Abstract
A possession inventory website for organizing and tracking ones possessions.
What
The site will allow one to inventory ones possessionts. Adding an item (book, cd, dvd, video game, etc) by some pice of information (UPC, title, author, artist, etc) and store the pertinant details in a database for future reference.
The site will allow one to create information for "borrowers" to track lending. Perhaps with deadlines for return timeframes and contact information for initiating the return process (nagging).
Read only access for certain amount of information (gifting purposes).
Why
I've always wanted the ability to enter a new cd, dvd, book, etc into a site for multiple reasons:
- For gifts: everyone can know what I already own.
- For lending: keeping track of which of my loser friends has absconded with something.
- For insurance purposes: have a complete record of possessions in the house.
There are a few programs for Mac OS that do this with a SQLlite interface, but they don't offer good publishing mechanisms.
A few of the existing web solutions are highly specialized for one type of product at the expense of others.
Todo
Use php with remote XML. Perhaps some AJAX for searching or other interactive type site behaviors (auto-complete borrowers, etc). AJAX is a new technology for me.
Intend looking up items from Amazon via UPC or other search string (XML Soap/RPC interface). Then storing various bit of pertinent information in MySQL.
For movies: perhaps looking up the movie information from IMDB for ease of searching. Since IMDB is owned by Amazon: it may be that Amazon provides enough information or that we're not interested in additional details like plot summaries. It may be enough to be able to link to IMDB on demand. This remains to be seen.
I have some concern for the potential complexity of MySQL database structure. However, I think this can be made general enough for this project where the main goal is to store a consistent basic level of information for each "type" of item.
Missing Feature List
Also known as the airing of the dirty laundry:
- More Ajax - specifically on searches (string search without type take a while)
- Ability For Users to edit/change their information. Never quite got there.
- Authentication is "weak" (and non-SSL too)
- Better filtering of item views - limit to my items, items of a specific user, etc (probably cookie based?)
- "Power" Item Adding - searching specific fields (title, author, combination)
- "Power" Searching of existing items - closely related to the previous item.
- Paginating Search results - both local and Amazon searches
- Reminders to due items - the framework is there (borrowers with email addresses)
- Allow user to request to borrow an item (probably via email to owner)
- Chicken and egg problem for initial admin user. Pre-populate the db tabl?
- "Weird" Firefox CSS issues (aka where is Firefox 3 and inline-block?)
- html entities or slashes or both in item details (sigh, so much time wasted)
- Better referrer checking (possible data disclosure bug if the right AJAX page is hit).