Extension development

Monday 04 October 2010 4:18:53 am

I developed a couple of very specific extensions for my own use.

I'm facing a couple of general problems developing extensions and using other people extensions as well witch is the lack of an "official howto".

for example : If I have to handle http inputs, where should I handle that ? In an action ? inside a class ?

That kind of things is handled in very different ways in the various extensions I used witch makes it difficult to understand the code and adapt it.

It also leads to write a lot of code for buiding functions that already exist in the core. For example, I recently used an extension redefining a custom datatype for structuring data that are already handled by ez (dates, booleans, etc.). That leads to write very much code and braking the compatibilité with fetch functions.

I'm also sometimes very surprised to see some general purpose labels like "Remove selected" being translated in the core and in every extension.

I'm often reading advices like "read other people's code", or "study the kernel files" or "use ezdebug" and that's of course very usefull. The only benefit of using a structured expandable system is to be able to use it without having to undertand the whole thing.

Il read a few articles about developing extensions and my question is not "how should I do this or that ?" but is there some sort of "offical" guideline document about that.

Wednesday 06 October 2010 4:59:29 am

Merci Damien,

The fact is : there is an expandable system that needs extensions code to respect certain conventions to function properly. Plus there is a whole system that implements a lot of things allready.

I used an extension that needs to process user posted data. The processing (capture of http vars + various actions) is done inside a class and triggered by a fetch method. The problem is : when the view cache is working the fetch doesn't occur anymore and the processing is not working.

My example is trivial but illustrates the fact that if one doesn't realize one's extension is not fully 'compatible" with the system it's supposed to work with, users are going to spend time solving problems and might even give up and say it's lousy even though it does basically everything they need.

A simple rule could be : handle user posts in that place : ... you can be sure it works 99% of the time.

Rules for making fully compatible extensions => it works immediatly, isn't it what everybody wants ?

I agree that no rule can apply 100%, 99% is far enough.

About asking to people what they would do in this or that situation, I really preffer to know what is made to work that way than relying on what is known to work.