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Status php library development

m_mind

Hi all,

Currently I'm looking into the possibilities of integrating Alfresco into our project environment which is written in PHP.
For this I want to use the remote PHP libraries which I downloaded from the SVN repository (http://svn.alfresco.com/repos/alfresco-open-mirror/alfresco/HEAD/root/modules/php-sdk/source/php/remote/).
As some of the methods mentioned in the PHP api are not available (for example $node->copy()), I checked whether or not I was using the latest version.
It turned out that the last commit has been over a year ago.

Is remote PHP code still developed in some other place, or has it been discontinued?

Thanks in advance,

Peter

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dwilson

I'm not sure the official response, but from my perspective we just converted our PHP web application to use RESTful web scripts to retrieve data instead of the heavy & incomplete PHP API that uses SOAP. The javascript library behind web scripts isn't without quirks, but it is more complete and definitely more actively maintained than the PHP API.

Hope that helps.

m_mind

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.
I think I'll also have to go that way or else I'll have to write the needed functions in PHP which isn't a problem, but not what I expected when I had a look at the PHP API before I started with the implementation.

I hope some official response will follow so other developers know what there up to if they want to use the PHP library.

strophi

Hi,

it seems that the php library was a only a marketing trick to fish in the php community as same as the anouncement of an alfresco ubuntu package was a (vaporware) try to fish in the ubuntu community. I think (or should i say hope) these communities will honour this by avoiding alfresco.

I like alfresco software, but i have to convince my (windows based) organsiations managent to pay for alfresco.
There is no way to produce a tiny simple prototype (for me dumb ass) to show the power of alfresco to those who will pay, without even minimal support from the forums, see all the zero answer threads… Alfresco will say, thats not alfrescos problem, but community problem, to come out of this situation. But it is Alfrescos problem.

Alfresco showed me that I'm a dumb ass, who was or is betting on the wrong horse.

sadly and disappointed,

strophi

dwilson

…minimal support from the forums, see all the zero answer threads… Alfresco will say, thats not alfrescos problem, but community problem, to come out of this situation. But it is Alfrescos problem.

I've brought this exact issue up several times via different methods and received the same response. It turns out 98% of Alfresco's customer support energy goes to enterprise customers on an entirely separate information portal. (where answers are not shared to this forum for reference.) I understand and appreciate the argument, they have to pay the bills by caring for paying customers, however I believe Alfresco's popularity would surge if they treated the community with more attention. For each Labs customer that doesn't at this moment have the budget to pay for enterprise, there is a colleague, other project, or future employer of that Labs customer that might have the budget for enterprise and needs to hear about the great experience with Labs… not the sometimes frustrating zero-answer thread experience I've had myself and heard from others. :?

My advice for Alfresco, hire even just one community manager that is on the forums & the wiki all day long providing answers to the "known issue" questions, updating the unfinished skeleton wiki pages, marking post subjects with "SOLVED" or not, building FAQs, improving the forum search functionality… etc. Just one FTE doing only these things. I have to believe the investment will pay off and your community will thrive & thank you.

Cheers.

mrogers

Its a little unfair to say that there's zero support.   I for one post several times a day, and I'm not the only alfrescan doing so.   I've even replied to dwilson on this particular subject.

There are a couple of facts of life with the php library.   We in the Dev Team are concentrating on building out the Java Script API and some time in future need to rework all the scripting APIs for JSR 223.   It all comes down to resources and prioirties and the php interface, although on the roadmap, is not at the top of the list at the moment.

In the meantime were open to contributions to the PHP api.   Is anyone out there interested in taking the php api forward?

dwilson

Thanks mrogers, I greatly appreciate your reply to this thread. By your stats it is clear you are certainly a more active Alfresco employee, and that is great to see. And you might have even been talking about replying to my similar thread late last year created at a point of frustration: http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=15855

Strophi's words were a bit strong, although to be fair neither of us claimed zero support, just "minimal". By "zero" we were both specifically referring to the no response threads that are relatively common here. I've personally spent many, many hours searching these forums for answers, only to see my exact question posted even a year earlier with no reply on numerous occasions. It's worth noting that I'm a member of several other commercial open source community forums and do not see these problems there.

All in all, I do appreciate that some steps are being taken to improve the situation. (e.g. Member Reply Points, your own replies, etc.)

But it could truly be a wise investment having a dedicated staff member (not necessarily a full engineer) who spends 8hrs/day nursing the forum, the wiki, FAQs, and the thousands of valuable Labs members in general.

