The JDSparkle plugin for CakePHP makes it easy for Mac developers to integrate Sparkle’s update and system profiling API with your CakePHP website, and it’s available now on github.
While developing the next release version of Balthisar Tidy (currently
buildable from source) I’d decided to release it using the
ubiquitous Sparkle framework in order to allow Tidy
to update itself automatically. While it would have been simple to dump some static XML
documents into app/webroot, I decided to make a proper CakePHP plugin to handle the process
for me.
Main Features
- Serves the XML appcast that Sparkle requires in order to check for available updates. - Serves the HTML document that Sparkle can use to display release notes in your application’s update notification window. - Collects system profile information from Sparkle if your application has it enabled, including support for any arbitrary tag. - Presents simple reports indicating basic statistics for all of your applications which have reported profile information.
Documentation
You can have a look at the full documentation on its gh-pages branch.
Version 2.0
I’m not actively developing version 2.0 yet, but if I were (and if you want to contribute) I would do some of the following:
- Git rid of the static XML views in favor of a database solution, including a version editor admin page. - Add a helper or two for displaying reporting data.
- Add a component to expose reporting data to your own view controllers. - Log and/or count application contacts (currently logging is only done for your applications using system profiling).