Making third party contributions work side by side

[eluser]Colin Williams[/eluser]
You don't need community standards, you just need to write flexible APIs. Most, maybe all, of the "auth systems" written for CI a based on their own strict conventions. Getting together and tinkering with a wiki page to develop a "schema standard" is just one more reason not to spend time with your family, with your significant other, further your career, workout, read, write, learn, code, etc. In other words, a waste of time. Just make the API good (flexible).

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
Colin don't you agree in spite of many ways to come to a solution the base of the solution is the same. The problem now if you want to go from one solution to another you have to change tables wouldn't it be better you are able to salvage the data that is already gathered to make the new solution work.

I can understand your view that a contribution should be as flexible as possible but there are things you can't solve by having a flexible api because the solutions are too different. If you create a base structure, which as a developer you can honour or not, can make it easier for others to come up with other solutions or go from one solution to another.
If i follow your train of though then there shouldn't be abstract classes and interfaces in php, or any other programming language.

[eluser]davidbehler[/eluser]
I tried giving the user as much flexibility as possible when I created my auth library. You can define like everything, starting with wether you want to use the database at all to the layout of the database and the used encryption method and what not else

But in the end I think it aint't worth it. It's quite a lot of work I had to do to make the library that flexible and most of the people use more or less the same layout for their database anyway...

[eluser]Colin Williams[/eluser]
@xwero:

If i follow your train of though then there shouldn’t be abstract classes and interfaces in php, or any other programming language.

Never said that. Never even got close to reaching that conclusion.

@MeNeedz guy:

I tried giving the user as much flexibility as possible when I created my auth library.

I haven't looked into your "auth system" but if what you claim is accurate, then good. Everyone can look at it and see what can be done.

But in the end I think it aint’t worth it. It’s quite a lot of work I had to do to make the library that flexible and most of the people use more or less the same layout for their database anyway

1.) How are you assigning "worth" to the effort of making it flexible? (Did you do A/B testing against a non-flexible version of your library?)

2.) Yes, good APIs take more effort than bad APIs.

3.) You are right. There is an intuitive, generally agreeable schema for most resources. So to make it flexible, you get that part in, then make it amendable in some fashion.

[eluser]davidbehler[/eluser]
Dude, I got a name

"A/B testing"? What exactly do you mean?

What I meant was that I had to spent alot of time making my library flexible but in the end most people use the same setup anyway. But I agree in general, that flexibility is a good thing for a library even though in some cases it's more needed, in some less.

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
Colin i knew you weren't think that. i just went to that extreme to make the point there is a base or a pattern for most solutions, as i read further you agree with me and waldmeister

[eluser]RS71[/eluser]
I think there should a collaboration to come up with a library not with interchangeability in mind but best practices. A complete (and somewhat modular) library that people could pick apart and modify for their own needs.

[eluser]RS71[/eluser]
Any possibility of making this happen?