Symphony.

Hi,

Brand new user of Symphony, i was wondering what was the best way to use Symphony with editing software like Panic Coda or Espresso on a Mac ?

Could some of you explain how to get the best potential working both for development ? For instance, do you first create the pages in Symphony and then code in the editors, or do you create directly the XSL pages in the editor then built the site in Symphony, etc.

Which kind of remote do you use ? Only for the workspace ?

Thanks a lot for your advises.

Emmanuel

My particular process is split into three phases:

1. Information architecture
2. Environment setup
3. Implementation

Before I do any development, I usually have a good idea of the site's requirements such as its data structure (sections + data sources), URL/sitemap (pages), components (utilities and extensions) and interactions (events).

When it comes time to configure the system environment, my particular build order is outlined below:

1. Create sections
2. Define data sources
3. Create pages and attach data sources
4. Create utility skeletons (no code, just the files)
5. Create events (this step is sometimes done after the initial round of implementation)

The above steps can either be done contained within a single section or done in a batch across multiple sections and pages. This depends on the scale of scope and complexity of the project and how much of the project's specs are already designed.

Once the environment is set up, this is when I usually dig into code implementation. This includes, XSLT, PHP and any other work that involves a text editor.

For coding, I use a combination of Textmate and Espresso. I find Espresso better at file management across a project. Its project-wide search system is great and I generally find it easier to navigate and control files within a project than Textmate. On the other hand I find Textmate much better at code editing. I like the bundle system and I regularly use: remove trailing spaces, XML/HTML tidy, diff and more recently, zencoding in Textmate.

The other apps I use regularly with Symphony development are:

• Transmit for S/FTP
• Terminal for SSH/Git
• TestXSLT for XSLT experiments and testing
• AquaPath for fancy XPath experiments and testing

Lastly, my primary browser is Chrome.

I use Textmate and usually open my entire project (the root, including manifest, symphony, workspace folders, but leave them collapsed unless I need them. I have the missing drawer plugin, and code highlighting set up just how I like it. I also have an XSLT bundle so that I can type choose or var or if and have a code skeleton for the XSL element laid out for me.

I rarely use FTP these days, it's more trouble than it's worth... so apps like Espresso and Coda that let you work directly on a remote server are like sin in my eyes. I use Gitbox to manage my repositories and push files to remote repos on Github, Codebase and beyond.

I'm much the same as Nick, although I just use straight Terminal for git related commands

I just use straight Terminal for git related commands

Nerd.

Thanks a lot for your reply

I use Coda and work directly off the server. For development, obviously a development server and not live.

I'm not 100% familiar with git, so I just use Terminal to download extensions and upload them via FTP (or Coda in my case).

I find Coda brilliant for it's one window development. I've tried loads of editors (TextMate, BBEdit, Expresso to name a few of the popular ones) and always go back to Coda.

I'm curious... Since I'm getting the hang of git and love the way to push up and down and so on, I'm wondering how it would be easiest to manage extensions. as for now i just pull the symphony master repo and do a submodule init command and then add all the additional extensions.

next to that I have a seperate workspace for the project i'm working on.

Now is there a way to attach the extensions that are being used for the workspace to that workspace as submodules but have them install at the right place (confusing i know)

any ideas how to do this the best way?

Yes

git submodule add path/to/the/extension/on/git extensions/extension_name

And then commiting this result will save the extension submodule to your repo.

Wherever you pull this repo, git submodule init will do the default Symphony extensions as well as any you added.

But when my repo is the workspace and I add submodules I would have to add the extension like that:

git submodule add path/to/the/extension/on/git ../extension/extension_name

does this work?

in short: symphony has extensions as submodules can my workspace have extensions as submodules as well?

I would like to keep the symphony repo as the main repo so I can easily update. Or is it better practice to pull it and then push it onto a private repo and work from there?

Rowan wrote a useful article Using git and Symphony CMS which touches on this.

I guess it makes the most sense to just treat each site as it's own and give it it's own symphony repo. And then manually update if you want...

Thanks!

I guess it makes the most sense to just treat each site as it's own and give it it's own symphony repo.

What were you thinking?

Rowan wrote a useful article

So have I, to be submitted to the team, it's not finished yet though...

I guess it makes the most sense to just treat each site as it's own and give it it's own symphony repo

That's my ethos.

Edit: Link to article

@Lewis

Basically: 1: cloning the symphony repo initializing the submodules 2: creating a workspace directory and init as a new repo 3: link extensions to the workspace directory so they can be initialized easily

That way it's possible to pull new updates from symphony...

But number 3. doesn't really work I guess ;)Blockquote

Rowan wrote a useful article Using git and Symphony CMS which touches on this.

How do you use Rowan's approach without getting conflicts when you pull?

@Lewis, pull from where? And conflicts with? Rowan's approach has no remote link to the Symphony repo...

pull from where? And conflicts with? Rowan's approach has no remote link to the Symphony repo...

Well, I tried to pull from the official Symphony repository and I guess you can't do that if you did not clone it.

Oxygen XML has been a really helpful tool for developing for Symphony. It also can installed in the Eclipse IDE.

There is a great read on the search/need for a macosx texteditor over here. Since textmate feels abandonware, and espresso had some quirks(anyone using a recent version ?), I am thinking of simply starting a new with textwrangler, free in the mac app store...

Are there plugins for xsl code completing, code highlighting, and skeleton/snippets, for textwrangler (or espresso)

Or is anyone using KOD or sublimetext already fulfilling these features...