Packt Open Source

Packt Open Source

Packt Open Source books

Packt Open Source books will continue to be built around the “community experience distilled” motto, focussing on taking real advice from the community around projects, and refining and distilling it into easy to follow specialist information.

 

Through this, the Open Source Royalty Scheme will continue to support open source projects, offering a royalty for the sale of each book to the project on which that book was written.

 

Believe in Open Source

Open Source Awards

The Open Source Awards is an annual online event held by Packt Publishing to distinguish excellence among Open Source projects. We aim to play our part in the growth of Open Source software and see the annual Award as the ultimate platform for not only appreciating the great things projects have given back to the community but also supporting projects who have future potential to change things for the better.

Open Source Project Royalty Scheme

Packt believes in open source and helping to sustain and support its unique projects and communities. Therefore, when we sell a book written on an open source project, we pay a royalty directly to that project. As a result of purchasing one of our Open Source books, Packt will have given some of the money received to the Open Source project.

In the long term, we see ourselves and yourselves, as customers and readers of our books, as part of the Open Source ecosystem, providing sustainable revenue for the projects we publish on. Our aim at Packt is to establish publishing royalties as an essential part of the service and support business model that sustains open source.

To read up on the projects that are supported by the Packt Open Source Project Royalty Scheme, click the appropriate categories below:

All Open Source Projects

Content Management System (CMS)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

e-Commerce

e-Learning

Networking and Telephony

Web Development

Web Graphics and Video

Latest Articles

Adding Geographic Capabilities via the GeoPlaces Theme

by Yuxian Eugene Liang | January 2013 | Open Source

In this article, by Yuxian Eugene Liang, the author of WordPress Mobile Applications with PhoneGap, talks about creating a location-based directory via the GeoPlaces theme. It covers the setting up and addition of sample geographic data into your WordPress site. We'll add geographic capabilities to our WordPress site by leveraging on the GeoPlaces theme.

The major topics we will cover in this article are:

  • Introduction to the GeoPlaces theme

  • Populating the site with sample data from GeoPlaces

  • Managing place listings from the frontend side as well as the admin side of the site

For a start, we'll be using a premium theme called GeoPlaces, by Templatic. At the time of writing, a single user license is priced at USD 99 while a developer license is priced at USD 179. For the rest of this article we will be using the GeoPlaces theme to do the bulk of the heavy lifting of geographic functionalities, since Google Maps are built directly into the GeoPlaces theme.

Before we move into this article officially, you might be wondering where it will lead us. To begin with, since our mobile app's content is dependent on our WordPress site, we need to add basic content (in this case, place listings and other article-like information) to the site.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Read Adding Geographic Capabilities via the GeoPlaces Theme in full

Components - Reusing Rules, Conditions, and Actions

by Robert Varkonyi | January 2013 | Drupal Open Source

This article by Robert Varkonyi, author of Drupal Rules How-to, explains the benefits of using Components by creating a Condition that can be re-used in other rule configurations.

In this scenario, we want to perform some action when a node is being commented on. But we only want to execute the action if the node was not created by the super admin (that is, user 1) and the node is either an article, or has an image field (field_image).

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Read Components - Reusing Rules, Conditions, and Actions in full

Creating an Application

by Ajit Kumar | December 2012 | Open Source

In this article by Ajit Kumar, author of Sencha MVC Architecture, we will take a step-by-step approach to create a functional application in ExtJS using the MVC architecture and the framework classes related to it. For the sake of completeness and illustration of the concepts, we will be taking up an application requirement and implementing it in ExtJS.

As a requirement, we will be creating an application, which would:

  • Show the list of departments and the users

  • Show the list of users for a selected department

  • Allow the user to edit user information

  • Refresh the users list to get all the users of all the departments

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Read Creating an Application in full

Advanced Indexing and Array Concepts

by Ivan Idris | December 2012 | Cookbooks Open Source

In this article by Ivan Idris, the author of NumPy Cookbook, we will learn some of NumPy's more advanced and tricky indexing techniques. NumPy has very efficient arrays that are easy to use due to their powerful indexing mechanism. NumPy is famous for its efficient arrays. This fame is partly due to the ease of indexing. We will demonstrate advanced indexing tricks using images.

