[dokuwiki] Re: Hello, a couple questions. :)
- From: Eddie Parker <eddie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: dokuwiki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 09:16:45 -0600
Hello Andreas!
I've started a new thread regarding the auth_ changes I was thinking
about, but I figured I'd answer back on a few of the points you raised
here. :)
Anyhow, the root of my change is this: I want to allow users to edit
their preferences, which at this time is just e-mail, username, and
password. Pretty trivial to do, in terms of getting the data,
displaying it, etc. No problem.
Not so trivial when using plain text files ;-) I'm currently just use
the append mode which makes additions unproblematic even in multiuser
environment (when to people register at exactly the same time). You
need some locking mechanism if you need to change a file (not
impossible but you should think on it)
Right, that's quite true. It's unfortunate, but things like this are
going to impact performance on the server a bit - locking mechanisms
aren't really all that efficient. That said, I imagine plaintext/XML
solutions aren't really meant for a massive system. Hence my proposal
for the auth refactor, so it should be easier to extend DokuWiki to
using SQL, or some other type of directory server.... But I'll let that
other thread talk more about it. :)
The format of the plaintext file isn't too bad, I believe it's colon
separated or some such, but I was thinking this would be a great
place to put XML in, especially since PHP has a very nifty
xml_parse_into_struct, to get what we need, and writing it out is
even simpler.
Using XML could indeed make it easier to add some optional additional
fields like suggested by Bob. But it makes it harder to edit the file
by hand. but remember Dokuwiki authenticates against external
Databases as well - you need to stay compatible here so this was my
intention when restricting it to the minimal needed fields.
Right. I figured that XML was a good choice, since it's not often read
by the user, and it's very easy to manipulate programmatically. I was
hoping that with the changes to allow users to edit their own passwords
etc, however, there would be less of a need to go in and muck with these
files anyhow, so XML might be more acceptable in those cases (I myself
loathe having to go to the server to change my password. :)). Trust me,
I have a longstanding rant against improper usage of XML
<http://www.kickingdragon.com/?postid=11>, so I'm more than happy to not
use it in cases where it doesn't belong. :)
On your note regarding Dokuwiki authenticates against external DB's: I'm
hoping that my comment on the auth_ refactor thread will show the
usefulness in maintainability and extension for things like that. :)
I noticed that there are no classes in use anywhere! (Near as I could
see). Out of curiousity, is that policy, or preference?
Well I originally used no classes... however some things are now
implemented in classes (parser/renderer/plugins). I don't mind a
mixture between OO and procedural programming. When using OO be sure
to stay compatible with PHP 4!
Fair enough. :) I'm a big fan of using OO, although I have to admit, the
procedural code in there isn't too bad! That said, anything I do will be
in PHP 4, so no worries on that front. :)
Also, on a similar note: what are thoughts on using PHPUnit?
(http://pear.php.net/manual/en/packages.php.phpunit.intro.php) I
haven't had much experience with PHPUnit, but I'm a huge advocate of
PyUnit, Boost::Test, JsUnit, etc, and I wouldn't mind hooking my
things up to proper unit testing.
I have no experience with this kind of stuff. Harry Fuecks introduced
some Unit testing for the parser stuff using SimpleTest, but this is
currently broken because some heavily modification in the parser and
no update of the test classes. If anyone would have a look at it I'd
be glad. I'm not used to these automatic testing stuff yet so I tend
to ignore it as too much work (shame on me).
Hah, fair enough. :) Unit testing isn't for everyone, however, the huge
benefit I see in open-source projects, is that you can actually get your
users to do some work for you. Richard Jones, the owner of the RoundUp
<http://roundup.sourceforge.net> project, introduced me to the concept,
by asking for bug reports (that were really heavily technical) to be in
the form of a unit test that fails. It made it much easier to fix things
on his end, and when I adopted the practice, it made me understand what
was going wrong much faster as well.
Anyhow, I'll look into doing it on anything I do, if anyone has any
questions, let me know! (I've never used PHPUnit, but it should be
interesting to try! :))
Thanks once again for answering my questions, and happy Wiki-ing. :D
-e-
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