If you haven't been following progress at the http://groups.drupal.org/wscci group and the http://drupal.org/project/issues/butler issue queue, here's what's been going on, and where you can help, as well as an IRC meeting for you to attend to hash this out more!
The initiative is split into 4 phases: Contexts, Plugins, Routing/Services, and SuperBlocks/Panels in Core. The status of these currently is:
- Contexts: Code has been committed to http://drupal.org/project/butler in the 7.x-1.x branch with the current state of Contexts, which is outlined at http://drupal.org/node/1233232.
- Plugins: Currently punted due to discussions at http://groups.drupal.org/node/150149. We'll re-open this once Contexts are put away.
- Routing/Services: No code yet, but we've started some architectural discussion at http://groups.drupal.org/node/148149 about what the routing API might look like. Comments welcome!
- SuperBlocks/Panels in Core: Bojhan and Yoroy have started a lively discussion on the UX at http://groups.drupal.org/node/160144. Actual code for this is a long ways off, and may end up as Drupal 9 material, but we need to nail the UX for the new system before we can implement it.
Check the group home page at http://groups.drupal.org/wscci for an up-to-date list of hot issues we need help with, and key discussions for background.
If you want to help, specifically we need:
- We need code reviews on the 7.x-1.x branch of http://drupal.org/project/butler. This is a Drupal module you can plop into a 7.x site, and comes with unit tests.
- We want to put a real HTTP library into core because we don't want to write our own wrapper library around $_GET and $_POST. At http://drupal.org/node/1178246 we're asking developers to help us compare/contrast Symfony and other 3rd party libraries.
- We need brainstorming around what goes into the context object. Please chime in with your thoughts here: http://drupal.org/node/1178762
- f you just want to stay abreast of major happenings around contexts, subscribe to the http://drupal.org/node/1233232 Context meta issue in the core queue. This is a "satellite" issue that will be pinged when major happenings occur.
We want to kick the context work into higher gear, but there are still some architectural questions to work out. To that end, we're having the inaugural WSCCI IRC meeting in #Drupal-WSCCI on irc.freenode.net on Tuesday 2 August at 12 pm US Eastern Time. (Please adjust for your timezone.) Our agenda for the first outing will be:
- Nominate someone to look into Zend's HTTP library vs. Symfony2's HTTP library, and discuss criteria by which we want to evaluate them.
- Discuss whether we want to have the context object handle full objects (such as nodes), or restrict it to just primitives (eg, node IDs.) See http://drupal.org/node/1177246 for background.
- Figure out the API for context handlers. What's implemented in the code right now is likely not the best, and it's an open question whether the context value itself should have a wrapping object as well. See http://drupal.org/node/1177246 for some discussion there, as well as the current code in the 7.x-1.x branch of the butler modue.
I'll be posting a summary of what we discuss to the WSCCI group on g.d.o afterward for those who can't make it.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| drupal-wscci.08-02.txt | 66.52 KB |
Comments
Why would we use Zend's HTTP
Why would we use Zend's HTTP library vs. Symfony2's HTTP library instead of just using the cURL library?
Inbound
Curl is for sending HTTP requests to other servers. What we're talking about here is primarily wrapping and abstracting the incoming data that triggers the PHP process; the GET, POST, etc. If it also happens to provide us with a better API for sending requests, I consider that a nice bonus. (Curl's API is also rather ugly, and is not available on all servers. That means that we still have raw-socket code in Drupal, which is nasty.)
Meeting notes
Well the meeting ran long and we only got through the first two items, but it was still a very productive meeting. We put together some notes during the meeting, but rather than paste them here I decided to put them both on the issues where they are most relevant. For the digested notes, see the following comments:
HTTP Libraries:
http://drupal.org/node/1178246#comment-4815646
Keys vs. Objects:
http://drupal.org/node/1177246#comment-4815688
We need volunteers to help implement the latter, still!
I am also attaching a copy of the log to the original post for those who want the nitty gritty details. Thanks to neclimdul for providing the log.
We'll likely have a follow-up meeting next week. I'll announce that soon.
Thank you to everyone who participated!
Broken log link
Weeeee eating our own dog food. I don't know where the bug is but files starting with # don't encode the first character so you get an anchor instead of the file. Didn't consider that when I copied the file out of my logs directory.
Link until its fixed or Crell can re-upload it with a different name..
Fixed
Damnit, Drupal!
Uploaded the file with a less complicated name.