Asset tracking

Overview

This is a LAMP application. It requires Apache, MySQL and PHP. It has been tested under Linux (Red hat) and Mac OS X. It probably runs fine under Windows and other OS's and under other Web servers but they have not been tested. All that's really required is MySQL and PHP and a web server that supports them. It was developed under MySQL version 4.0 and version 4.1 and PHP version 4 also tested under version 5.

I resently added CSS support so you can customize it easily (this is also why it looks like these pages - I'm using a simular style sheet until I learn CSS a little better).

Demo

Currently the demo is running on my home machine because or some version incompatibilities here at this hosted site. You can login and try it but because it is my home machine and it may not be up. Try it live Log in as user 'tester' password 'tester' or should there be any problems you can view the screen shots.

When you first enter the application you'll come to the home page which right now is a bunch of links into the application. I expect most people changes homepage to one that meets their needs. The banner across the top contains links to the major areas of the application.

People a simple address book function, it is also used to give users their password into the system. If you do not have an enterprise wide address book you can fill this with all of your employees information and it may be useful. Otherwise, all you need is to enter the users of this system.

Assets this is the hardware database. You can search for hardware, see detailed information and update the information. It is a future enhancement wish to allow you to customize much of the detail information since everyone has a different list of what's important to track.

Purchase Orders this is a very simple form to store your purchase order information. I did not intended to replace your finance department's system. Certainly this could be enhanced and offer a simple financial system however the finance department usually have their own system and my vision was that this would be fed information from that system available read only to the users of this system. You'll notice the body of the P.O. is a large unformatted text field this is so you can take a P.O. from whatever system you have and pasted in here. If you have needs and desires year please let me now.

Reports half the power of this application is being able to generate custom reports as needed. When you write a report in the query is stored in the database and this report is available to run again and again. Right now there are few very simple reports as examples but if you know SQL you can create whatever you like.

Download and Install

Before you begin you should have a Web server with PHP installed and a MySQL server; as written this application expects them to be on the same machine but you can easily change this.

This application wants to be installed in a directory called "asset" in the root directory of your web server. It will create a database in your my SQL server called "asset" and it will add two accounts to that database "webster" (used to select information) and "updater" (used to update the information).

To install:

There is only one issue I have run into: MySQL version 4.1 uses a new password hashing scheme and older versions of PHP do not support this. It is easily remedied by either telling MySQL to use "old_passwords" or to upgrade PHP. If you do have this problem read "Client does not support authentication protocol" (that is the error message you'll see) from MySQL.com

At this point the application should work, I have also included some sample data which you may load it to see how the application works or you may simply load your own data.

This software is released as open source, you may use it and enhance it. You may not sell it and any enhancements you make to it that you do sell must also be available as open source. Please read the full license included in the distribution.

Future Requests

I have had a few suggestions and as time and energy permit I will be implementing these. Feel free to send me your suggestions or to vote for one on this list so that I may give it a higher priority.

Frank Flynn   This page updated on Apr 6, 2005