Just open sourced my 10k LOC PHP & MySQL invoicing app

by renownedmedia • 14 years ago

129 97 14 years ago

manelvf• 14 years ago

How many users did you have?

There was only about 120 users at its peak. I hesitated, was never ready to make it a real money-making business, and therefor didn't really advertise it.

Alan012522• 14 years ago

I've a few questions if you have the time.

Did you never charge? Or were you charging? What were the reasons it was / you were not ready to make it a money making business? Any mistakes or lessons learned while building/running the software? Where did the 120 users come from?

As someone who is looking to create their own product soon I'd be really grateful for any response you can give.

Thanks

Alan

obituary_latte• 14 years ago

Is that mochaUI? Looks like it.

Tried using it recently and it actually was quite nice despite the lack of docs and other various hiccups.

At any rate, thanks for putting it out.

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

Yeah, it's MochaUI. About two years ago, the project was mostly un-maintained, I haven't looked at it recently though.

markhuus2• 14 years ago

I can't believe you hardcoded this for MySQL instead of using PHP's excellent and versatile PDOs, and I can't believe the 10k line count. Gosh. Is "de-engineering" a suitable term here? Thumbs up for open sourcing your work, though.

markhuus2• 14 years ago

No I'm serious here, renownedmedia. Don't disregard my rant with a silly downvote, but do instead indulge yourself in the PDO methods instead of painting yourself and your projects into corners: http://php.net/manual/en/book.pdo.php

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

It wasn't me who downvoted you, I promise! I love PDO; please read my other comment.

citricsquid2• 14 years ago

You can't downvote comments that are a reply to your own item, the person that downvoted you is not the OP -- unless he used an alternative account. I would suspect someone else did, the tone of your comment isn't one that really fits with the HN environment even if your point is valid.

aaronpk• 14 years ago

Having just converted an app to use Postgres from MySQL, I can tell you that the PDO drivers only get you so far. You're still ultimately going to be writing SQL, and then you have to get into the differences between MySQL's `key`="val" and Postgres' "key"='val' quoting differences.

savories• 14 years ago

You probably got down voted because you seem like a dick, rather than a helpful, nice, encouraging person.

rpeden• 14 years ago

What makes you think he was the one who downvoted you? You could easily have asked him about his technical decisions without being a jerk.

Besides, this was a personal project, probably created without the intention of eventually open sourcing it. If he only ever intended to use MySQL, and portability across RDBMS systems wasn't a goal, then it's fine as it is.

jakejake2• 14 years ago

Your very first comment on HN got a down-vote, I haven't actually seen a -5 karma before. On the bright side you've nowhere to go but up.

Seriously though I agree with your point about PDO. Perhaps the down-vote was due to the comment about de-engineering and apparently making fun of 10k LOC?

I took a look at the app and it's got a huge amount of features. 10k is not really that much code for a "enterprise" app I suppose you could call it. The OP probably is just trying to express the amount of labor that went into the app. Unfortunately other developers may judge your LOC as either a positive or negative, so it's probably best to avoid mentioning it (unless you've written an app in an unbelievably low number of lines).

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

I built it using CodeIgniter, and wasn't as proficient in PHP as I am now. CI is a beginner framework and doesn't teach a lot of good practices (e.g. it loads external classes as singletons and uses a class loading script developed during the PHP4 days).

Here is the suggested CI method for executing database queries: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/database/examples.html

Nowadays, I prefer (PHP) frameworks with real autoloaders and better OOP usage (like Zend or Kohana).

sandollars• 14 years ago

This is the sort of comment that keeps a lot of people from publishing their source code.

Make a pull request, sir.

jwdunne• 14 years ago

Please can you point me to documentation that shows that you can easily switch vendor when using PDO? The PHP docs clearly state database abstraction isn't purpose of PDO. The purpose of PDO is to abstract access to a database.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/intro.pdo.php

In this sense, wouldn't it have been better to either recommend that he should have used a DBA library? Or even recommend that he used PDO in place of CodeIgniter's own DB access library?

The OP's experience aside, I think you're also missing that this was written on top of CodeIgniter. From my own experience and learning, CodeIgniter isn't really the best tool for writing larger applications. It's architecture isn't so great and is largely a remanent of the past. To end a rant about CodeIgniter short, it seems more natural to write namespaced procedures using classes rather than taking full advantage of objects and OO (again, probably due to it being largely a PHP4 framework).

ericingram5• 14 years ago

"markhaus" has -15 karma. I think his goal is to accumulate negative karma. That or he is just a real jerk.

Plus, I really disagree with his comment.

tonywebster• 14 years ago

Really disappointing to see someone's work get trashed. Rock on for open sourcing it.

PleaseBeSerious• 14 years ago

What would you do different based on what you know now?

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

While I was at a startup recently, I did all of my frontend development in Backbone.js, this app would do a lot better in that framework.

Also, the CI framework isn't all that great, I would have certainly used a different framework. Perhaps even Node.js (which is what I'm doing a lot of my development in nowadays).