Best,
Dave

m_mind

Thanks for you reply mrogers.
Not to offend you or any of the Alfresco employees, but I must agree with dwilson and strophi about the low response on the forums.
I've been testing whether or not Alfresco would be suitable for our company and a lot of the issues I encounter seems to be multiple times on the forum without any real answer except people confirming or asking if someone knows how to fix it.
Please don't take the following personal, but I must say that I find it strange that this topic doesn't have any reaction from an Alfresco employee in about a month, but when someone starts talking negative about Alfresco a reply is posted within a couple of hours, which I can understand from your point of view, but it does emphasizes dwilson point of having a community manager.

Again, I mean no offense, but those are just my observations.

Peter

mikeh

Hi all

I understand your frustrations. Believe me, we'd love to spend more time answering the forum posts, but (as I've pointed out previously) often we're just too busy to do so.

The Alfresco Community is at a difficult growing stage: too big for just the Alfresco employees to take care of and too immature for it to be self-sustaining.

I'll pass your suggestions for a full-time "Community Expert" on to our Community Manager, Nancy. In the meantime, please be assured that we do value you guys and are trying our hardest as individuals to answer posts where possible - and definitely appreciate those of you who do the same.

Thanks,
Mike

wabson

Just a few thoughts on this debate.

As mikeh says, we all wish we had more time to be able to devote to the forums, but this is a difficult issue because the deep knowledge of the Alfresco employees that seems to be so valued by the contributors on this topic only comes from working with the code day in, day out. It is not fair to say that they are too busy looking after paying customers, as most engineers' time goes into building the open source code that is available to all, rather than into dealing with support requests.

As dwilson suggests, one option is to employ dedicated people to provide forum responses, while this might help in the short term given the current growth rate of the community using Alfresco it is not something that would be sustainable in the longer term. In contrast, if community members are able to help each other then that is sustainable as numbers grow. Note that when I talk about the community, I'm including our own employees in that. Developing an us-and-them approach is not helpful to anyone.

Where there are failures in the ability of the forums to provide timely information to those who are trying to get help on Alfresco, that is a collective failure of us all, not just of those of us who happen to be employed by Alfresco, like myself. Any solutions to that need to be debated in the open by all under a collective responsibility.

It's therefore encouraging to see such debate taking place, but any suggestion that Alfresco as a company should simply 'provide' solutions to this problem shows a misunderstanding of open source communities.

Whilst there are no doubt improvements that can be made to the support on the forums, if you are looking to get a response back within a specific time period or from specific groups of people such as Alfresco employees, then you are almost certainly looking in the wrong place. For that, Alfresco provides support subscriptions to our customers.

Thanks,
Will.

wabson

On the original issue posted by m_mind, I agree with dwilson that the REST API is almost certainly the way to go. Rather than embedding the PHP client library in your application, you can simply use PHP's CURL functions to call URLs on the Alfresco server to authenticate and perform your work. You could even develop a custom web script of your own and reduce this to a single HTTP call.

I have developed in PHP using both the SOAP client and using CURL functions, and CURL wins every time for me.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Will.

nancyg

As Alfresco's community manager, I'd like to weigh in on this topic.

It may help to provide you with some stats; we have > 1.5 million downloads, > 90,000 community members and <100 people in our company.

About a year ago, I started a point system to encourage community members to contribute in the forums. You'll notice for instance, that mrodgers has 53 points and he joined Alfresco less than a year ago. MikeH has 94 points, look at the member list and you'll see that all the top contributors are Alfresco engineers. Their commitment is clear but look at the ratio, 90,000 community members to 100 Alfrescans, the burden of community support must be shared by the community.

The success of open source is due to community members contributing back. If just one out of every 100 community members answered a question in the forums even if it was only once or twice a year, think of the impact that would have.

So I have a different perspective and it is difficult to read the criticism when I know how dedicated our engineers are to the community. I would challenge anyone who is using Alfresco and not paying for it, to schedule a few minutes every day to answer a question.

Nancy

dwilson

Thanks very much for the replies. It's good for us to hear the perspective. I especially appreciate Mike's point:

The Alfresco Community is at a difficult growing stage: too big for just the Alfresco employees to take care of and too immature for it to be self-sustaining.

Seems quite true. The community is a bit awkward (like a lanky teenager perhaps) and needs to stabilize. Will, you're correct that one "community expert" role responding with the appropriate wiki link, faq, editing post titles to help searching, etc. isn't necessarily scalable, but that would be a wonderful kick-start to making the wealth of questions and sometimes buried answers that exist on the forum more accessible. Building out, organizing, and updating FAQs to truly represent the frequently asked simple questions would be a great boon to frustrated new members. (Instead of stating it has been asked before and just leaving the thread unanswered – as I've actually heard several times.)

