[Typo3-dev] PHP problem revived

[dan frost]

Hello all.

Thought i'd throw my ideas in - as usual, they may be very unpopular...!

As php5 has such very, very powerful XML tools (compared to php4.x) why 
not make the TCA into XML? E.g.

<TCA>
...
	<pages>
	  <columns>
	..
</TCA>

Just like Templa Voila. I think putting this off until php5 would be 
best - instead of using the array2xml function - because i've discovered 
that the array2xml/xml2array function runs quite slowly (or : for a long 
time) when the xml gets at all complicated. Also, why re-build the wheel?

What do you think? Something for version 3.7?

dan


Kasper Skårhøj wrote:
> Hi Folks.
> 
> Christian Jul Jensen has previously reported to this list that stuff
> like, say:
> 
> is_array($TCA['pages']['columns']['title'])
> 
> will spawn an error in PHP5 if say, "$TCA['pages']" is not an array.
> 
> The solution would be
> if (
> 	is_array($TCA['pages']) &&
> 	is_array($TCA['pages']['columns']) &&
> 	is_array($TCA['pages']['columns']['title']) )
> 
> ....
> 
> This is not acceptable to us. This would bloat the code so many places.
> Christian went further into the issue and discovered something else
> which he perceived as a reproducible inconsistency in PHP5. He posted it
> to the bug-tracker for PHP but got back an (somewhat rude) answer that
> he should not ask support questions about PHP there. Anyways, Christian
> can be asked for the true and complete details of the story if anyone is
> interested.
> 
> 
> My main point/question is: 
> If we are right about this problem and that it really *IS* something
> that could fairly be considered an inconsistency in PHP5 - which the
> PHP5 people are not willing to fix - what do we do?
> 
> To me this is dejavu; As you all know ImageMagick has been changing
> behavior for all the years from version to version making it simply
> impossible to maintain an API that would work with all versions.
> Sometimes it didn't even work at all. Other times it was (provable!) GD2
> bugs which lead to the mistaken idea that TYPO3 was buggy (like in the
> iX article 3 years ago!)
> I predict that as soon as PHP5 is in some way deemed final, it will
> float into our mailing list with harsh comments about TYPO3 not being
> PHP5 compatible and *any* notion from our side that we can prove an
> inconsistency which is a bug in PHP5 but which no one cared to fix will
> be ignored.
> So we are here again: TYPO3 gets the blame for a bug in the base
> software!
> 
> I'm presenting you this case because I'm too old to figth these battles
> alone. 
> 
> What can the community do?
> Are we big enough to apply some pressure on the PHP5 development team to
> pay attension to this issue (provided that we have a strong case)?
> 
> 
> 
>