Topic on Extension talk:PhpTags/Flow

Hi

I wrote you previously when the extension was foxway. Anyways I was wondering how the extension, and extensions, were going? From the gist that I gather I find the notion of magic expressions to be very interesting. Wondering when you think the extension(s) will be a high enough to be production ready?

On a secondary note, I gather, or think it was implied somewhere, that this series of interconnecting extensions is looking to be a replacement, or a faster version, of semantic mediawiki? Or was my understanding flawed in some way?

All the best to you.

Hi

I think "production ready" is a little vague definition :-)

I see no reason why it cannot be used in production now. Yes, there are the some lacks and most likely hidden bugs (сan be anything without them?), but generally it is ready for trying use in production.

At this moment main subquality are:

• insufficient test coverage of exceptions
• the pages with PhpTags errors are not placing into the category "pages with PhpTags errors"
• inconvenient to edit the source code, I am deciding this problem with Extension:CodeMirror
• it can be used for DDoS attacks, restriction public access to expensive functions can helps
• not all PHP operators are implemented yet
• almost absent PhpTags compatible extensions that really useful for end users

As you can see, it's all just a matter of time and desire to do it. Since it is a open source project, you can help develop it or just wait while others develop it :-) In any case I am open for cooperation.

The first who was going to use this extension is User:JoelKP. I helped him by writing Extension:PhpTags SMW that is used for accessing SMW data. I hope he will come back and write some review...

I do not use this extension yet, because I need a more flexible and fast alternative to semantic mediawiki and I am going to do it with PhpTags. I also have a lot of ideas related to the user interface. Of course, this requires a lot of effort to develop. I still have the desire and ability to develop it and maybe in the end it will be done.

Best of luck.

It sounds great. Wish I could help, but limited time and a lack of trusting my coding skills at the moment is a problem.

I assume, or read somewhere, that the extension can be namespace restricted? But can it execute the code when transincluded? Currently I'm using the following extension for html: Extension:NamespaceHTML. I got the developer to change it so it can be transincluded. This way I treat the template, property (Semantic), namespaces as "developer" namespaces, which I assume I could do with PhpTags (My assumption is that end users really just want to write, upload photos,videos, etc with no html, no wiki-syntax, semantic wiki-syntax or phptags syntax. The closer to FaceBook the happier they are) This would seem to limit the possibility of DDoS attackes, but maybe I'm missing something.

Anyways best of luck to you. I'll be in touch & assuming I end up using the extension I'll throw you whatever little insides I run across.

> I assume, or read somewhere, that the extension can be namespace restricted?
Yes, use variable $wgPhpTagsNamespaces, example: $wgPhpTagsNamespaces = array( NS_DEVELOPER => true ); It will allow to use PhpTags only in NS_DEVELOPER namespace.

> But can it execute the code when transincluded?
Yes of course.

> This would seem to limit the possibility of DDoS attackes...
Yes, you are right, but do not worry, I am sure PhpTags is not the weakest link. There are a lot of ways to create a critical load on the server. PhpTags can only make it a little easier for intruders.

I can help you to resolve any small task, if you would like. I will show you how it can be resolved with PhpTags.

My best wishes to you.

Once again thanks for the info & your work.

One interesting thing I'm looking at phptags for is for calculating ratings. See Extension:Semantic_Rating#Displaying the Result of a Semantic Query as a Five Star Rating. It's one of the things I'm adding to my wiki, but the code suggested in that section seems less then ideal. I think it's one of things that would run far faster with phptags. Any thoughts on this?

All the best to you.

Yes, it does not look very optimized and I'm sure it can work only in theory.

You're right, with phptags it should be much faster.

The easiest way is using Extension:PhpTags SMW make requests to SMW and process the result using Extension:PhpTags Functions and display it using {{#rating: {{#phptag: $result}} }}.

I'll do it quickly if you give me url and access to your wiki. You should install Extension:PhpTags, Extension:PhpTags SMW, Extension:PhpTags Functions and User:Vedmaka/Semantic_Query_Interface.

Of course, ideally, it should work using only PhpTags extensions and I will strive for this, but it takes a lot of time.

I looked today at this more closely and see even more simple solution:

{{#rating: {{#ask:[[Item::<q>[[Author::{{FULLPAGENAME}}]][[Category:Items]]</q>]][[Category:Reviews]]|?Rating|format=average}} }}

I could be wrong, since I can not test it.

it gives incorrect result

Hi

Thanks for even trying. Been swamped or I would have replied sooner. I'm currently redesigning my wiki in the Foreground skin and as soon as I get it under control i"ll be trying out phptags.

All the best to you

> The first who was going to use this extension is User:JoelKP. I helped him by writing Extension:PhpTags SMW that is used for accessing SMW data. I hope he will come back and write some review...

Sorry for the rather late reply.

Only recently have I come to actually take the use of PhpTags further. Earlier, I came no further than testing, and then the wiki project I'm working on was put on hold for some time. Now It's been taken up again, and I'll both be using PhpTags more and doing more development of extensions.

The idea of a "more flexible and fast alternative" to Semantic MediaWiki is interesting, but I'm guessing that it will also take quite a while. Currently I'll be going along a more pragmatic short-term route – getting SMW functionality as flexible as I need it with PhpTags. Best of luck with the alternative approach, and if the work I've begun turns out well, then eventually it may mean that there will be two powerful systems that can be used through PhpTags.

Regarding PhpTags SMW, the approach works well, but Semantic Query Interface (which it uses) needs some work. The basic design ideas for SQI are good, but the implementation is rough. I also want to add a second query interface class (which uses the first as a building block) for recursively following page properties and building a structure (graph representation) of the page relationships. This representation should then be simple to use through PhpTags to e.g. print a hierarchical navigation list for the pages.

SQI also contains some neat things already besides the query interface class. It can be used to set properties on pages. That function will be made accessible in the future PhpTags SMW update.

Having said all that about PhpTags SMW and SQI, here's a brief review of PhpTags itself so far:

• It works.
• It's simple to make an interface available through PhpTags in an extension. The amount of code needed is small.
• While the PHP language support in PhpTags does not include defining functions, it's not too impractical to place things complex enough to need it in an extension. Such extensions could be more general, or could become a wiki-specific code library.

One example of a smaller project I might end up doing (and releasing if of general use) is to write an extension for handling sort keys for pages. PhpTags Wiki can set them, and it's easy to write functions to transform title strings for different kinds of pages.

Finally, thanks for the assistance earlier – you helped get me started.

Hi, Joel! Thanks for feedback :-)

Pay attention to Extension:CodeMirror. I did it for easier writing PhpTags code but I was distracted by highlighting wikitext. The idea is to make the code autocompletion, but I have not reached that goal yet. In any case, it may already be useful and interesting.

And I started experiments with Extension:PhpTags Widgets. You can see Slick.

You are welcome!