[TYPO3-extbase-kickstarter] New branch in gerrit

[Nicolas de Haen]

Hi list,

it has been a bit quiet here in the last weeks. So I just want to give 
an update about the current state.

Due to my work overload the progress slowed down in the last weeks, but 
I still implemented new features. Due to restrictions in gerrit I 
couldn't publish my new branch, but finally Steffen Gebert created one 
and so the new stuff is online now.

The main features are:
1. Make actions configurable:
There is a new textarea in the "Advanced settings" section of plugins 
and backend modules called "Controller action combinations"
There you can configure what you usually do in the localconf.php 
"registerPlugin". The background is, that it is not possible to remove 
settings that are already registered, so with the "merge" strategy in 
the overwrite settings for the ext_localconf.php resp. ext_tables.php 
this could not be solved.

2. Actions are now configurable by checkboxes and you can define own 
action names!

3. Enable "Switchable actions"
Another textarea that enables to configure Switchable controller 
actions. This should result in a dropdown in the plugin configuration, 
where you can select wihich action should be the default action in a 
plugins instance.

4. enable mapping to a (database) table (in domain object settings)
This will result in a special configuration, so all domain objects will 
be persisted in that table

5. extend existing class  (in domain object settings)
Here you can extend a class of another extbase extension (the extension 
MUST be installed!) or classes of your own extension (if your extension 
is installed and the classes you extend are already "registered" by 
saving them in the Extension Builder before extending them). It is also 
possible to extend Tx_Extbase_Domain_Model_FrontendUser and to extend 
classes that extend Tx_Extbase_Domain_Model_FrontendUser!!
Currently only SingleTableInheritance is possible!

One tricky part about 4. and 5. is, that you will need a TCA[ctrl][type] 
field. So the ExtensionBuilder creates one if there is none defined, but 
in the next run, it will be defined and it's hard to find out, if it was 
defined manually, by another extension or by your extension. There will 
probably be cases, where this might get confused. This is caused by the 
(bad) TCA design...

All this stuff would be much easier to implement with a richer User 
Interface, to provide more options. Rens is still planning to implement 
one, but he also had very few time, so he could not proceed so far.

This might become better next year!! ;-)

Please test the new branch by checking it out from gerrit:
git fetch git://git.typo3.org/TYPO3v4/Extensions/extension_builder 
refs/changes/32/7632/1

git checkout FETCH_HEAD

Since it's a very alpha version, you might report issues to the mailing 
list if it's a more general issue or to forge if it's just a bug.

Especially with the extending classes feature I expect several use cases 
that are not yet covered. The validation of the actions configurations 
are also not fool proof.

By the way: the new branch should be compatible to the configurations, 
created with the TER version 2.05. I use it in my real life projects, 
but I can't recommend it, if you are not very familiar with Extbase and 
it's configurations...

Have fun and a happy new year!

Nico


-- 
Nico de Haen
ndh websolutions

Webprogrammierung, OpenSource, Typo3



http://www.ndh-websolutions.de