[Typo3-dev] Event System in the core / Ease the integration of 3rd party apps

[Martin Seebach]

Hi,

Andy Staudacher wrote:

>I'm concerned about the interfaces
>between CMS like typo3 and 3rd party applications (3rdPA) as the forum
>software phpbb or the gallery software gallery/G2. I'm a fan of projects
>like typo3, xaraya, phpbb or G2 and I'm working on the integration of G2
>with xaraya as an integration prototype for future G2 integrations with
>as many CMS as possible, typo3 and various *nuke forks are on the list.
>  
>
I'm sorry, but I'm gonna go a bit off topic. I've spend some days 
integrating phpBB in Typo3, using the lz_phpbb extension as a base. The 
reason this particular application doesn't integrate very well, is 
because of its almost manic lack of us of functions. Almost everything 
is executed inline (I believe is the term), using includes etc. The 
lz_phpbb extension works around this, using some wrapper functions and 
output buffering.

This designchoice makes it very difficult to implement or extend phpBB 
in any way. Even the 'official' mods to the forum are installed as 
sourcecode patches. It doesn't seem to be a priority for the phpBB 
people to change this design.

>One aspect of the integration is the user / group management. Both, the
>CMS and the 3rdPA, have their own user/group management. 
>
In lz_phpbb, changes were already made to directly use the Typo3 fe 
users table, login, etc., yet groups were handled seperately in phpBB. I 
solved this particular problem by rewriting a few of the SQL queries 
relating to the groupmanagement. phpBB actually creates a group for 
every user, and manages some permissions using that. It would be very 
ineffective to extend thore groups to Typo3 groups, so I ended up 
crossing the two, in a 'half' solution, yet, functional enough that I 
can grant and revoke group membership using FE usergroups.

It seems to me that you are more or less suggesting a grand unified 
systems interfacing, that everything would support. That is not very 
likely to happen. You will always need to make some kind of interfacing 
and wrapping to fit a third party product into typo3. Wether that 
product is designed with this interfacing in mind, this can be very 
difficult or rather simple.

Making the above changes in phpBB was rather more easy that I expected 
it to be, due to the lack of comments in the source code. I suspect I 
may have broken some things relating to the phpBB admin interface.

Of your two proposed solutions, I'd definately prefer B. Keeping 
serveral tables in sync are messy at best. The 'rewriting' could be very 
simple, if the third party application was weel designed. Features like 
object extensions and hooks are designed with this kind of seemless 
extension in mind.


Best regards,

Venlig hilsen
Martin Seebach