News

RFC #0167: RDBMS and Timezones

2008-11-19T17:05:08+01:00

Scope of Change
Extend DBConnections to manage and handle timezones

Rationale
Provide a valid timezone for date objects created from database values instead
of using the default timezone.

Read the full RFC here

RFC #0176: Scriptlet URL handler classes

2008-11-14T17:03:58+01:00

Scope of Change
A new class will be created which is used to handle the scriptlet URL in an
easy and flexible way.

Rationale
To make it easy for the scriptlet engine to deal with scriptlet URLs without
having some preg_match() magic on different places, a new scriptlet URL class
will be created.

Read the full RFC here

XP Runners in C#

2008-11-02T16:50:56+01:00

The XP runner infrastructure (as described in RFC #0166) provides a flexible way to run the XP framework without having to configure PHP's system-wide include_path. Besides the already existing implementation in /bin/sh, there's now an implementation in C# (using the .NET framework 3.5). Apart from being a training project for my C# skills, it's also five times faster than using shell scripts on Windows via Cygwin:

Imaging / Streams integration

2008-10-21T16:06:07+02:00

The imaging API has been integrated with io.streams. This means there is now no limitation anymore where images can be read from and stored to. Compare for yourself!

Old (and still possible) way - limited to files (via io.File) and memory (io.Stream):

 
  $image->saveTo(new JpegStreamWriter(new File('out.jpg')));

New - exchange right-hand side of the following assignment with any of io.streams.MemoryOutputStream, io.streams.FileOutputStream, peer.SocketOutputStream, peer.ftp.FtpFileOutputStream or various others:

 
  $output= ...
  $image->saveTo(new JpegStreamWriter($output));

RFC #0173: xp-tools.xar

2008-09-22T12:05:25+02:00

Scope of Change
Classes used by command line utilities but not in xp-rt will be added to a new XAR file called xp-tools.xar

Rationale
Separate classes currently in xp-net.xp_framework.xar and used for core utilities from unittests.

Read the full RFC here

RFC #0170: Make Specifying nonexistant classpaths fatal

2008-09-21T22:46:25+02:00

Scope of Change
Make having a classpath part to a XAR file or directory that actually does not exist or is not readable a fatal error.

Rationale
Classpaths (or "include_path"s) are specified to change the order of and enhance the class loading process. A path within the classpaths that does not exist does not serve any useful purpose, but is usually a indicator of a simple mistake, which should be detected early.

Read the full RFC here

5.6.9-RELEASE: PHP 5.3 Forward compatibility and bugfixes

2008-09-05T20:25:35+02:00

With the upcoming PHP 5.3, some changes in forward compatibility have been made to ensure 5.x-releases will also run with the new PHP versions. This release is the first release to work with PHP 5.3 (public alphas and development versions) but that will still work with PHP 5.2.x (XP 6 releases will require PHP 5.3 upwards, though the 5-series will stay around for a while).

To use 5.6.9:

Open a shell window
Type wget -O - | php
Add the path shown at the end to your PATH environment setting

PHP 5.3 Experiments

2008-08-23T12:58:47+02:00

All the experiments with the newest PHP version can be found at the XP Forge's 5.3 experiments.

Singleton base class

2008-08-23T12:10:05+02:00

With the so-called "late static binding" feature in PHP 5.3 and the function get_called_class() at hand we can realize a singleton base class. This will alleviate creating singleton classes -the only thing needed is to extend the base class:

 
  class Logger extends Singleton {
  
    public function log($arg) {
      // ...
    }
  }
  
  Logger::getInstance()->log('Hello');

RFC #0169: New package unittest.web

2008-08-14T20:23:21+02:00

Scope of Change
A new package unittest.web will be created. It will contain the base class WebTestCase with which web tests can be written.

Rationale
Integration testing.

Read the full RFC here

PHP 5.3 and typesafe enumerations

2008-08-12T09:58:24+02:00

Within RFC #0132, typesafe enumerations were added to the XP framework. Because PHP does not support them language-wise, we need a bit of workaround syntax to make them work.

With PHP 5.3 and its so-called "late static binding features", enum declarations can now be written much more compact for the simplest use-case. Example:

 
  class TransactionType extends Enum {
    public static $NOT_SUPPORTED, $REQUIRED, $SUPPORTS, $NEVER;
  }

PHP 5.3

2008-08-08T20:58:00+02:00

I've started playing around with the first alpha release of PHP 5.3 (should be released around September or October this year), see also the PHP 5.3 alpha1 announcement from August 1st.

Some first observations:

RFC #0171: Rename util.DateInterval class

2008-08-08T20:50:01+02:00

Scope of Change
The util.DateInterval class will be renamed.

Rationale
PHP 5.3 has a class called DateInterval built-in. Thus, non-namespaced versions of the XP framework won't run on PHP 5.3.

Read the full RFC here

5.6.8-RELEASE: HTTP, FTP, features and bugfixes

2008-08-05T20:47:39+02:00

This release features quite a bit of revamp in the peer.http API's backings - though nothing should change from the outside except for the new proxy feature, numerous fixes to the FTP support, and a couple of nice-to-have features.

To use 5.6.8:

Open a shell window
Type wget -O - | php
Add the path shown at the end to your PATH environment setting

Casting an object array to a string array

2008-07-19T21:15:28+02:00

While testing the new EASC server and client implementations we're currently working on, we asked ourselves how to cast an object array to, for example, a string array.

The following is an array of objects consisting solely of strings:

  Object[] strings= new Object[] { "Hello", "World" };

The first thing we tried was to cast it via (String[])strings. This is legal sourcecode but will raise a java.lang.ClassCastException in Java, and a System.InvalidCastException in C#, both at runtime.

RFC #0164: Exceptions for XPClass::get*()

2008-07-14T23:30:18+02:00

Scope of Change
The following methods in lang.XPClass will throw exceptions instead of returning NULL for the case the respective element is not found:

getConstructor()
getMethod(string name)
getField(string name)

Rationale
Allow for chaining, be consistent with other APIs (if a hasX method exists, the getX method will throw an exception) and the getAnnotation() method.

Read the full RFC here

Search function online

2008-06-28T18:01:16+02:00

On a short note: Finally had time to set up this site's search functionality on its production server. In the top right corner, you can find the search box which will search the site for words you enter (currently, only the news section is indexed). Happy searching

Exceptions in Java

2008-06-25T10:57:27+02:00

Found this nice article on exceptions in Java - from a historic overview of Oak, on checked and unchecked exceptions, and asynchronous exceptions it explains nicely (and with code examples) what the Java exception mechanism is about. What I like most are the best practices section, which applies not only to Java:

Don't Write Own Exceptions
Write Useful Exceptions
Throw exceptions early
Catch exceptions late
Document exceptions
Unit Test Exceptions