Caching and headers

[eluser]Aquillyne[/eluser]
[quote author="beemr" date="1216768872"]I'd rather that CI took a more complete view of serving type headers, rather than just solving Aquillyne's need for php-based css.[/quote]

Ah but for the millionth time, nothing about this patch is just solving my CSS-based needs. This patch fixes a general problem that, among many other things, does happen to solve my CSS-based needs (and some others too). This patch solves the general problem that CI doesn't cache headers.

[quote author="beemr" date="1216768872"]When serving types such as RSS or PDF, it is organizationally advantageous for both the user and the developer to have the same controller/method pushed to a variety of formats rather than a loose collection of URLs to do the same. Example.com/company/groups/Board_of_Administration should have its RSS at Example.com/company/groups/Board_of_Administration.xml or ".atom". Without suffixes to differentiate, we'd be forced to manage separate controllers for each in order to avoid cache conflicts.[/quote]

I agree with you. But this patch is nothing to do with suffixes. That's a separate issue which we might seek to fix another time. It's one you seem desperate to fix, as you go on:

[quote author="beemr" date="1216768872"]Suffixes combined with cached headers, as they are in Suffix cache, give us the basis for overloading our controllers, thereby establishing a convention that will reduce configuration ... I think CI would do well to consider suffix-based content negotiation for its core. Rails has it.[/quote]

You're basically suggesting we patch even more than what I'm suggesting. You want to patch the CI core with Suffix cache, which is basically MY patch plus one that makes CI recognise suffixes. You're trying to solve two problems at once. Hence I guess you're not against solving just one?

Wait, maybe you are:

[quote author="beemr" date="1216768872"][Fixing suffixes and header caching, rather than just header caching] encourages sensible structures. Simply adding cached-headers without a path for suffixes would encuorage abitrary structures and diminish convention.[/quote]

But let me remind you of one of the tenets of CI:

From the CodeIgniter Front Page:
CodeIgniter is for you, if:
* You want a framework that does not require you to adhere to restrictive coding rules.

CI isn't about forcing people to code sensibly, or any way at all. It is, however, about functionality. The patch I'm suggesting adds functionality where it's sorely missing. Indeed, I might even go so far as to call my patch fixing a bug.

The discussion of suffix recognition is for another time on another thread.