A month and a half of really, really solid work has started to pay dividents! I’m very proud to announce the release of CodeIgniter 1.6, the kick ass open source web application framework for PHP developers working in the real world. The release marks a new turn in the development of the framework, and has received considerable attention from both EllisLab developers, and the community.
Among a host of new capabilities, this release features:
- A Database Forge class: database agnostic table and field manipulation
- An enhanced Active Record library
- A revised Session Class with “flash variables” and additional security
- An extendable Model Class with auto-loadable Models
- Extendable Helpers, and additions and enhancements to existing Helpers
- A revised view architecture that allows for simple inclusion of multiple views
- And over 120 different enhancements, improvements and bug fixes. Yup one two oh other changes.
What’s even more exciting? Development on CodeIgniter is moving forward in earnest. There are great things on the horizon, and as soon as some of the 1.6 dust settles, we’ll be ready to kick up more dust in the form of another version, with a raft of new features. I expect the release cycle to get much tighter now.
Some of the changes are so simple and elegant, I’m kicking myself that I didn’t think of it earlier. The new view functionality for example is so simple yet functional. Rick did a great job with that. Extending the helpers? I love this change. That particular innovation was courtesy of Derek Jones. Again, very simple, very elegant change. Brilliant.
I hope this release is as exciting for you as it is for us - and hey, just because its out doesn’t mean you get to sit back now! Keep hitting the SVN for more changes, features and enhancements.
Fellow web-nerd, instructor, and ExpressionEngine aficionado Simon Collison has written what has to be the most inspirational blog entry written in Education for 2008, entitled Dear Students.
Its short and to the point, and while I usually don’t like quoting large chunks of other people’s writing (preferring you just go read it yourself) its hard to express the greatness of this post without getting both of its paragraphs. Go read it first-hand anyhow.
Dear Students
On 12th March at 9am, I’ll be presenting the snappily-titled The Business of Web Design: Latest Trends in Web Design and Web-based Applications lecture at the University of Nottingham. This forms part of a great season of presentations for the Development of Digital Business module that also includes lectures from the likes of Microsoft, IBM and a plethora of others.
If you’re on that course, make sure you don’t get pissed the night before and oversleep in a pool of vomit and cigarette butts. I know what you students are like.
Now that is poetry. Well done Simon…
As of CodeIgniter 1.6.0 (not out as of this writing unless you use the svn repository), you’ll be able to “extend” CodeIgniter helpers. This is a huge convenience if you just need a small change, or a single additional function, but don’t want to make an entire duplicate copy of the helper.
For example, I often find myself needing a “mysqldatetime_to_timestamp()” function in there. Previously, it would mean making an entire duplicate helper in application/helpers, but now, adding an additional function is as easy as creating an application/MY_date_helper.php page, and just adding in a single function.
function mysqldatetime_to_timestamp($datetime = "")
{
// function is only applicable for valid MySQL DATETIME (19 characters) and DATE (10 characters)
$l = strlen($datetime);
if(!($l == 10 || $l == 19))
{
return false;
}
//
$date = $datetime;
$hours = 0;
$minutes = 0;
$seconds = 0;
// DATETIME only
if($l == 19)
{
list($date, $time) = explode(" ", $datetime);
list($hours, $minutes, $seconds) = explode(":", $time);
}
list($year, $month, $day) = explode("-", $date);
return mktime($hours, $minutes, $seconds, $month, $day, $year);
}
Also, if you want to change the behaviour of a current function, you can simply create an identically named function. Perfect for getting seconds out of timespan() (a personal bugaboo).
Of course, this is on top of an impressive change log of other features added into 1.6.0. The future looks very bright indeed!
* This function originally written by Clemens Kofler.
There’s been renewed discussion about CodeIgniter moving to a PHP 5 only framework within the community. This post is my attempt to articulate the point of view of the development team, and my personal reasons for why we will not go this route.
First of all, let me just say this “I like PHP 5”. A lot. I use it exclusively for my personal development, and I want to see it adopted more. I don’t like PHP 4 much, and in fact, I’d love to not need to support it. But the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of PHP servers out there are still running PHP 4, and we want our products to be accessible for the widest possible audience. We will not be dropping support for PHP 4 anytime soon.
What follows in this entry is my full reasoning. Want to see a PHP 5 CodeIgniter? Read on…
This is just one of those quickie posts about news regarding a few pieces of tech that are important to me.
I’ve been quiet on the blog recently… but not in my code - and the same can be said of the rest of the EllisLab dev team. I’m finally ready to say that the next version of CodeIgniter will be out shortly. We’ve added all our completed* work into the subversion repository, and we’re just finalizing a few bug fixes and admin details before we go formal with it. If you have access to the bleeding edge that is our SVN, please grab a copy and run it through its paces. Beat it up, inspect it… poke, prod and otherwise try to tear it limb from limb.
And let me also just add that we are not done. Not by a long shot. What is up there now represents much less then a month of development - and we’ve been doing massive work on ExpressionEngine 2.0, so this is all “trickle down”. There are many more exciting things in the works that will make it into CodeIgniter shortly.
*What an odd choice of words… “completed”... Does it make you wonder what kind of half-finished but not quite ready for prime-time stuff is coming down the pipes?
Ever wanted to pick Rick’s brain in person? Ever wanted to scream at me for introducing a bug into CodeIgniter? Now’s your chance!
If you’re going to South by Southwest this year we’re holding our usual party (last year’s was awesome), BUT we have MUCH more goodness going on. Check out http://camp.ellislab.com/
- ExpressionEngine 2.0 Sneak Preview
- EllisLab Open Panel Discussion
- Party at the Moonshine Grill
- Solspace Night Cap
- Brunch “Click” Event
And of course, just hang out with us… we’re cool like that.
