc, but I can't
promise that will get fixed overnight.
 
 
> Arnaud
> 
> PS: I didn't bother to set the proxy for the install, so I manually 
> fetched source zips and ran "ant install-keeltools". It worked fine, 
> but I was very surprised when I tried "ant nonetinstall" upon 
> reinstall - 3 days :) - , which should do a "ant install-keeltools" 
> and a "ant assemble-deploy" if I understand well. But then, ant 
> tried to download the packages... Did I do something stupid, or is 
> this a known issue (couldn't find a trace of it in the mailing list 
> or the Wiki).

I'll try the Ant nonetinstall and fix if necessary...not hard at all.  I am
more worried about the 3-day part, let us know more details on what caused it
and what we can do to fix it.