Re: [phpesp-dev] ideas, wishlist. etc

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A few comments below...

--On Sunday, March 24, 2002 02:28:57 PM -0500 "James E. Flemer" 
<jf...@ac...> wrote:

> Anyone who is seriously interested in contributing should
> get themselves a sourceforge account, and letting me know
> their user name.

My SF username is greggmc.

...snip...
>
> The best solution to this is something you have already
> suggested -- an install script. The install script, if
> written, must check to make sure the user will not install
> the phpESP.ini in a publicly accessible directory,

An install script is surely the way to go.  However I'm not sure it's 
possible for an install script to know what is and what isn't a web 
accessible directory.  We are gonna have to trust the user somewhat.

> and must
> modify all necessary paths depending on the install
> location. This should be a fairly trivial operation. In
> addition, I would like (tho not necessary) for the install
> script to handle the database creation and initialization,
> and on checking the user permissions (mysql user).
>
>>     add a stock set of surveys and questionnaires
>>     import/export feature which handles XML and other formats
>>     use XML and XSLT to generate the HTML pages for reports etc.
>
> I am very glad you mentioned XML. I would actually like to
> move a large portion of data out of mysql and into XML. I

Are you sure you want to do this?  XML is a great data "interchange" 
mark-up, but generally functions poorly as a data repository, unless you 
have a specialized XMLDB.
I would put my vote in favor of keeping a SQL based back-end and use 
XML/XLT as presentation/data exchange layer.

> would like the back-end format for the surveys to be XML.
> With a well written DTD (or schema), the XML based survey
> format would be much more flexible. It would still be
> simple enough to allow a similar web interface to design

...snip...
>
>>     interfaces to other content management systems
>>         phpNuke, PostNuke, phpgroupware, ezPublish, etc.
>
> I would like to see an interface to PostNuke first. Note
> that there are license differences between most of those
> CMS and phpESP, so phpESP cannot be distributed with them,
> but I can certainly work with them.

Not that I would distribute ESP with any of the above CMS's, but can you 
explain why ESP can't be?  They are all GPL'd.

>
>>     Ability to specify a page to include the generated PHP code
>>         (i.e. maybe include comment in the HTML/PHP page with a
>> begin/end
>>             comment such that phpESP could auto insert the php code
>> directly
>>             into the HTML/PHP page
>>                 e.g.
>>                 HTML/PHP file.
>>
>>                     <!--  phpESP v1.4 Survey Start -->
>>                             Section to include the generated PHP code
>>                     <!--  phpESP v1.4 Survey End -->
>>
>>         Possibility to manage "pages with the php generated survey code"
>
> I don't quite follow this. I am assuming you mean removing
> the step where the user inserts the PHP code into their
> HTML template file. Naturally that would be ideal, but
> probably not possible security wise (since the web server
> executes without user privileges).

This is just off the top of my head, but what's wrong with something like 
this:

<html>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<?php $sid=$id; include("/var/www/esp/public/handler.php");?>
</body>
</html>

Then called as survey.php?id=3 would show survey with ID 3.

...snip...