Welcome to the repository for ProTalk, an online community resource providing a central point of access to audio/ video content with a PHP focus.

ProTalk is an open-source project built using Symfony 2. We welcome contributions from developers of all skills levels.

###Bugs

If you're too busy, or just not quite ready to help us work on the codebase, you can help by finding and reporting bugs to us via the issue tracker.

###Code If you'd like to contribute code, pull requests containing new features or bug fixes are very welcome!

Before getting to work on a new feature, please talk your idea over with a member of the ProTalk development team on the #protalk freenode IRC channel or open an issue in the tracker and wait for the go ahead. We have a roadmap of features that we'd like to incorporate into the site and one of the team may already be working on something similar, so it may save you some time in the long run to talk it over with us first.

###Installation

We have an automated development environment available which can have you up and running 'on the fly' using Vagrant and Puppet. With a single command, this powerful tool can set-up or tear-down a fully functional development environment inside an Oracle VirtualBox. It works on all platforms and is the recommended way to get started with ProTalk.

If you prefer to do things old-school, go ahead and jump down to the Manual Installation instructions at the end of the page.

###Clone the repository

Fork the ProTalk repository, then clone it to your local machine:

$ cd /path/to/where/you/want/the/cloned/repo/to/be
$ git clone https://github.com/{YourGitHubUsername}/protalk.git
$ cd protalk
$ git submodule update --init

To keep your cloned fork up-to-date with the main ProTalk project repository, add it as a remote:

$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/protalk/protalk.git

If you are new to Git and need some help with the basic commands, you may find this basic tutorial useful.

###Vagrant/Puppet Installation

To get up and running you need the following installed on your machine:

• Ruby
• Vagrant
• Oracle VirtualBox

To check if you already have Ruby installed, you can enter this at the command line:

$ ruby -v

Once you have the required software installed, and you have cloned your fork to your computer, navigate to the protalk root directory and run the following cli command:

$ vagrant up

That's it! I know, it's too easy. The first time you run this command, it may take a few minutes to complete. Subsequent invocations should run much faster.

Now, add the following to your hosts file to access the virtual host:

192.168.56.199 protalk.dev

Congratulations, you now have a fully functional ProTalk development environment!

####URLs

You can view the development version of ProTalk in your browser using the following:

• http://protalk.dev

####app/console activities

This is important, if you need to perform php app/console commands as part of your development work, do it inside the Vbox:

$ vagrant ssh
$ cd /var/www         //this is the protalk root directory inside the vbox

Other than that, you can work with the code directly in the location you cloned it to.

####Essential Vagrant Commands

Run this command before closing the VBox window, or shutting down your computer:

$ vagrant suspend

This starts the process again:

$ vagrant resume

Run this to destroy the VBox (removing the development environment completely from your machine):

$ vagrant destroy

This creates a new VBox (use this if you destroyed a previous installation):

$ vagrant up

The following command is a housekeeping action which you shouldn't need to worry about, but its here if you want it:

$ vagrant provision

###Manual Installation

1. Fork the protalk repository
2. Use git clone to get your fork on your local machine
3. Run ant - this will install all dependencies, clear the cache and run tests
4. Make sure the app/cache and app/logs directories are writable by the webserver
5. Create the database and change the parameters.yml in app/config to set the database connection details
6. Run the command "app/console doctrine:schema:create" to create the database tables
7. Import the doc/db/seed_data.sql in your database for initial data
8. Creating a admin user for the backend can be done by running this command: "app/console fos:user:create admin admin@example.com password --super-admin

###Doctrine Migrations

ProTalk uses Doctrine Migrations to enable synchronizing database changes between multiple developers. It works by comparing your changes in the entity classes to your database schema and generate migration files according to the entity changes. Usage:

To check for differences and make new migration file if needed:

$ app/console doctrine:migrations:diff

New migration file will be created under app/DoctrineMigrations, regardless of whether there are any changes in the entities or not.

If you see there are no SQL statements in the newly generated file, you can remove it.

To make changes to the database according to the SQL statements in the migration files, run:

$ app/console doctrine:migrations:migrate

It is necessary to always check for new migrations when you pull new code from Github. To see if you have any new migrations to be executed, run:

$ app/console doctrine:migrations:status

You will see highlighted number in the "New Migrations" section if there are any migrations to be executed.

Please note, that you should never manually modify a table structure that belongs to an entity. Always do a diff and then migrate to update your database. When your diff creates new migration files, it is crucial that you commit these files along with your pull request.

###Writing tests

If you want to contribute by writing unit or functional tests, this is actually quite easy. One example unit test is in the MediaBundle, in src/ProTalk/MediaBundle/Tests/Helpers/Paginator.php. This is a very basic unit test, but shows how testing works: It's simply writing PHPUnit tests for the classes and all methods. For every class there is one test class, and for each method you can have one or more test methods. You should not only test the valid use cases, but also test for error use cases.

###Documenting code

Please make an effort to include DocBlocks to every new file and if you see a file that is missing DocBlocks, make a little effort to add them to that file.

Having documented codebase is a joy for others to work on and makes the code more professional.

###Running the tests

Running the tests is simple. Just go to your project root in a console and run:

$ bin/phpunit

Or if you also want to run tests, checkstyle and linting together just run:

$ ant

####Further Reading

If you want to read more about writing tests for a Symfony2 project, check the Symfony2 documentation