[Typo3-dev] Services - any work??

[Ingmar Schlecht]

Hi Dan, hi devs!

dan frost wrote:
> Has anyone got into this yet? 

I'm fiddling around with services for some time now, and they prove to 
be really useful!

> I've recently built some classes/structures which might be useful:
> 
> - XML classes - we could pull PEAR etc into it.

I'm not sure about whether or not implementing this as a service would 
be helpful. Which advantages do you think of?

> - Datatype-independent handling. E.g. putting something into an array 
> looks the same as putting it into a file or a database (using pull, pop, 
> push methods etc)

Yeah.
I like your idea!
It reminds me of the "Data Sources" idea that we discussed in Düsseldorf.
However, I don't know how we could actually USE this idea in Typo3.

> - Really simple table-building classes

Why should they be implemented as a service?

> - Email transport classes

Jepp, would be nice to make the email functions of Typo3 use a service 
for mail transporting. That way one can make different implementations 
of this, one implementation using SMTP to access their provider's mail 
server, one using the local sendmail, and the default service using the 
PHP function mail() or something like this.

> I've also got a heap of other ideas.

Get them out, tell us! Or at least tell the a-team [1].

While we're at it, I'm gonna tell you my ideas about where I think 
services could be useful:

- simulateStaticDocuments
  -> implementing the simulStatic engine the service way, it would be 
easy to implement new things like "Speaking URLs".
     I have written proof of concept code for simulStatic services.

- converting the whole graphics manipiulation classes to service classes
  -> this way one could implement the "graphics service" using different 
backbones such as GD, IM, PIMP, GIMP, plain PHP, Adobe Image Server, etc.

- making the file icon handling service based.
  -> this is a rather minor thing, but it would be nice anyway.
     Proof of concept code for this has been written as well.

- I was thinking about how we could make the Extension Kickstarter 
extensible, and again services came to my mind.
I have written some code that uses what René's manual refers to as 
"services in chains".

- "Data Sources".
  -> Accessing and Writing data to ANYTHING. This is too cool to explain 
in one mail :)

cheers,
Ingmar

[1] The a-team, 
http://typo3.org/1477.0.html?&no_cache=1&tx_extrepmgm_pi1[projUid]=30