We are no strangers to hacking at stuff here in the lab and we love building useful tools and add-ons using our own APIs. In that long running
tradition, I wanted to announce a little pet project I started a few days ago.
fixx Django Middleware (I know it's original) is the aptly named
middleware app for people who run Django sites/applications. It provides an exception handler in the middleware that allows you to log exceptions
that occur in your Django instance directly to your fixx instance encouraging pro-active problem solving than waiting for visitors to report
bugs in your Django site/app.
The middleware component does required fixx 1.8+ to work with.
You can grab a copy of the code which is licensed under the BSD
license and is free for you to modify.
Why not take a look at some of these other API-enabled tools/add-ons for fixx we are working on and even see if you can contribute?
We at hedgehog lab love testing, infact our flagship bug tracking product, is geared toward tracking those bugs and delivering better software.
Well now there is an awesome test management suite on the block called testuff, which executes manual software tests and reports the flaws found in these tests. To boot testuff can output these results directly into fixx and other bug trackers!
From their site,
Testuff is an on-demand service for managing and executing manual software tests and for reporting defects. It is a test management suite that includes management for various test stuff: cases, runs, defects and more.
What's unique about testuff is the ability to attach video footage of each test and attach it to bug reports in order to quickly replicate and highlight the problem within your software to developers. Isn't that cool!
One of our original aims of opening up a RESTful API for our bug tracking product fixx, was to encourage a healthy eco-system of third-party developers who can enhance and add to the functionality fixx brings and provide open integration points to third-party apps.
It has been great to see the overwhelming response from third-party developers who have spent their time and effort to enhance the fixx eco-system and we thought it would be the perfect time to thank everyone who has been working with the fixx API, providing feedback/criticism (which we always listen to and take on board), and generally writing some awesome add-ons. The following are just a few of them that we hope will be useful for those currently using fixx or considering using fixx in the future.
IDE Integration for Visual Studio and Eclipse
One of our customers, Martijn Laarman, has done a stellar job delivering a first version of Visual Studio Add-On for fixx. The project is pre-beta and is looking for people to try out the system and help him iron out bugs. There is also a project underway to bring IDE goodness to fixx in Eclipse.
Instant screenshots with Freshlog
Freshlog is a pretty nifty screen capture tool for the Mac that I personally use. It integrates with fixx and many other bug tracking tools, allowing you to capture and submit screenshots as new issues or comments to existing issues. It comes at an affordable price of $14.95 which is a bargain considering the plethora of tools and speed of updates it provides.
Source Control and more with XP-Dev.com
XP-Dev.com offers Enterprise Subversion hosting and has leveraged Subversion post-commit hooks to update fixx issues with commit messages. Even if you host your own Subversion repo, you can use a Ruby post-commit hook that allows you to do the same. Mercurial and Git hooks are also available.
These are just a few of the Add-Ons and integrations that third party developers and some of our customers have been working on. You can always find a more comprehensive list on our Add-Ons for fixx page and we would love to hear from you if you have been working on an add-on and would like it to be featured.
Here at hedgehog lab, we love to tinker with our API's, mashing them with other services and technologies, however, as hard working chums always committed to the job, we rarely have the time to do such things.
This is why we love it when our customers play about with our API's and create some great services. Recently, Radosław Szalski created an awesome Git post-commit hook in python, using our API. The project is published up to Gist for anyone to use as they see fit.
Radosław had this to say:
"
Ever since I started using GIT and Fixx was searching for a way to even
further streamline my workflow. Unfortunately most of the hooks I've found
were only posting comments to issues. Why stop there, when Fixx's API has so
much more to offer ?
I love robustness and automation, so I created something that suited my
needs. I chose Python, because I wanted to learn it for a long time. The API
itself, thanks to RESTful architecture, is extremely easy to use.
As for the future, I am considering adding support for timelogs. That's the
only feature I am thinking of - I don't want to make it too complicated. As
I am actively learning the language, I will probably upgrade it with some of
the Pythonic goodness."