I also would have looked for a marketer and devoted more time to the project. The market for this kind of product is very crowded, but there is a lot of room for innovation.

lftl4• 14 years ago

I'm curious why you would choose Node.js instead today. I've done a little Node.js work, and I would unequivocally use it again for anything that needs a fair amount of concurrency, or high volume, lightweight requests. Other than that though, the only advantage I see over other server side stacks is a slight mental bonus in using the same language on both the client and server? Are there any other major advantages you see over PHP/Python/Ruby,etc. stacks?

bdunn• 14 years ago

I don't think anyone's ever subscribed to a SaaS product because it used X technology over Y. I also think you're way too focused on the tech and the list of features, instead of selling a solution.

You can say all you want about invoicing being an over saturated market, but I launched a very successful project management product a few months ago. Focus on doing a few things very well, and you can do well in just about any "saturated" B2B space.

swang• 14 years ago

What exactly did you dislike about CodeIgniter? For me CodeIgniter is probably what I'd use if I had to go back to making PHP applications so I'd like to hear any reasons you had against it.

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

CI was built in the PHP4 days, and for that reason it has a lot of cruft left over. For example, there is no autoloader. Also, classes are loaded as singletons, and are assigned to properties of the controller, which I put into the 'magic' category, and isn't compatible with IDE autocomplete features (I'm a VIM user, but it makes things easier for a lot of developers).

//CI Class Load Example:

$this->load->library('example'); $this->example->something();

//Raw PHP Class Load Example:

$this->example = new Example(); $this->example->something();

As you can see, the latter is a little more obvious about what is going on.

citricsquid2• 14 years ago

I'm not comp sci educated, I'm all self taught so maybe "Autoload" has a real meaning outside of this context, but CI does have an autoloader... something that can autoload libraries and models? application/config/autoload.php

iends• 14 years ago

What PHP framework would you use if you had to today? Kohana? Yii? Something else?

mmmooo5• 14 years ago

Just as a quick look, this thing is riddled w/ potential sql injections..a number of unchecked/unescaped uri controlled variables. In some cases there's validation of numerics w/ +=0, but in many cases (e.g. $sort_col) there's none.

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

The routing script should be taking care of that stuff with regular expressions.

If I'm wrong, please do let me know!

jumby3• 14 years ago

you mean you shouldn't trust user input?

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

The arguments to controller methods (in CI) are passed through some regular expressions. CI goes as far as to destroy all GET variables (which I highly disagree with).

mmmooo5• 14 years ago

I live by the communist motto. Trust, but verify.

notJim2• 14 years ago

Skimming the code, it looks like input is being escaped in the SQL queries. Can you link to examples?

mmmooo5• 14 years ago

Just skimming, and e.g.

in: controllers/invoice.php

$data['invoices'] = $this->invoice_model->select_multiple($this->session->userdata('company_id'), $page, $this->pref_user['per_page'], TRUE, $sort_col);

$sort_col appears to be just uri_segment 2 of list_items.

select_multiple() then calls:

$sql = "SELECT id, name, DATEDIFF(NOW(), duedate) AS past_due FROM invoice WHERE company_id = " . $this->db->escape($company_id) . " ORDER BY $sort_col";

$sort_col is left as-is. It is certainly more difficult, since '()' aren't permitted in the uri, and we're already in the ORDER BY clause, but I think it may still be doable to get some blindsql into there.

jumby3• 14 years ago

I remember writing invoicing systems like this. Then I realized I probably shouldn't reinvent the wheel or break GAAP. :/

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

Yeah, there is a ton of competition. I started building this without having done proper research.

jumby3• 14 years ago

See, the thing is: creating an invoice is an 'accounting' event that needs to be thought out a bit. Like a double entry general ledger, receiving payments, proper audit trails, the inability to modify an invoice after 'posting' it, batches, periods, and other goodness.

Otherwise, you get this ugly term: embezzlement.

But kudos for opensourcing it and standing up to criticism from hecklers like me.

ericingram5• 14 years ago

I think competition was never your problem. A lack of passion for your industry/product over the long-term, is most always the high level reason people start and stop projects like this.

einhverfr6• 14 years ago

Shameless plug here kinda.....

One thing you could do is write a really good invoicing app that works with a decent GAAP accounting system, like LedgerSMB. If the system is ok, and the database underneath is solid, you can do the GAAP stuff without having to write a whole accounting package.

danso• 14 years ago

I didn't look through the PHP or MySQL code but the front-end has a clean look (from the video), which is more than is expected from most people who take it upon themselves to develop an invoicing system

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

Thanks! The public facing layout went through three major revisions and the final one is based on 960.gs. The layout of the app is governed by MochaUI, but it is a custom theme.

BjornW• 14 years ago

Thanks for sharing! I wished more people would share code of projects they are no longer interested in. The educational value ('how did he/she built this') is worth a lot, regardless of the 'quality' of the code. Thank you!

