Would CI be suited to online booking / reservations system?

[eluser]Unknown[/eluser]
Apologies for asking such an extreme noob question, trying to do some preliminary checking before diving in deeper.

Would CI be suited to creating an online booking / reservations system for hotels, vacation rentals or any other sort of date-based resource?

A friend has been having a nightmare trying to get such a system coded over the last few years, completely ripped off by freelancers, mainly because he didn't really know what he was doing and partly because the freelancers had bitten off more than they could chew.

There are plenty of off-the-shelf booking applications but none do quite what he needs and relying upon other people to customize and modify them will pretty much bring him back to square one.

So, we are trying to work out if it would be feasible to build it from scratch, using a framework such as CI or RoR or possibly even adapting WordPress. The idea is that we can put together exactly what we need, understand exactly what we've got and gain the skills necessary to keep it secure.

What do you think?

Would CI be well-suited to this project?

And is it realistic of me to expect to pick up the necessary skills in a month or two, using this forum and other online sources such as Theme Forest's Diving into PHP series and NetTuts' CodeIgniter From Scratch series?

I am not a coder but am familiar enough with PHP to hack around and I have a good grasp of HTML and CSS.

I would be very grateful to hear your opinions.

[eluser]Dam1an[/eluser]
Short answer: Yes, and I'm currently making 5 such sites (well, one base sites, with 4 similar sites targetting particular niches)

Long answer: Sorry, you expecting a long answer as well?

And as for being able to pick up the skills in a month or 2, sure. Picking up the skills in a month or 2 and creating the whole app... not so sure (obviously depends on lots of factors, such as how quick you learn, full or part time etc)

[eluser]Johan André[/eluser]
Are you expericenced with PHP or any other language?
Learning PHP + a framework from scratch in 2 months is quite hard, even when working full-time.

[eluser]sl3dg3hamm3r[/eluser]
[quote author="donnacha" date="1250656956"]I am not a coder but am familiar enough with PHP to hack around and I have a good grasp of HTML and CSS.[/quote]

Especially if you are not a born coder, which means you don't have much experience neither in PHP nor in any other programming languages, it might become difficult to build a fully grown web-app with elaborate backend, user-roles etc. ... maybe you could start with something more simple than that to get first some basic knowledge.

One good thing about CI: especially if you are not experienced, it helps you to write well structured code. This is a point which is especially hard when starting a first project without having much programming experience. If I think of my first PHP-projects, it was messy! Presenting and logical layer was not seperated at all etc. - CI helps to make this better, from the beginning.

As for the learning curve: as the others mentioned before, it is of course depending on your general skills being a programmer. But even if you are very skilled, 2 months seem to me quite short in order to improve your php-skills, learn CI AND fullfill a fully grown web-app.
I first did a very small, static web-page (see my signature), which helped me learn the concepts behind CI. Only after that I dived into a big web-app.

Good luck!
sl3dg3

[eluser]Unknown[/eluser]
Thank you all for taking the time to leave such helpful replies.

Following your advice, I have decided that the best route would be for me to, instead, spend those two months diving deep into an existing reservations component for the Joomla CMS, called Jomres, which seems to have a good reputation and an active developer behind it. I am hoping that will be a good, guided way to get to grips with PHP in a directly relevant context.

At the very least, I will gain a good knowledge of reservation-related design decisions. Also, while learning PHP in this way, I will read up on the structures that CI encourages and that should help me to hit the ground running when using CI for any further project.

Again, thank you very much guys.

[eluser]nkelem[/eluser]
I was facing this same trouble, then a dream came to me, I woke up and starting learning php. I have since built a small Hostel/Hotel Booking website all in 8months of code learning.

Have a look and let me know your views. I would like to hear them HOSTEL/HOTEL BOOKING ENGINE