[geeklog-devel] Plugins and GL 1.5 online config manager

[Joe Mucchiello]

site_enabled still needs to be removed from the list of configuration 
options since once you set it to false, you can't login to reset it. 
Moving it to db_config is the least painful option.

At 09:52 PM 1/3/2008, Blaine Lang wrote:
>With GL 1.5 and the online config manager, plugins that want to use 
>it have to do things a bit different and I've re-worked the 
>staticpages plugin installation and upgrade code to support loading 
>the online configuration. What's needed now is peer review to see if 
>this is the best way as it would likely be copied into other plugins.

Peer review now is a bit late in the game. Where was the design 
document's peer review?

I have a related question. Where do the configuration pages for the 
plugins reside? I can imagine the configuration tab being extremely 
confusing if it is a mixture of core tabs and plugin tabs. Especially 
if complicated plugins need 4-5 tabs themselves. I'm not sure the 
config class should be written as a singleton. There should be a core 
config object and each plugin should create its own. That way when 
you go the staticpages admin page, one of the top menu items would "configure".

I also notice you have to be in 'root' use the config gui. That makes 
sense for options in the old config.php but by moving the 
configuration to a GUI, it should be more flexible.

At 11:11 PM 1/3/2008, Blaine Lang wrote:
>I think the change would need to be made to the COM_whatsNewBlock as 
>we have no specialized handlers in the config class.

This is a huge design flaw. There's also no validation code. Suppose 
I have a field that can be between 1 and 100. My only choice is to 
make a ridiculous dropdown box. Or go with a number field and handle 
out of bounds values "gracefully". At a minimum, the "selectarray" 
field should be able to handle other simple validations: if type = 
number, selectarray contains a two-element array of lower and upper 
bounds (or is empty if all values are allowed).

Special handlers would work if the class was a real class and each 
plugin could subclass it for maximum effect.

Maybe the config manager isn't ready for 1.5. It still needs a lot of testing.


----
Joe Mucchiello
Throwing Dice Games
http://www.throwingdice.com