Introduction

"Allow me to reintroduce myself..." - Jay Z

As is traditional, like my father before me, I issue the greeting of our people:

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echo "Hello world!";
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Right, so what are we going to learn here? Maybe nothing! Maybe you're super pro at Li3 already. That's cool, please let me know of any improvements that could be made to this book!

This book is meant to complement the Li3 documentation so I'll be referring to that throughout. Technical reading can be heavy going, so I'll keep the tone light in this book, partly to keep myself entertained as I go!

We're going to focus on how to actually use Li3 to build a web application from start to finish, step by step, stopping to explain things along the way and making sure that we build quality in throughout. We'll take a pragmatic approach - LIKE A BOSS. This application will be a "staff index", like a rolodex used to be in the 80s. Do you remember the 80s? I do. I never had a NES. Still hurts. I had a BBC Micro though, Elite was sweet.

Anyway, this application is a good choice (YES IT IS, HUSH YOU) because it will allow us to use:

  • MVC architecture
  • Testing
  • Coding standards
  • Logging
  • Filters
  • User access control
  • Error handling
  • Performance analysis
  • Flash messages
  • Model-based data queries

My source code is up at https://github.com/gavd/employee-rolodex - you might find it useful to refer to it when you get stuck.

Sounds pretty hashtag swag to me! Let's roll.