CodeIgniter's Future

[eluser]nmweb[/eluser]
Adding features or changing current behaviour I deem more important than php4 support. CakePHP and WordPress are still going strong and support php4.

However, the lack of OOP patterns seen in the storing of the instances of libraries in the singleton super object and thus losing all advantages of OOP and returning to procedural code. Why can I not have multiple instances of the Mail class by having a factory instead of storing the one instance in the super object. ->factory('Mail') or something. CI is easy to learn since there hardly is any OOP. Just usage of classes to emulate namespacing of some kind. Php5 wouldn't help anything here.

Other features like reverse routing (better routing in general), internal forwards, layouts, before/after filters, action that is called when no matching action is found, matching views to actions. I know some or perhaps most of this can be achieved by hacking into CI and many have done so, still having this sort of stuff in the framework is preferred to having to pick a solution from ten repositories spread around the internet. Php5 may be nice, the magic functions are certainly cool for syntactic sugar and me personally can't wait for 5.3 to ship with lamda functions but lack of php5 is not the problem of CI. I loved CI and have learned a lot from it but long since have moved on.

[eluser]Phil Sturgeon[/eluser]
While I am definitely more than happy for PHP4 to slowly phase out, I will will say what I say every time this topic comes up: It doesn't matter!

You can autoload classes, you can make multiple instances of models and libraries, you can use any PHP5 syntax you like in your code - there is no difference.

If it comes down to what is under CI's hood, then as Michael pointed out, that already is PHP5.

If it comes down to speed then one thing to remember is that the more OOP you use, the easier it is to start chewing up memory and CPU cycles. Abstracting, extending, autoloading, etc all uses up WAY more CPU and memory than procedural code.

So basically there is no reason to worry, complain or even care about whether PHP4 is supported or not.

[eluser]sanket[/eluser]
yeah u r absolutely right man......!

[eluser]Adam Griffiths[/eluser]
Firstly, does the OP know where the search function is located? Use it and you would've found your answer.

By process of elimination CI is definitely going to drop PHP4 at some point. So by saying that you are either just pointing out the obvious or acting the fool.

The great thing about CI is that is a fast, it's really fast. If PHP5 is installed on your server CI will use the Base5.php file located in the Codeigniter/ folder and make use of PHP5's features over PHP4.

Of course, the loader class could be classed as a pain, but it works, and it also fast. Oh, and you can extend or replace any library you like, but you knew that, right?

And as per when you said "90% of the hosts I used have PHP5", I would just like to point out that:- the hosts you used wit PHp5 is not directly proportional to the ones that actually support PHP5, more like indirectly proportional.

But, why would EllisLab put the majority of their customers out in the cold? Their customers would find another Framework to use and another CMS to use. Which results in EllisLab downsizing or worse, closing forever! And then that would put everybody out in the cold and we'd all have to bugger off and find some other tools to use.

</rant>

[eluser]simshaun[/eluser]
Oh, so that's what little white box is up to with the word "Search" next to it. *duh*

I was simply voicing my opinion. I'm not sorry if my thread makes you read over 1 tiny row in all the posts that are on these forums.

If you don't take the time to read the whole thread.. and I don't think you did.. don't take the time to reply.
I've already stated that I don't expect Ellis to drop PHP4 right this instant.

Quit your trolling and get back to doing something useful.
..and to think I wasted 2 minutes of my time replying to you.

[eluser]Adam Griffiths[/eluser]
[quote author="simshaun" date="1231382323"]Oh, so that's what little white box is up to with the word "Search" next to it. *duh*

I was simply voicing my opinion. I'm not sorry if my thread makes you read over 1 tiny row in all the posts that are on these forums.

If you don't take the time to read the whole thread.. and I don't think you did.. don't take the time to reply.
I've already stated that I don't expect Ellis to drop PHP4 right this instant.

Quit your trolling and get back to doing something useful.
..and to think I wasted 2 minutes of my time replying to you.[/quote]

I did read the whole thread. Did you really use the search tool? if you did you would've seen the posts that staff have left on the forums saying they won't be dropping support for PHP4 because they refuse to alienate more than half of their customers (which they should). And, if you had and really wanted to know whether at any point in the future drop PHP4 support you should've used a brain cell and though "well at some point of course they will!".

*duh*

[eluser]TheActionCombo[/eluser]
"Speed" should only be mentioned in framework discussion when referring to development speed, not performance. None of the current frameworks are going to be a bottleneck, so it really is a waste of time arguing about it.

Development speed, not performance or PHP5/6 adoption is what is going to determine CodeIgniter's future. Currently, CodeIgniter is lacking Auth, ACL, ORM, integrated CRUD, table associations, and command line tools. I think those should be the priority so developers don't need to rely on 3rd party libraries for the majority of their application's functionality.

[eluser]Randy Casburn[/eluser]
So many new coders come to CI. Perhaps many are in school hoping to land a great programming job after they graduate. I might offer that for those folks CI is offering a disservice in regards to this discussion. My point being that the modern, high performance aspects of PHP found in the likes of the SPL and proper exception handling coded through extensions to the native Exception Class would better prepare aspiring new programmers for computer science training or careers. Those attributes can only be found in PHP 5.

For those making money by selling web fronts and applications using rapid development...it probably doesn't matter much as long as the cash is flowing...right?

Just a thought.

Randy

p.s. Yii is truly interesting because of the way it is built...not because of its 'speed'.

[eluser]vlad_ci[/eluser]
I agree with Randy, SPL, and now 5.3 features such as closures, name spaces should be used
throwout the framework for as many things as possible

They overall promote design examples of how to build 'large' systems.



But I think we as community we might have failed to communicate to CI developers exactly how we would like to
see the new PHP features be used in CI as well.

In other words, just saying to use 'SPL' may not be enough, but show how they can be used for database record
management, may be would score better response.


While I would not be personally using it, but implementing a complete
UI development paradigm using say Dojo-toolkit with its RESTful stores would be a huge show case for CI.


And to that extend, if CI could have designed in 'Server' side OO scheme for
Dojo Item*Store, Dojo-deffered and DataGrid.layout would essentially allow
to hook-up all Dojo widgets (including the DataGrid) to CI backed 'Model'

And then in The View part a developer would just have to define where the widgets are positions on the page
and tell what widget uses what 'data store' (dojo concept for a structured Data model for a given widget)