postfixadmin-devel

Re: [Postfixadmin-devel] refactoring

[Guido 'l. B. <g....@le...>]

Hi everyone,

i just subscribed to the list. I've seen the recent
"Refactoring" thread in the archives and would like to
participate if anybody is interested.

What would you guys think about using ZendFramework [1]
for the ORM [2] and validation part at least? I've done
various small to midsize projects with ZF recently and
had a pretty positive impression about the documentation
(good examples, ..) and the structure and robustness of
the code. It could probably ease the hassle with PG-
vs. MySQL since it comes with a pretty much complete
database abstraction layer.

Of course this would be PHP5 only, but i don't think this
is really an issue since PHP4 isn't officially supported
anymore anyway and should be outdated soon. Moving to
PHP5 would allow for various other improvements like
and exception-based error-handling throughout the source.

Maybe it would be a good idea to consider an MVCed [3]
rework of the interface, too, and think up a way how to
integrate some kind of module-/plugin-system for
additional functions which extend the core-functionality
(managing a set of domains/aliases/mailboxes inside an
sql-database).

I was thinking about adding a searchable maillog for
Domain-Admins for example, which would include rejects/
bounces/... from /var/log/maillog for the domains in
question, something i would consider a typical plugin
use-case. Vacation, Fetchmail and broadcast-msgs would
imho make good candidates for being "outsourced" as
plugins as well.

On an unrelated note, can someone provide me with an
(maildir-) archive of postfixadmin-devel? It seems like
sourceforge itself doesn't provide any downloads and i
like to have archives searchable in my mailclient..

[1] http://framework.zend.com/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller

// lenix
-- 
Guido Boehm |    _/  | website: http://lenix.de/
Voigtstr. 8 |   _/   | contact: http://lenix.de/contact/
20257 DE/HH |  _/    | my card: http://lenix.de/contact/vcard.vcf
01738099196 | _/_/_/ | sweet<3: http://xichen.de/ :]

Re: [Postfixadmin-devel] refactoring

[David G. <da...@co...>]

> i just subscribed to the list. I've seen the recent
> "Refactoring" thread in the archives and would like to
> participate if anybody is interested.
 
Anyone's welcome; but your more welcome if you contribute code :)

> What would you guys think about using ZendFramework [1]
> for the ORM [2] and validation part at least? I've done
> various small to midsize projects with ZF recently and
> had a pretty positive impression about the documentation
> (good examples, ..) and the structure and robustness of
> the code. It could probably ease the hassle with PG-
> vs. MySQL since it comes with a pretty much complete
> database abstraction layer.
 
ZF sounds fine; I was reading the docs for Zend_Db_Table 
the other day. My only issue is that I'd like to aim for a
xmlrpc/soap interface, which means you can't have objects as
return types or parameters to methods.

My dummy code for what I wanted to achieve already uses PDO.

I think xmlrpc/soap would be very useful for people wanting to
integrate postfixadmin with e.g. squirrelmail /
insert-other-email-client-here. At the moment they have to duplicate
code which isn't very good.

Presumably xmlrpc/soap will allow others to integrate postfixadmin in
ways I've not yet considered.

> Of course this would be PHP5 only, but i don't think this
> is really an issue since PHP4 isn't officially supported
> anymore anyway and should be outdated soon. Moving to
> PHP5 would allow for various other improvements like
> and exception-based error-handling throughout the source.
 
Yes, I have no problem with dropping PHP4 compatibility.

> Maybe it would be a good idea to consider an MVCed [3]
> rework of the interface, too, and think up a way how to
> integrate some kind of module-/plugin-system for
> additional functions which extend the core-functionality
> (managing a set of domains/aliases/mailboxes inside an
> sql-database).
 
We're working towards an MVC approach. The views are already seperate,
so it's just a case of fixing the controller/model section.

Some sort of plugin architecture sounds like a good idea.

> On an unrelated note, can someone provide me with an
> (maildir-) archive of postfixadmin-devel? It seems like
> sourceforge itself doesn't provide any downloads and i
> like to have archives searchable in my mailclient..
 
I can't sorry. I delete most email on this account once it is older
than a few weeks.

David.


-- 
David Goodwin 

[ david at codepoets dot co dot uk ]
[ http://www.codepoets.co.uk       ]

Re: [Postfixadmin-devel] refactoring

[Christian B. <pos...@cb...>]

Hello,

Am Montag, 28. Juli 2008 schrieb Guido 'lenix' Böhm:
> i just subscribed to the list. I've seen the recent
> "Refactoring" thread in the archives and would like to
> participate if anybody is interested.

Yes, of course ;-)

> What would you guys think about using ZendFramework [1]
> for the ORM [2] and validation part at least? 

Good question - I don't know it, so I can't really answer.
After having a quick look at the documentation, it looks like it has 
lots of things we'll never need and might therefore cause some 
overhead. (I can't judge if it is worth it ;-)

> [...] It could probably ease the hassle with PG-
> vs. MySQL since it comes with a pretty much complete
> database abstraction layer.

Well, in postfixadmin the things we need is mostly SELECT / INSERT / 
UPDATE / DELETE. We already have some abstraction functions for those 
queries which work well IMHO and are easy to use. I consider the 
various checks for pgsql in the code mostly historical issues - usually 
they can be replaced with db_boolean() calls or alike.

The ALTER TABLE for database upgrades are always special (_very_ special 
if foreign keys come into play ;-) and I'm quite sure that most 
abstraction layers won't be very useful for those things.

> Of course this would be PHP5 only, but i don't think this 
> is really an issue since PHP4 isn't officially supported

ACK

> anymore anyway and should be outdated soon. Moving to
> PHP5 would allow for various other improvements like
> and exception-based error-handling throughout the source.

Yes, why not...

> Maybe it would be a good idea to consider an MVCed [3]
> rework of the interface, too, 

My proposal goes in this direction, even if I didn't have MVC in mind 
when writing it ;-)

> and think up a way how to 
> integrate some kind of module-/plugin-system for
> additional functions which extend the core-functionality

Yes, good idea. And not really difficult to implement.

> I was thinking about adding a searchable maillog for
> Domain-Admins for example, which would include rejects/
> bounces/... from /var/log/maillog for the domains in
> question, something i would consider a typical plugin
> use-case. Vacation, Fetchmail and broadcast-msgs would
> imho make good candidates for being "outsourced" as
> plugins as well.

We could call _everything_ a module or plugin.

> On an unrelated note, can someone provide me with an
> (maildir-) archive of postfixadmin-devel? It seems like
> sourceforge itself doesn't provide any downloads and i
> like to have archives searchable in my mailclient..

I'll send you a mailbox off-list. Converting to maildir shouldn't be too 
hard ;-)


Regards,

Christian Boltz
-- 
Und der erste, der mich darauf hinweist, ich könne das ja selbst
umkonfigurieren, ich müsse nur die 200KB-Doku lesen, den besuche
ich zu Hause und *singe*(!) ihm den Sourcecode vor,  und DAS ist
WIRKLICH eine STRAFE. [Ratti in suse-linux]