In this article, we will cover:

  • Installing SciPy

  • Installing PIL

  • Resizing images

  • Comparing views and copies

  • Flipping Lena

  • Fancy indexing

  • Indexing with a list of locations

  • Indexing with booleans

  • Stride tricks for Sudoku

  • Broadcasting arrays

Before diving into indexing, we will install the necessary software — SciPy and PIL. Some of the examples in this article will involve manipulating images. In order to do that, we will require the Python Image Library (PIL); but don't worry, instructions and pointers to help you install PIL and other necessary Python software are given throughout the article, when necessary.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Read Advanced Indexing and Array Concepts in full

Adding Bodies to the World

by Emanuele Feronato | December 2012 | Games Open Source

Bodies are what make Box2D games possible. Anything you can move or interact with, is a body . Birds, pigs, and crates in Angry Birds are bodies, as well as the idol and the totem bricks in Totem Destroyer.

In this article by Emanuele Feronato, author of Box2D for Flash Games, we will cover:

  • Creating a fixture
  • Creating a box shape
  • Different body types — static, dynamic, and kinematic

(For more resources related on Spring, see here.)

Read Adding Bodies to the World in full

Meet Yii

by Jeffrey Winesett | December 2012 | Open Source PHP

The name Yii is an acronym for Yes, it is, and is pronounced as Yee or (ji:). Yii is a high-performance, component-based, web application framework written in PHP5.

This article by Jeffrey Winesett, author of Web Application Development with Yii and PHP, provides you with a brief history of Yii, an introduction to the Model View Controller (MVC) application architecture, and you are introduced to the typical request life cycle as it makes its way from the end user through the application, and finally as a response back to the end user.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Read Meet Yii in full

Adding Interactivity and Completing Your Site

by Divya Manian | December 2012 | Open Source Web Development

HTML5 Boilerplate is the number one choice for many web developers to get their projects going. It allows you to deploy quality websites successfully and quickly while also ensuring robust cross-browser performance.

This article by Divya Manian, author of HTML5 Boilerplate Web Development, will help you discover how to do feature-detection, add some interactivity with JavaScript, and finalize your website implementation.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Read Adding Interactivity and Completing Your Site in full

Managing Files

by Jonathan Bowen | December 2012 | Open Source

Talend Open Studio for Data Integration (TOS) is an open source graphical development environment for creating custom integrations between systems.

This article by Jonathan Bowen, author of Getting Started with Talend Open Studio for Data Integration, shows how to manage Files during integration jobs. We'll look at renaming, moving, copying, and deleting Files; how to timestamp a File; connecting to remote servers to FTP files; and zipping and unzipping Files.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Read Managing Files in full

Building Applications with Spring Data Redis

by Petri Kainulainen | December 2012 | Open Source

The Spring Data project is essentially a parent project that collects data storage specific subprojects under a single brand. It teaches you how you can use Redis in your Spring powered applications.

In this article by Petri Kainulainen, author of Spring Data, we will cover:

  • The basic design principles of a Redis data model
  • The key components of Spring Data Redis
  • How we can implement a CRUD application
  • How we can use the publish/subscribe messaging pattern
  • How we can use Spring Data Redis as an implementation of the cache abstraction provided by Spring Framework 3.1

(For more resources related on Spring, see here.)

Read Building Applications with Spring Data Redis in full

Sharing a Mind Map: Using the Best of Mobile and Web Featuressil

by Silvina P. Hillar | November 2012 | Cookbooks Open Source

FreeMind is the powerful, free mind mapping software used by millions of people worldwide to capture their ideas and communicate them visually.

In this article by Silvina P. Hillar, author of Mind Mapping with FreeMind, we will cover:

  • Exporting a branch as a new map or HTML
  • Exporting the mind map to bitmaps or vector graphics
  • Uploading the mind map on Flickr and sharing it
  • Exporting the mind map as HTML
  • Exporting the mind map as XHTML
  • Exporting the mind map as Flash
  • Exporting the mind map as an OpenOffice Writer document and uploading to Google Docs
  • Viewing an interactive mind map in a web browser

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Read Sharing a Mind Map: Using the Best of Mobile and Web Featuressil in full
Code Download and Errata
Contact Us
Awards Voting Nominations Previous Winners
Judges Open Source CMS Hall Of Fame CMS Most Promising Open Source Project Open Source E-Commerce Applications Open Source JavaScript Library Open Source Graphics Software
Resources
Open Source CMS Hall Of Fame CMS Most Promising Open Source Project Open Source E-Commerce Applications Open Source JavaScript Library Open Source Graphics Software
Sort A-Z