Re: [SM-DEVEL] Plan for File Prefs

[Alexandros V. <av...@no...>]

On Thu, 1 Apr 2004 15:09:13 +0200 (CEST)
"Thijs Kinkhorst" <li...@ki...> wrote:

> I've got a plan for redoing the file prefs. We store the prefs in a
> keyed array $PREFS ($PREFS['full_name'] = "Thijs Kinkhorst"). This
> whole array is serialized and then written to disk. Inversely, the
> prefs can be loaded by just reading the string from the file and
> unserializing it.
<snip>
> Any thoughts on this plan?

Great idea. :-)

I'm doing some serialization already for the LDAP prefs backend
(available as a Squirrelmail plugin, albeit a bit experimental and in
CVS currently); although I break up the prefs pieces to LDAP attributes,
I've found that keeping mail fetch and highlight prefs , for instance,
in serialized arrays saves me a LOT of trouble, and is generally more
'reliable'.

As I also serialize some stuff in the avelsieve plugin and store it in
the SIEVE filter, I've found saving versioning information in there
handy; if something changes, backward-compatible code will kick in...

You can also check that if the versioning information does not exist at
all, then do backward-compatible reading of names-values pairs, thus
making transition of peoples' data dirs transparent.

$0.02