I’m starting on making my own template and I’m wondering: if you make your own project templates, then what templates do you have (e.g. templates for different project types?) and what items do you include?
Recommendations are of course much appreciated.
I have templates for each each DBMS platform that I use. Each includes a login prompt as well as a SQLlite db to store connection info.
Having at least one stable template is very important for being productive. So I invest serious time in templates and which every possible general function I add to an application I ask myself the question if it would be valuable for adding to a template. Most of the time I even don’t remove the stuff which is not in use by the application, since the size of the compiled program is not the biggest issue.
So creating a SQLite file with default configurations, licences etc. is part of my main-template. So my application by default have logging for critical user-interaction. ,The (encrypted) database is created when the program starts for the first time. In case of exceptions I store all the available data there. Once the customer has any complains I ask for this file and have all the information I need, user history, exceptions occurred, but also his OS details, Xojo version etc.
I also have some unit testing code included, but this I leave out of deliverables by conditional compilation.
Now I am thinking of creating a template-builder application that gives me a Window with all the options to enable or disable for the application-development-start.
Another thing I want to say is that templates are more or less developer- or team-specific. A template is best to be designed by yourself following your programming strategies and logic. It grows with the developer, has no secrets.
Most of the time I have this code encrypted in the navigation pane, just to avoid accidentally hitting this code.
Last but not least, I do seriously try to find the time to have a template documented.
Xojo is positioned as a RAD environment, and templates help you to be more RAD and stable.