[TYPO3-core] Adding visibility to methods and variables within t3lib_tcemain?

[Tolleiv Nietsch]

Hi,

I recently made two requests to add visibility information for all 
t3lib_tcemain methods and member variables [1], [2]. Christian brought 
up certain concerns that this should be discussed with the list before 
it's merged. Therefore I'll give you a short explanation what my 
motivation was to make these requests and afterwards you're invited to 
comment on it ;)

 From my understanding especially t3lib_tcemain acts as public API to 
work with records in TYPO3 (even if that changed a bit with extbase). 
Therefore t3lib_tcemain should have a clear and clean API and that 
should focus on the purpose of that class.

 From what I see at the moment the API is cluttered and every attempt to 
refactor or clean it up can't be done without a preceding deprecation 
step 6 months before the actual refactoring. I guess you'll figure 
yourself why this is an issue.

For the two requests I figured out which of the t3lib_tcemain members 
and methods are currently used from the outside and then protected all 
others. What I see as the result is that some functional blocks (e.g. 
all the checkValue_* stuff) could now be moved out into separate 
classes, other methods could be turned to be "protected" with the normal 
deprecation procedure and some other known-to-be-public methods could be 
treated as such and receive some more attention in regards of 
input-validation etc.

Still I agree with Christian, proceeding with the requests is not a 
small step but I think that 6.0 also enables us to make these (slightly 
breaking) changes without complex deprecation methodology.

Cheers,
Tolleiv

[1] http://review.typo3.org/11624
[2] http://review.typo3.org/11635

-- 
Tolleiv Nietsch
TYPO3 Core Developer


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