Re: [Phpslash-devel] Variables.class

[Joe S. <joe...@us...>]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 12:13:27PM -0400, Mike Gifford wrote:
> Howdy Joe,
> 
> On Tue, 2003-07-29 at 04:57, Joe Stewart wrote:
> > > How much is this class being used?  Just got a question about trying to
> > > extend this class to allow folks to add global template variables. 
> > > That's beyond what this class does now from what I understand, but it's
> > > an interesting concept.
> > The Variable class is not used at all currently.  0.5.3 had many variables
> > in the db and had many queries to get them each page view.  We worked hard
> > to move to html templates and defining what's needed in the config text
> > file.
> 
> Right...
> 
> > We discussed possibly using it again by loading variables from the db into
> > the session to reduce repeated access issues.  
> 
> This makes sense..  Would be nice to be able to turn modules on/off via
> the web interface and customize other variables through the interface.. 
> But wow..  Has it been 0.5.3 since it was used that way?  That was a
> heck of a long time ago..
> 
> Speaking of modules, how is the phpSlash modules code going?  
> 

Mostly stable.  There is so much flexibility that you can really screw
things up.  Not sure how I like this part.  Sometimes the bugs have been
pretty harsh and unforgiving.

A few nice things:  

Easily make a poll, etc on the front page instead of a list of stories.

The about page can be a story or a block and not necessarily tied to text
inside a template.

Sections can have different headers and skins.  

If you don't use the TopicBar, you simply don't have that block.  No worry
about including the class, etc.

You can have different footers for the two or three column page.  This is
important for all CSS pages ( no tables).

> > I think providing some of the basic common placeholder values to the
> > template object when initiating it is a natural next step.  We couldn't do
> > this till we had a slashTemplate class.  Now, we should be able to set
> > things like rooturl, imageurl, etc. to be provided to all templates.
> 
> Is someone working on a slashTemplate class?  
> 

0.7 includes the slashTemplate class that extends the phplib template
class.  This allows us to override the set_file method to use absolute
paths, parent skins, template directories in the module's own directory,
and as suggested, some initial values for commonly used template
variables.

Previously, we were just using the phplib template class.  So we had keep
up with the template directory and all variables everywhere.

Joe

> Mike
> -- 
> Mike Gifford, OpenConcept Consulting
> Free Software for Social Change -> http://www.openconcept.ca
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>