skin the daq

• WARNING #1 – TURN BACK IF YOU AREN'T A CODER. This is experimental code, intended for programmers only, and can really mess up your 'daq experience if you're not careful.

• WARNING #2 – DON'T RUN ANYONE ELSE'S SKINS (YET). Running someone else's skins means you are effectively running their code on your computer, and can expose you to serious security risks.

• WARNING #3 – EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING MIGHT CHANGE FROM UNDERNEATH YOU. I might die, get a real job, rewrite the code base, whatever, so please don't be offended if your hard work is for nought.

That said, if you're a web developer, and you want to help make the 'daq a better place, welcome! I (as you probably can tell), am an engineer, not a designer, and could really use some front end help. That's where you come in. If you know HTML, CSS, HTTP, XSS, cookies, etc., can publish files on the web, and are interested in doing some difficult work for no pay and very little glory, read on.

The 'daq is a completely different code base than the 'dex, which is a nightmare. (Trust me here. Ask C2 if you don't believe me.) All pages are generated by simon, a home rolled template engine (insert religious war here). The page logic generates a dictionary, a template is loaded according to the page, and simon expands the template into html which is returned to the client. Python source for simon is available here: simon.py. You don't need it, but you may find it useful in figuring out what's going on.

Here is where you come in. Those templates can be read in at run time from arbitrary urls. So, to skin the 'daq, you write (or, more likely, modify existing) templates, host them somewhere on the web, and browse the 'daq as normal. Once your skins are fully baked, let me know, and I'll QA them and, maybe, put them in the official build.

Ready to get started?

• First, turn on the debug flag so you can see what's going on. Add a "_debug=1" parameter to a url, like this (we'll use mp3daq.com for these examples): http://www.mp3daq.com/?_debug=1. This will drop a cookie, so all future page turns will have debug information at the bottom of the page. You can turn off debugging info later by adding a "_debug=0" param.
• Next, turn off cacheing. Add a "_nocache=1" parameter to a url. Do a couple page turns, notice in the trace that we're not cacheing pages. When you're not developing, please turn the nocache off with _nocache=0.
• Now take a look at a template. Compiled templates show up in the debug output, but raw templates do not. You can get a template by adding "template=TEMPLATE_NAME" to this page. For example: http://www.mp3daq.com/skin?template=about.tmpl
• Now take a look at the debug output. In particular, look at the raw templates and the datadict sections. Try to figure out what's going on. You may want to run away screaming at this point.
• If you made it this far, great, I bet you can't wait to change something. First, find someplace on the web where you can publish static content, say http://www.myhost.com/xdaq/ . Save a copy of the about template here, so that it is publicly accessible on the web as http://www.myhost.com/xdaq/about.tmpl .
• Now, tell the 'daq to pull skins from your host. Do this by adding a "_skin=http://www.myhost.com/xdaq/" parameter. Do a couple page turns, look at the debug output. Did it find your template? Can you see the request in your logs?
• Lastly, modify the template, rinse, repeat. I'd suggest starting small, say, by adding static text, then move up to pulling data out of the dictionary, then by walking rows, etc.

Easy huh? :) If after looking around some you're still interested, please send me an email. I'm sure there's loads of bugs and improvements to be made.

Some random thoughts:

• This is not for translating strings (or internationalization or localization), this is for wholesale rendering. i18n is coming shortly.
• Again, no guarantees we'll use anything you create, so don't be offended if we don't use your skin.
• I'd really love to have a mobile skin (or maybe an iPhone skin? a facebook app?)
• If possible, please stay true to the Case Game core values: keep it fun, simple, fast, cheap, and honest.
• ... and most importantly — have fun!

Thanks again, and please do keep in contact if you have any questions or comments.

– Colin

PS: Head over to the developers group to join in the discussion.