[Typo3-dev] $TCA and XML [was: Re: Better templating: PHP!]

[dan frost]

Kasper told me that he wanted to make lots (all?) 
of  the config into XML - tca, languages (already 
done)...

So, i guess it'll happen soon.

dan

Peter Niederlag wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> dan frost schrieb:
> 
>>>XML advantages:
>>>
>>>- you can validate it
>>>- you can process it
>>>- it's easyer to read comparing PHP includes
>>>- good combination with xhtml and other xml
>>>- it seems to be an establishe standard
>>>
>>
>>XML has the other advantage that you don't have to edit it - because of
>>the wide availability of XML-objects (DOM stuff etc) it is relatively
>>easy to build a GUI on top of the XML object model.
> 
> 
> One thing I like about XML is that it is "language-neutral".
> 
> Consider for example $TCA. Right now it is strictly bound to be used in
> PHP, since it is an array. Also it is not really kept somewhere but
> mostly needs a loadTCA to get it in memory on the fly. If $TCA would be
> available as XML on a per table basis from a filesystem, it could be
> used from any language.
> 
> I just had some thoughts about $TCA and XML yesterday. ;)
> 
> A rough idea would be to somehow make an XML-Definition of $TCA
> available to the outside world on a per table basis. One could
> have serialized objects for $TCA that are understood by the TYPO3-Core
> available in a temp-Filesystem.
> 
> For example I like the way znf http://znf.zeronotice.com/ handles
> XML-based config-files.
> 
> I am pretty sure there are ways to do something like this without too
> much of a hassle with TYPO3 as well.
> 
> Well, just some spits out of my brain. ;)
> 
> Cheers,
> Peter