Using Open Source Frameworks to Build an Agile Real Estate Web App

I have been working on web sites for real estate agents for a few years now. Over the years I have built these sites on a LAMP platform with my own simple code base. As I worked with more and more agents the codebase and feature set grew and grew, hours became days and days became months. I always attempted to extend to, and have worked toward, creating a codebase that could serve as a hosted web application for real estate agents. There are many competitors in the space, but hey, there’s always room for one more!

Back in November, we demonstrated some of Simuagent’s functionality at the NAR tradeshow in New Orleans. We were planning the launch very soon thereafter, however I decided to hold off. Some of the features weren’t complete and my codebase was getting a bit out of hand. Basically, we were able to release early, but were not going to have the ability to release often.

Last year, I was working with xajax. For me, xajax worked for individual sites when I needed a some ajax features, but I lacked javascript knowledge to extend and relied heavily on releases of new features. Releases seemed to come to a stop after April. So, I began hunting for a solid frameworks to port my code, designs, feature set and ideas to create an agile environment. I also spent alot of time with YUI, prototype, and scriptaculous for javascript, and cake, and code igniter for php. After weighing out the advantages of all the available frameworks, the hunt ended with Dojo and Symfony.

Kick ass tools, documentation, and community support.

Dojo won me over with the slick interfaces, abundance of functionality, documentation for integrating with symfony, strong contributors and community, and potential of Dojo Offline Storage. Symfony brings …

• simple templating and helpers
• cache management
• smart URLs
• scaffolding
• multilingualism and I18N support
• object model and MVC separation
• Ajax support
• enterprise ready

Stay tuned for the announcement of the bells, whistles, and buzzword compliant simulagent release. We will be sending out invites to our private beta in the upcoming weeks. Enter your email address at simulagent.com.