Slashdot

Having recently released Core Enterprise PHP v0.2 alpha we have found some major changes that we are going to make to the core of the Framework.

First off, we are changing the module lifecycle to something like:

• authenticate (if needed)
• verify permissions
• init module
• handle events
• display
• destroy

We have also made some decisions to include more code in the core framework. We are no longer going to just provide "example" modules and libraries. We are going to provide some more serious functionality out of the box (group document management system, user/permission management tools, etc). In addition we are also looking to provide native ports of a few successful PHP projects (coWoki, Serendipity, etc).

In order to do this we are going to include some reusable components in the core framework. Including an OOP interface to the HTMLarea WYSIWYG tool.

For all of the components and modules they are only going to output XML that will be transformed with XSLT. We hope to get to a point where developers can set styles and attributes of components and modules through an OOP interface and without touching any XSL files.

We are not sure if we are going to still use a templating system for the final output or if we are going to move that to XML/XSLT too.

Sound interesting? Visit our Sourceforge page. Feel free to join the developer list or post comments in the CEP section at TekZen.

-Jackson

Documentation has been released for Core Enterprise PHP.

KDE 3.2 release Candidate 1 was released yesterday. I have been using the KDE 3.2 code since the first alpha release. Each release gets better (though beta 1 did introduce some annoying bugs in Konqueror).

I am emerging KDE3.2rc1 on my Gentoo laptop right now. Hopefully I will have it installed by the end of the day.

I will write more about it after I have had a chance to check it out.

-Jackson

I read a journal post at slashdot today from a guy named Micah. He was talking about writing an Apache module in C that was actually a fully functioning we app similar to slashcode.

The funny thing is that Marcus and I have been tossing around the possibility of writing mod_cep (an Apache module implementation of Core enterprise PHP).

Micah's vision seems a little off base since he wants the app to only output XML and allow each client to create and parse their own XSLT. It is also a little narrow in that he envisions things that appear on every page to be in the XSLT and not part of the application (the site name for instance).

We are going to implement XML/XSLT in CEP but are waiting for a little more maturity in the parsing packages. We have high hopes for SimpleXML in PHP5, but there is also a couple of projects at apache.org that look promising (we hope to benchmark a couple of different XSLT parsers).

Anyway, I am mostly just posting because I thought it was interesting that someone else is thinking about an Apache module as an application.

-Jackson

Core Enterprise PHP is reaching a solid aplha state. Marcus and I are developing several sites on already. I know that there will be some adversity to the announcement of yet another application development framework, but the fact of the matter is that this framework is allowing us to develop apps REALLY quickly. It may or may not be of use to the community, but making it available is the right thing to do.

We are just waiting on SourceForge to make a decision on my abandoned project takeover request. They are supposed to make a ruling today. If they give us the cep project namespace then we could have the alpha (with limited documentation) in CVS today or tomorrow. If we have to create a new project then it will probably take a little longer (at this point, but it would have been faster if we did that in the first place).

Anyway, I just thought I would post that out there in slashdot land.

Jackson