News

Support for PHP 5.3.12 / 5.4.2

2012-05-04T13:17:18+02:00

With the RFC #0229, the UUID class from the old org.ietf package was moved to the XP Framework. At the same time, its API was changed and now not only implements time-based UUIDs (v1), but also name-based (v3, md5 and v5, sha1) as well as random (v4) UUIDs. For details on the new API, see here.

Heads up: If you have previously used the old UUID class, please be aware that you will need to change your code!

5.8.5RC2: REST

2012-04-17T11:30:48+02:00

The second release candidate for 5.8.5 contains improvements to the REST server API's type and error handling, new handler finalization specializations (reloaded, cancel, success), extension method fixes for lang.Throwable instances and the ability to use SSL versions in conjuction with CURL transports.

Go get it!

  $ cd ~/xp
  $ wget http://releases.xp-framework.net/setup/5.8.5RC2 -O - | php -- -d ~/bin/

RFC #0210 prerequisites

2012-04-15T22:16:22+02:00

A while ago we blogged about the cleanup work in xp.contrib. This was now structured in three different pull requests:

Renaming
This is handled in pull request #12 and includes renaming of the ecma, xmlrpc, img, google, microsoft and cyrus packages.

Removing
This is handled in pull request #13 and includes removal of the ajp, tar and gettext packages.

IETF package split
RFC #0229 consists of two parts:

Creating a new util.UUID class in the framework (see here
Renaming the "ieft" package to "punycode" and removing UUID from there (see here)

Split xp.contrib's "ietf"

2012-04-15T22:11:21+02:00

Scope of Change
The UUID class will be merged into XP Framework core (as util.UUID) and the ietf package will be renamed to punycode.

Rationale
The "ietf" module contains both PunyCode and UUID implementations, which are completely unrelated.

Read the full RFC here

RFC #0235: CsvMapReader / CsvMapWriter

2012-04-15T12:42:58+02:00

Scope of Change
Instead of working with integers describing the cell offsets in CSV files, we will add a class CsvMapReader to read data into a map, and a class CsvMapWriter to write data from a map to CSV files.

Rationale
Enable writing code to flexibly deal with changing field order.

Read the full RFC here

Closures and "this"

2012-04-08T15:35:11+02:00

What does the following (plain PHP) do?

  class Lambda {
    protected $greeting= 'Hello';
    
    protected function greeter() {
      return function($who) { return $this->greeting.' '.$who; };
    }
    
    public static function main($args) {
      $l= new self();
      $greeter= $l->greeter();
      echo $greeter($args[0] ?: 'World'), PHP_EOL;
    }
  }
  
  Lambda::main(array_slice($argv, 1));

Well, we'd say it should print Hello World. And that, indeed, is what it does when invoked with PHP 5.4.

Unfortunately, with PHP 5.3, this does not work (support for $this was first removed and then re-added again after a lengthy discussion on the php-internals mailing list). To make things , in other languages and platforms, things work even more differently. This is why we've started an RFC on this topic. Its goal is to define consistent behaviour over all platforms XP language runs on. For details, see here.

New method peer.URL::getCanonicalURL()

2012-04-06T15:56:43+02:00

The peer.URL class now features a new method getCanonicalURL. URL canonicalization, or normalization, consist of:

Converting the scheme and host to lower case.
Capitalizing letters in escape sequences
Decoding percent-encoded octets of unreserved characters.
Adding trailing /
Removing the default port.
Removing dot-segments.

For more details, see pull request 143.

XP on NodeJS: Class constants, annotations, stacktraces

2012-03-21T02:55:18+01:00

More work has been put into the XP on NodeJS experiment: The compiler now knows how to correctly emit class constants and annotations, and a couple of minor bugs have been fixed. The bigger efforts have gone into stabilizing the XP "Microkernel" (which is what I've decied to call the miniature XP Framework implementation written in JavaScript and adopted to NodeJS as well as Windows Scripting Host):

We're finally getting inheritance right (or are we ? - )?
Class path is now assembled via class.pth files
Classes can reside freely inside any of the class path elements
Stack traces are now shown, including method names and arguments
Parent class reflection now works
The entry point scripts (tools/node.js and tools/cscript.js) are now generated from a common base
When these are invoked without arguments, they show version and classpath info

Here's something for you visually oriented people:

Finally, now, also the emitter dictates the file extension instead of it being hardcoded, so compiling is now completely hassle-free, no more moving the generated .class.php files around.

To get started, visit XP on NodeJS experiment continues to grow, with the following now implemented:

Flow control, via if / else
Exceptions, try, catch, throw and finally
Loops - foreach, for, do and while
ARM blocks

A full list of changes can be seen in the compare view.

5.8.5RC1: The web

2012-03-10T09:01:00+01:00
The first release candidate for 5.8.5 fixes the problems introduced with the implementation of Pull request 121 (Case-preserving parameters / Case-insensitive lookups), and holds a bit of refactoring and improvements of the REST serverside APIs.

Go get it!
$ cd ~/xp
$ wget http://releases.xp-framework.net/setup/5.8.5RC1 -O - | php -- -d ~/bin/

XP on NodeJS

2012-02-26T19:45:31+01:00
Following discussions with Claus and Alex, with the XP compiler's long-thought-about strategy of enabling us to decouple the framework and the platform in mind, and based on the "JSXP" experiment I had started about a year ago, I created a first draft of a write-once, compile, run-multiple approach.

This is the starting point, the XP language in a file called Greet.xp.
public class Greet { protected string $greeting = 'Hello'; public void printGreeting(string? $name) { util.cmd.Console::writeLine($this.greeting, ' ', $name); } public static void main(string[] $args) { new self().printGreeting($args[0]); } }