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Jomres is a great hotel booking system, and we have lots of loyal users who're constantly coming up with new feature requests.
A frequent request nowadays is for inter-server connectivity. This could be for connectivity between bookings.com, or a remote PMS (Property Management System). Other requests include for desktop and mobile phone applications.
Looking at all these requests, the common requirement is for an established API that will allow a Jomres server and "a n other" server to talk to each other, so about a year ago I sat down and wrote the initial framework for the Jomres API plugin. Since then it has been tweaked and updated here and there.
Time has finally allowed me to take a few days off from support and sit down and work on a Windows application that uses the API, which I'm currently calling the Jomres Desktop Companion (JDC).
This first version of the Windows app is relatively basic. That's because the main focus has been on generating the framework for building future functionality on top of, however I think that it will have enough starting features to make it immediately useful.
Initial features include the ability to view booking graphs, an overview of all bookings for the next year, the ability to edit the property description and to remotely book rooms (with a nicer interface than you currently get on Jomres).
If you want the source code for JDC (which is written mainly in PHP), please email
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and request a copy. It'll be released under the GPL and MIT licenses because I want developers to take the ideas used in it to build their own applications. By directly asking for copies I'll be able to judge just how interested in the application developers are. Don't worry if you're a Mac user, the application was actually built on localhost with WAMP so you should be able to put the php source into your MAMP localhost and start playing right away.
Not bad for 7 day's work.
A brief overview of the application is available on the wiki https://jomres.net/Jomres_Desktop_Companion
Other news :
Jomres 4.2.2
Jomres 4.2.2 has been released. This is a minor build which introduces a couple of new features, and tweaks to how a property initially is created allowing us to use property type specific language files at property creation time. It makes things like adding boats and other non-hotel related elements more logical.
It also adds the codemirror javascript editor to the Template Editing feature and allows you to create property features which are specific to property types.
Jomres & PHP 5.3
Jomres runs on PHP 5.3, with no problems, in fact I've been testing on 5.3 for some time now and had been getting a little frustrated with Joomla 1.5.14's bugs with PHP5.3 but Joomla 1.5.15 seems to have fixed that. There is, however a wrinkle in the ointment (isn't there always?). As PHP5.3 is relatively new, to date ioncube have released just a beta version of their 5.3 loader for linux, and no loaders, as yet, for Windows. This means that you will not be able to run Jomres on a PHP5.3 installation of WAMP/XAMPP yet. I advise you to stick to PHP5.2.x for now.
On most hosts this isn't a major problem because you should be able to either edit the /etc/php.ini file or add your own php.ini file to tell the server which version of PHP to run (ideally 5.2.x for now) but you'll need to check with your host's FAQs as to the correct method of setting this configuration option.
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