Thread:Extension talk:PhpTags/Production level/reply (8)

> ''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.