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

I have the exact same sentiment; I pretty much open source all of my old projects for people to learn from (I taught a small meetup for a while, it was useful to explain both the good and the bad). I add DEFUNCT to the description if they are really old or have a lot of bad practices. Here's the rest: https://github.com/tlhunter

TazeTSchnitzel3• 14 years ago

That's an excellent idea. I should go add that to some of my horrible, horrible C code, lest someone think that 10 levels of indentation, not using c-style strings, non-portability, architecture assumptions, lack of error checking, and blocking sockets is a good idea...

Or that macros without bounds checking that cause segfaults unless debugging is a good idea...

What was I thinking?

TazeTSchnitzel3• 14 years ago

I've open-sourced a number of projects I was intending to keep closed-source, but gave up on.

One of them was SMOKE[1] - simple Python/Flask site with login. The most interesting part is probably the SMF Forum signature rotator[2], which manually parses HTML[3] that is not intended to be machine-readable.

[1]https://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/SMOKE

[2]https://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/SMOKE/blob/master/smoke/sm...

[3]https://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/SMOKE/blob/master/smoke/sm...

will_work4tears• 14 years ago

I've spent many an hour staring at somebody else's code. I love it, but so often when I'm in the middle of a project I totally forget about those time's I've seen code that made me go "wow, I should do that."

Am I doing something wrong? Notes or something?

th0ma5• 14 years ago

i've been trying to put unused stuff on my github https://github.com/th0ma5w and i've received great comments, and people thanking me for showing general concepts and such, so that's been really great to hear, especially from crap i just had sitting around at dead ends.

justinkelly2• 14 years ago

great to see this open sourced - sorry to hear you closed neoinvoice though

the web based invoicing market is extremely crowded and very hard to complete against the likes of freshbooks.com

though i went the opposite route to you and its working $ for me

created the open source app http://simpleinvoices.org first, got large user based, then offered premium hosting at http://smarterinvoices.com

einhverfr6• 14 years ago

I think at one point we had some LedgerSMB users using SimpleInvoices and importing data into LedgerSMB.

I think the difficulty with invoicing is that it is so heavily tied to everything else one might try to do in a business, from tracking inventory to CRM to financial accounting. This doesn't mean that one can't do this, but the interconnections seem to be key.

justinkelly2• 14 years ago

re ledgdersmb - yep - the ledgersmb crew did some great work to the SimpleInvoices code to make it work for them

re interconnections

* depending on the target market

* the people who need integration already do some form of accounting already - and a 'full stack' accounting solution like http://xero.com is more appropriate for this market

* simpleinvoices market is people with no accounting system or desire for debit/credit stuff so we have make no attempts to make quickbooks, etc. integration work

jbigelow76• 14 years ago

I'm curious, I remember a posting a while back that you were trying to sell this app through Flippa? Any details of that experience you would mind sharing (nothing but tire kickers, not the right market, buyer fall thru, etc...)?

renownedmedia27• 14 years ago

Long story short, not a single bid. A lot of people would ask some questions, but would seem to ignore the info on the page. I didn't bother paying extra to have them tweet the site on their twitter, since they tweet seemingly hundreds of times a day and nobody seems to listen.

I'm used to selling items on the Envato marketplace, which provides all of the 'advertising' for me. But it seems that with Flippa, there is so much noise and one has to do their own finding of buyers.

pdufour• 14 years ago

This looks like you put a lot of work into this. Thanks for open sourcing it.

krob• 14 years ago

Okay, so coming from a user of CI 2.0 mind you and using integrated smarty templates with it, I would have to say after using even a micro-framework say silex, I could build a much better enterprise application with modern php5.3/5 features than i can with CI. The major problem is it feels really dirty to include/require statements with CI. Also to build re-usable code within the confines of their existing library system you have to build all your constructors with a single $param argument. The models are junk since they are really just a place to store organized function calls. Their database abstraction is an abomination. Generally the only thing good about CI is that you can break up your source into a marginally logical fashion which can it improves maintainability.

Now as for this application being written in Code Igniter? I don't really see it as a problem since it means it will be easier for lesser experienced dev to pick up and run with the ball. In time they will learn it's major deficiencies and they will move on. But i think there is room for improvement, in fact I think this would be a great project to port to another maybe more robust framework and is a good project for learning new framework translations.

I will say however that the author wanting to rewrite a product like this in nodejs is really only going to make something like this more inherently difficult to maintain since javascript code tends to get more complicated than your typical java / php / python app as it grows. Granted you do have js at your finger tips it is still largely un-tested on massive scale for large application development. It however has shown great promise for handling extreme traffic in terms of concurrency, but it handles it mostly by using async libraries which pile everything into queues of some sort some where. So your code is littered with async callbacks everywhere. Anyways.. Not only that, but the biggest problem of all is the inability to intelligently step through your code with some kind of IDE beyond using a browser-base debuger such as webkit inspector or the online IDE cloud 9.

I don't hate nodejs. I just think people are jumping on the band wagon way too quickly for server-side hosting. For websockets it's a great solution, I just don't like seeing it as "the only solution" for some peoples projects. I'd rather see a more hybrid approach.

Just open sourced my 10k LOC PHP & MySQL invoicing app

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