[TYPO3-dev] DB app builder

[Francois Suter]

Hi all,

I started a discussion off-list with Tim and he decided to move it here 
for all to take part. I had been thinking for a long time about 
something similar to the extension he developed. I feel like this is 
something like a "missing link" in TYPO3. Actually I had just pitched 
this idea for a session the upcoming Developer Days. Here is what I wrote:

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When creating a TYPO3 web site, it is very often necessary to handle a 
variety of items (publications, wellness travel offers, construction 
machines, real estate offers, etc.) each having their own properties. 
The wanted functionalities are to display a list of items, a detailed 
view of a single item and being able to search the available items. This 
is achieved either by (mis)using tt_news or by developing a custom 
extension.

This is not entirely satisfactory. Given this common pattern, it should 
be possible to develop a series of TYPO3 extensions that would make it 
possible to define a data source (tables in a database, XML feeds, flat 
files, etc.), define some filters and sort criteria on this data source 
and finally display those items (in both list and single view). 
Furthermore it should be possible to create a custom search form more 
specific than just integrating the data from the items into the indexed 
search.

Some pieces of this puzzle exist, others would have to be developed. 
With such a tool it would become possible to display just about any data 
inside a TYPO3 web site. Such a functionality exists in ezPublish and I 
think it would be a big boon for Typo3.
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This idea was accepted and Tim's extension was published in the 
meantime. I discussed the matter further with Karsten Dambekalns (who 
had approved my idea) and he agreed that the session was still justified 
at T3DD06. There's now just one more brick (and quite an important one, 
too) for building this application.

Hopefully people will find this thread interesting and it will feed the 
discussion at T3DD06.

Cheers

-- 

Francois Suter
Cobweb Development Sarl - http://www.cobweb.ch