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kai_desu's avatar

Codex - A weekend Laravel project to help with (Markdown) documentation

Hey guys! I've just recently wrapped up a small weekend project that I think everyone here would like.

Codex is aimed to help ease the means to creating and hosting documentation for your projects. It's simple in functionality, built on Laravel (4.2), uses Markdown, and completely open source.

See it in action here or visit the code on GitHub.

I'd love any feedback anyone may have!

0 likes
15 replies
chrisgeary92's avatar

Darn, you beat me.. This was going to be one of my projects. But, nice job. I haven't tried it out yet, but I will soon :)

1 like
milon's avatar

really nice work. Keep it up.

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slovenianGooner's avatar

Wow that looks great. Is it compatible with L5. By compatible I mean that there won't be many major changes when L5 comes out?

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kai_desu's avatar

@slovenianGooner, there shouldn't be too much of a change as it's a fairly simple application. I think the biggest update to be made would be switching over to the new folder structure of L5. I may tackle that by just starting with a clean L5 installation and moving things over one-by-one.

I do plan on upgrading it to L5 once it's released and tagging Codex as v2.0.

@chrisgeary92, don't let me stop you! It's a great learning experience (especially dealing with static files). I look forward to seeing what you build!

chrisgeary92's avatar

@kai_desu I'm probably going to wait for L5 before I start it. I have another project I'm working on at the moment anyway. I'll be sure to post a link to it whenever I finish :)

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kai_desu's avatar

@slovenianGooner Unfortunately I don't work in Windows (Ubuntu user here). Could you open an issue on GitHub and post some details/screenshots?

RemiC's avatar

I just needed something like that for my next project :) Thanks

1 like
zoltanpeto's avatar

Hi, Well done, I think a lot of people will make good use of it! I was thinking though, wouldn't it be better to create this as a composer package, the same way as laravel works: laravel/laravel contains an app skeleton, which requires illuminate/framework that provides the basic laravel framework components. This way, codex could be used either as a standalone app or integrated into a any laravel application. What do you think?

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bashy's avatar

Very nice, clean and simple. Will sure use it for my new project :)

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kai_desu's avatar

@zoltanpeto I have thought of that, but as it stands now it's meant to be a stand alone application in of itself. The goal of it is to be as simple as possible with no real setup time so you can get straight into writing documentation.

Codex will be seeing some new features soon (ability to use different storage means, like Git, and user authentication for private documentation). These features wouldn't be something I could add to a laravel package.

With that though I'm not opposed to extracting the core functionality of it out into a package. I understand some developers would like to integrate this within their existing application rather than install codex on a sub domain.

Maybe after Codex 2.0.0 is released (which will be the update to Laravel 5) I might work on a package.

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