[TYPO3-dev] Refactoring TCEforms

[Andreas Wolf]

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Hi list!

As some may have read in the core list (discussion of RFC 8232), I am
working on refactoring TCEforms.

So, what is it about? It is *not* about rewriting TCEforms, this would
require a lot more work and also involve a prior broad discussion. I
realized a while ago that TCEforms in its current state is nowhere near
anything you could call extendable, it is just a beast of about 6500
lines of code with no real object orientation in it. Simply something
you could call modern at the times PHP4 was hot. But we are now at the
time where PHP 5.3 is at the gates, OO has been the ruling programming
paradigm for years. As we have seen with IRRE, there is really need for
making TCEforms extendable to be able to implement new features around
it. So I started with it on a boring evening with nothing else to do.

This is what I did until now:

* tear apart the old class t3lib_TCEforms
* put every element type into its own class
* put different form types into own classes (not complete)
* rebuild parts of the code to make the new class structure work
* some changes to alt_doc.php to use the new object structure

Most of the code is C&P from the old t3lib_TCEforms, only parts of it
have been really touched. Most work went into search&replace references
to the old class and vars/functions which got new names. There are also
lots of references to the old TCEforms class which need to be replaced
by new code.


This is what does not work by now (not complete!):

* IRRE has been completely left out as it is a separate class by now and
  would require some heavier refactoring (did not really dig into this)
* localization has not been tested, the same goes for FlexForms
* JavaScript may be broken at some points
* rewriting the old t3lib_TCEforms to be a wrapper for the new classes -
  this would make the transition a lot easier!

The whole project is in no way complete, tested to the last or even
bug-free. But I think it is a start. I'm of course open for comments,
bug reports and bug fixes.

The (preliminary) UML diagram of the classes/interfaces and their
relationship can be found under [1]. This is in no way complete, as is
the whole project. There are also some things which are by now not
realized, but done in some other way. The diagrams reflect how I imagine
the structure to be reasonable, but of course this is all subject to
change throughout the (hopefully following) discussions.

The code is available online, please see [2] for it. But keep in mind
that there are also other changes around it, as this project started as
a sub-project of the listmodule rewrite at the coding week in Stuttgart
at Benni Macks office. So if anything not concerning TCEforms does not
work, please drop me a note and I will create a new branch with only the
changes in TCEforms.

So, here we go, the discussion is opened and I'm excited to hear your
comments! :)


Andreas


[1] http://www.andreaswolf.info/typo3/tceforms-uml/
[2]
https://svn.typo3.org/TYPO3v4/CoreProjects/listmodule/trunk/t3lib/tceforms/

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