Important notes for those following the WSCCI initiative!
We've updated the way that we handle traversing of context keys and parent context objects. As of this weekend, the logic is now this:
For a given context key foo:bar:baz, check the top-most context object in order:
foo:bar:baz
foo:bar (argument baz)
foo (arguement bar, baz)
Then check the parent context object, if any, in that order over again, and keep doing it until:
1) We find a value and return it.
2) We run out of context objects to check, and then return NULL.
3) A handler returns a new instance of \Context\OffsetIsNull, in which case return NULL immediately and stop checking.
That allows a handler to override another handler in a previous context object and force a value to be NULL. The caller will only ever see NULL, as they should.
The astute reader will notice the use of PHP namespaces in a class name a moment ago. Because the patch to get the namespace-friendly autoloader into core is stalled (http://drupal.org/node/1178246), we've gone ahead and started using it ourselves. I've also refactored all of the Context code to use the new core autoloader, which also makes the code a bit tidier as we no longer have everything in one big file.
We also now have the HttpFoundation library in the WSCCI sandbox, so the next critical task is to put it to use: http://drupal.org/node/1279942
There are a couple of other important issues floating about that need input, code review, or code written. See the top of the WSCCI group home page for a list.
Our next IRC meeting will be Tuesday 27 September at noon US Eastern Time in #Drupal-WSCCI. Our main focus will be to sort out the issues we want to tackle next, and get volunteers setup to work on them. If you want to help make Drupal an awesome REST server and clean up our APIs in the process, this is the place to be!
Minutes will be posted as a reply here shortly after the meeting.
Comments
Exact time ?
Could you please confirm what US Eastern Time means in terms of GMT/CUT ? As per TheWorldClock, in this season, this can mean either EST or EDT and mean either UTC-4 or UTC-5.
Right now is EDT in the US.
Right now is EDT in the US. So that would be 16:00 UTC, or about 30 min from when I am writing this.
I'll likely have all meetings at the same time US time (we change daylight savings time differently than Europe, because our government is stupid), so mark it on your calendar and just watch out for the DST change in a few months. :-)
Notes from the meeting
As usual we ran a bit late today, but it was a good meeting anyway. :-)
We identified a few key issues we want to tackle next, and drafted volunteers to help with them. Specifically:
Get HTTP Foundation handlers written: Yuriy Gerasimov is taking point, with assistance and review from Tobiass Josten and Kyle Browning
Caching of context values: Justin Randall is taking point, with assistance from Chris Maiden and Pierre Rineau
Convert global $user to context: Steve Persch and Sam Boyer are taking point here, with assistance from Pierre Rineau. This one is tricky as our user system is tightly coupled to our session handling right now, so both of those need to get overhauled at the same time.
If you want to help with these issues, don't wait to be volunteered! You can volunteer yourself. There are also a number of other important discussions happening in the issue queue that could use your input.
We also spent some time continuing to discuss nothing. That is, discussing NULLs and what they mean and what they should mean. The key question hinged on the following two cases:
1) A context key was requested for which no handler is assigned and no explicit value has been assigned, in the current context object or in any of its parents.
2) A context key was requested for which a handler was assigned which returned NULL, returned "NULL and stop looking", or an explicit NULL value was assigned for that key, somewhere in the context stack.
In both cases the value of the context key that was requested is NULL, meaning "the absence of a value". However, there was some debate about whether or not a caller should be able to tell the difference between the two. Related to that question is the meaning of the offsetExists() method, part of the ArrayAccess interface, which as of right now means "does this value return non-NULL", regardless of whether there was a handler registered or not.
We didn't reach a conclusion here, so I'm going to open another discussion for it in the WSCCI group momentarily.
NULL discussion here
http://groups.drupal.org/node/179154
Please don't discuss it here. Discuss it there.