JSON CSV and autopopulate bugs
18 April
In observance of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, I am currently stopping any actual work on the project (to resume tomorrow). I have started coding the service end points for the iPad app and rethinking the schema. To date I have been using the defaults as dictated by the 3rd party modules but coding the service end point leads me to rethink that it would be a lot better streamline data particularly user data and possible sources where this can come from - the subscription form / and or Facebook (FB Graph is miles away from twitter in terms of data that it can pump into your app - its the biggest DB in the world!). Event calendar and interface to posting events had a new update, there are some issues with this module that needs to be addressed. it is currently forcing the use of a date variable which I may need to conform to, problem is it wipes away whatever registration test data I have already built up.
14 April
An update from Drupal Entity auto populate module fixed the problem but still required my sub fix (if Array - get node from object) to be in place.
Remaining Items prior to demo readiness:
A. Sample App interface - Views for JSON, XHTML, and XML are available and I have coded some of them for the blood donation registration type. I need data to get this off the ground though.
B. Sample iPad app for the interface
C. Ordinary Batch Reports
Features Wish list (probably not make the demo but worth working for this
A. Translation Services - to Filipino
B. Commerce - probably tied up with Donation
10 April
Bugs and issues in posting contents to a group - > I spent the better part of a couple of days trying to resolve an issue regarding posting non registration type contents to an event/group. The bug appeared after an update to Entity and I believe the Entity auto populate module. I just realised this morning that I can easily post them if I create them outside the group and then just add them later (to the group). It is still causes some delays. I also realised that if and when the Red Cross eventually uses this - they will require at least a 1 day seminar to start using the facility since items like fixing the location on the map, use of Display Suite to post articles with pictures and working with the backend (once running will need to be taught. Also some issues regarding protecting my intellectual property - The best way for this to happen is to just let them subscribe to the service, the offer of in motion hosting to act as reseller makes sense for me
I am now working on the back end processes to convert the list of registrants into JSON or XML or CSV for loading into the iPad app. Huge parts of the projects are working but a lot of cleanup needs to be made and maybe some UI customisation mainly to reduce the number of choices that a user can do and minimise possibility of an undetected bug suddenly coming up.
Electronic Registration status - This is up and working with automatic expiration based on the dates. this will need to be revisited again to allow dynamic changes in the schedule as class schedules can be suddenly postponed due to natural calamities and the expiry date need to be moved, Location awareness using the location coordinates should be working at least on iPhone but this is close to useless if the location are inside malls, a better way of doing this is through iBeacons which activates on proximity (just realised how great this is on cinema seats equipped with beacons). .. There are several flavours of passbook type wallets in Android and also for Windows phone as well. Most of them are free but the oldest one has problems with notification, I suspect location awareness is not working for them at the moment. I suspect the issue is full Bluetooth 4.0 compliance, click link - there is a small writeup on which phones are currently compliant, this list actually surprises me, Nokia invented BLE, however as of the article date, their phones are not yet complaint.
Over all I think the site should be ready by Easter or earlier pending the posting bug (I have reported this to the authors of the module but I have no idea how long it will take for them to fix this.