Project Detail

Description

RdbAdmin

Background:

RdbHost provides SQL databases as a web-service. A client can sign up for a account (which includes a database), and then post queries to that database using http POST requests. Any results are returned as XML or JSON.

A very rudimentary interface is at:
www.rdbhost.com/sql_form.html . To try it, use account name 'r000005' and no password. There is one table, 'test'. That account has only 'SELECT' privileges, sorry.


The Project:

Reimplement 'PHPMinAdmin' (NOT PHPMyAdmin) as a javascript application, using the rdbhost API, and 'XMLHttpRequest' to query the database.
PHPMinAdmin is a PHP script (server-side) which acts on the database through a local database connection, and formats results before sending them to the browser. RdbAdmin will be client-side, acting on the database through the RdbHost webservice. The functionality will be page-for-page identical, with the specific differences (mostly feature eliminations) listed below.
PHPMinAdmin is an open-source product, and it can be used as a 'cut-and-paste' source of html templates and javascript. Some parts of its functionality are implemented with javascript already, and those can be copied and adapted.
Use the JQuery library (alternatives such as MochiKit or Dojo can be considered) wherever it applies, in preference to writing new code.
You will have an account on the server to host downloads, but server-side code execution is neither required nor allowed.
There is no documentation at this point, for the RdbHost API, but the above mentioned 'sql_form' page is definition by implementation of how the webservice works.

Changes from PHPMinAdmin:

1) Each account has only one database, and the creation of databases is handled by existing code. The front page of PHPMinAdmin (with the choose/create database, privilege and processlist functions) can be replaced by a simple account-name/password form.
2) The 'dump' options can be eliminated, as that is handled by existing code.
3) The 'alter database' option can be eliminated.
4) Report execution time with all result displays so that users can tell how long queries take.
5) PHPMinAdmin is written for MySQL admin, and RdbHost uses postgresql, so some details of the interface will need to change accordingly. Sequences, for example, would need to be addressed, while 'auto_increment' option is no longer relevant.
6) At RdbHost, table encoding is always 'utf8', so encoding options can be eliminated.


Reference:
http://phpminadmin.sourceforge.net/

The code should be documented, in English, as it will become open-source (LGPL), and serve as a reference for anybody writing javascript code for use with rdbhost.com.