Re: [phpesp-dev] phpesp future expandability (xml)

[Matthew G. <gr...@mu...>]

After lots of chatting with James on IRC about XML.  I "think" I'm convienced it's 
the way to go. Using PEAR as a coding standard and library looks good.  Lots to 
get up to speed on with PEAR. Although OO-PHP, is none to nice, it's probably also
the way to go.

If James hasn't already sent it to you the XML/XSL "samples" are:
http://phpesp.sourceforge.net/xml/

Next step?  Maybe a create/edit/run for simple question types?

You ever join the IRC channel?  It's really good for ironing stuff out.

On Mon, Aug 05, 2002 at 09:09:15PM +1000, Kon Angelopoulos wrote:
> Guys,
> 
> 	It does seem logical that XML become the preferred media. I for one have no 
> problem with changing over to XML and OO coding. I've had a look at the docs 
> for Pear and being disciplined in coding standards is not a bad thing at all.  
> I would also prefer that XML Schemas replace DTDs.
> A few questions.
> Are we all confortable in coding using OO-principles and XML?
> How many developers would we 'lose' if this conversion takes place?
> Where do we go from here?
> What's our first step?
> 
> ps James could you please resend me the DTD and the sample XML/XSL.
> 
> 
> Regards
> 
> Kon
> 
> 
> On Mon, 5 Aug 2002 08:47, James E. Flemer wrote:
> > A few days ago I was chatting with the IT Lab guys
> > (greggmc, zorncj) about ways to make phpesp more flexible.
> > As you may have noticed, people frequently request the
> > ability to make forked (aka branching or conditional)
> > surveys, where the response to one question chooses what
> > additional questions are seen. In order to implement this
> > feature, the database schema would have to be changed to
> > hold more metadata. There have already been a few DB
> > changes, but I would like to find some solution to keep
> > this from continuing. Setting up the database seems to be
> > one of the biggest problems for users (besides windows
> > support). I propose that the survey storage model be
> > changed to XML. With XML, future metadata changes can be
> > easily accomplished by replacing the old DTD with a new
> > one, a simple 'cvs up' could do this (rather than fiddling
> > with mysql).
> >
> > My idea for this is to store surveys on the filesystem in
> > XML, and when they are activated (or tested) the XML will
> > be "compiled" (using xsl?) to php. This way the xml doesn't
> > have to be transformed on each hit. Also by using XML
> > internally, import/export of surveys will be trivial. I
> > wrote up a DTD and some sample XML/XSL files a while
> > ago[1]; they aren't complete but might give you an idea of
> > where I was headed.
> >
> > I also would like to pear-ize as much of phpesp as
> > possible. This means modularizing functionality, and
> > switching to OO-style code. However, we can make use of the
> > growing collection of existing Pear modules (like the Auth
> > module, and the XML modules). Even if this change doesn't
> > happen soon, I'd like developers to skim the Pear coding
> > standards[2] and start trying to follow them for all new
> > code.
> >
> > [1] http://phpesp.sf.net/xml/
> > [2] http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.php
> >
> > I'll be around on IRC if anyone would like to chat about
> > this, or post your thoughts on the list.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > -James
> >
> >
> >
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