Extension Documentation

Chapter 8. Design
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Chapter 8. Design

Table of Contents

Planning and Analysis
Planning and Project Analysis
Gather the Necessary Data
Define Security Requirements
Select Data Management Functions
Select Data Presentation Functions
Define Special Function Requirements
Designing the Database Objects
About the Locations Table
About the Reason Code Table
About the Countries Table
About the Robots Table
Log Table
Meta Data Table
HTML5 Geolocation overview
Handling Firefox 'Not Now' option

This section describes the design criteria used for the component. It provides the rationale behind the design and helps to understand how the component works.

One of the criteria in the design is to make use of as much of the supplied Joomla functionality and provide familiarity of use with the standard Joomla components.

Planning and Analysis

The original intent for this component was to be able to display the information captured by Akeeba Admin Tools Pro by the Web Application Firewall in a graphical manner to make interpretation easier. Inspection and searching on the web did not reveal anything that would do the job required and instead we decided to adapt some work written for Joomla 1.t that would display Site visitor information instead,

Planning and Project Analysis

The first action is to define the application requirements. These are then used to design a database and an outline that describes how the user interface accepts and presents data.

The project leads establish requirements that define the information that must be tracked, security requirements, data management functions, and how to present data to users.

Gather the Necessary Data

The source of the data was already determined and already available, so all that was required was to use the supplied data and to add the additional geographic location data and present it in a form suitable for mapping.

Define Security Requirements

Security was not deemed to be a problem for the component since the data is freely available as regards which IP addresses are assigned to which service providers. Also the specific IP addresses of the visitors has been freely provided so all that is being done is to present the data is another form.

Select Data Management Functions

The project leads also determine how information will be entered into the system. For this project, it must be possible to:

  • Create and edit reasons

  • Create location data

  • Edit location data

  • Assign reasons to location records.

Select Data Presentation Functions

Once the data has been collected there is the display. The team decided that the displays should be:

  • Selectable for one or more specific reason codes.

  • Selectable over a date range.

  • Visitor data collected by the Visitor agent should permit automatic trimming of ‘old’ records.

  • Provide the ability to have more than one map on a ‘page’.

Define Special Function Requirements

Provide a mechanism to control the locations table, particularly for busy sites where there are many visitors, and/or entries detected by the Akeeba Admin Tools Pro component..

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