TM-FORUM

Edit: November 15th, 2010
ManiaLib 1.0 beta was release, check post #14
/Edit


Hello everyone,

My mission at Nadeo was to develop the ManiaTeam game mode. I therefore developped a set of small but pratical libraries to help creating and maintaining Manialinks. In the end, we decided with the team that the project should be given back to the community as an open source project. There was born ManiaLib, a lighweight and simple developpement framework, written in PHP, for the creation of Manialinks. Even if it comes with basic modules, it isn't an all inclusive solution. It is a set of "building bricks" for PHP developpers.

I invite you all Manialink creators to use this framework. Your precious feedback will help the project to improve.

It is hosted on Google Code, where you can get the source code and some documentation:

I've already written tutorials about the core APIs so that you get rapidly confortable with the basics of ManiaLib. These are the available APIs:

GUI : classes for creating Manialink graphical elements
DatabaseEngine : database abstraction layer
RequestEngine : handling of GET variables and referers, creation of links and redirections
SessionEngine : manipulation des variables de session
LangEngine : internationalization
MultipageList : page numbering helper

Some basic modules are also provided to help developpers making other modules:

Admin: secure authentication to make admin panels
Posts: generic content management
Auto Connect: forced user identification

The ideal working condition is to use an IDE (Integrated Dev Environment). I personnaly use PHPEclipse plugin for Eclipse, which provides code assist, code completion etc. For those of you who use plain text editors, I made a "cheat sheet": a wallpaper with a reminder of all the core classes with their public methods and properties.

There are two way to get the source code. You can either download the latest release from the project's website - this is the simplier - or you can checkout the latest revision from the SVN repository - if you now SVN, this is the ideal, checkout from trunk/manialib-example.



Don't hesitate to post any feedback in this thread.

Max

Nice one!

manialinks are difficult but this looks more..................

that looks promising, well done

Obviously this is not a tool for Manialinks beginners. It is meant for developpers who already know Manialinks and PHP and who want to save time and effort on development.

So why do you recommend an IDE? (just curious thats all, if it's not for beginners..)
Has it got mega-complicated API or something?

Well done, btw!

Actually the APIs are really simple. When I say it is not for beginner, I mean that someone who never wrote a line of code may want to start with learning XML, then PHP. You still have to know what a class or an object are for instance, which may not be obvious at first.

About the IDE, I recommend it because it has the same goal as a framework : make you save a great deal of time and effort by providing useful tools. For example: PHP parser, which tells you in real time when you forgot a semi-colon or when you type the wrong variable name, code completion, code navigation (CTRL+click on a function or a class opens its declaration), debugging and much more. It is for sure more complicated to install and configure and learn, but the time you take to do that will be soon enough saved back.

Great work gou1!!!

I will take a look, if i can help call me, i have much experience with ingame manialinks creations.

Greetings.

Hi, very nice work
Have you got any working examble to start "playing" with?

Thanks Ap0VTx

The archive actually is an application example.

Yes thank you i finally understood how it works some hours after the post

I have already started to turn my team's manialink funteam with the script (offline yet!)

Apovtx



*EDIT*:Is there a way to change the "sizen" or the "posn" to "size" and "pos"? (I fount it finally)

There's no built-in feature to do that. I strongly recommend using posn and sizen since it's the newest positioning system.

Edit: nice article about that: http://funtrackers.bplaced.net/forum/sh ... 3#posarten

You could hack the code of the gui api, but I guess it would be a bit tricky to get all things working well.

Thank you for your reply.

I found how to change but then a realize that all the gui api had to change as well so i turned it back to original. I know the "...n" system but the whole manialink is written in the other form so it would be more complicated to change it.

Anyway i will re-write the whole manialink with the manialib

Thanks
Apovtx

Hi,

Today we are releasing ManiaLib 1.0 beta !

Why a beta? While the code is stable, the documentation is still light, therefore the package is better made for experienced developers.

You just need to download the package, unzip it, and follow the instructions of the Readme.

To get the latest version: http://manialib.com

To see the API reference: http://api.manialib.com

To see the demo manialink: ManiaLib

Have fun, and don't hesitate to give us your feedback !

Nice stuff! ...a bit over my head most of it but looks very handy

Thx for sharing