I'm certainly not trying to minimize existing employee contributions, but I do maintain that just expecting a group of community champions to come out of the woodwork to respond to the large group of clearly frustrated beginners without any help might simply be too much to expect. Each of you admitted to responding to this conversation numerous times, so perhaps you will start to see that this issue simply won't fix itself?

… Well, please consider it anyway. Thinking positively, I will try to earn more of my own points going forward though my technical knowledge of Alfresco is limited.

Nancy, as I mentioned earlier I think the points system you turned on a year ago is a great step, and it will be good to hear about other efforts you are making to help nurture the community "into maturity" as they happen…

Best,
Dave

nancyg

One other thing to consider, two times a month Yong Qu hosts Tech Talk Live, http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Live, this is an hour-long session. There is usually a guest speaker on some technical topic but there is almost always time at the end for questions - these questions can be about ANYTHING regarding Alfresco. This is essentially free developer-level support and is a great place to get help.

I'll make just one more stab at explaining my position and again I'll use stats: we have somewhere north of 500 paying customers. Remember that these subscriptions fund the free labs version. Without these paid subscriptions, it would not be possible to fund the improvement of the labs version - no bug fixes, no new features. We have far more people who use the software without paying or contributing back by answering questions in the forums, submitting forge projects, editing wiki pages or any other way.

It comes down to a question of fairness - is it fair to use enterprise-quality software for free and then on top of that, to expect free support? Put another way, how could Alfresco make a case for paid subscriptions if we gave away everything including support?

So, give Tech Talk Live a try, it really is a great resource and take a few moments, consider the above and if you have any other ideas that we can implement like the points system, I am all ears.

Nancy

irene88

Hi,
I have similar problem:
I'm trying to update an account status with the Abraham's PHP Library,
but I'm getting the generic levitra following exception message:

Bad request / Your browser sent a request that this server could not
understand.

I've already authorized my application to connect with my test account
and I saved the authentication data in constants. I'm using the code
bellow to do the update:

try {
$twitter = new EpiTwitter(Config::TWITTER_APP_TOKEN,
Config::TWITTER_APP_SECRET, Config::TWITTER_OAUTH_TOKEN,
Config::TWITTER_OAUTH_SECRET);
$return = $twitter->post('/statuses/update.json', array ( 'status'
=> 'TEST' ));
echo $return->response;
} catch (Exception $e) {

echo $e->getMessage();

}

API methods that uses 'get' instead of 'post' (e.g. account/
verify_credentials) works without problem.

or I can use everything you've already adviced?
Thanks in advance.

ddanninger

Hi there,

i would like to say some words too. (even it is a outdated topic) Actually i attended the developer conference in paris 2010 and i asked what will be the future about the PHP Library. On my question i got an answer that the PHP Library is quite outdated but actually it will not be developed anymore and the community should contribute on it. Alfresco is trying to change from MediaWiki (which is written in PHP to another java based Wiki and the Developer also told me he would be quite happy to get a new forum too.)

I told the Developer that i'll contribute a extended PHP Library soon. which i already did http://forge.alfresco.com/projects/ifresco-phplib (btw the reason why i moved my project to google code is, because the news get updated maybe once every two months. )

Also i send a mail to you Nancy with my contributions of an PHP written Client and PHP Library. But never got a response on that. (I sent it to you on 28.03.2011)

It is also not in my interest to offend you guys 😃 You did some great job with alfresco and it was for sure a really long way to go and i can understand that you cant support all the topics in the forum other wise we would have to wait for a new release for maybe 2 years 😃

But i think also non enterprise partner contributions should be published in the wiki or stuff like that.

@m_mind ->
at the moment i can just recommend you to use my extended PHP library.
I implemented a class called "RESTTransport.php" in there and it is possible to copy and move some nodes in there.
http://code.google.com/p/ifresco-php-library/

best regards
dominik

ddanninger

Hi,
I have similar problem:
I'm trying to update an account status with the Abraham's PHP Library,
but I'm getting the following exception message:

Bad request / Your browser sent a request that this server could not
understand.

I've already authorized my application to connect with my test account
and I saved the authentication data in constants. I'm using the code
bellow to do the update:

try {
$twitter = new EpiTwitter(Config::TWITTER_APP_TOKEN,
Config::TWITTER_APP_SECRET, Config::TWITTER_OAUTH_TOKEN,
Config::TWITTER_OAUTH_SECRET);
$return = $twitter->post('/statuses/update.json', array ( 'status'
=> 'TEST' ));
echo $return->response;
} catch (Exception $e) {

echo $e->getMessage();

}

API methods that uses 'get' instead of 'post' (e.g. account/
verify_credentials) works without problem.

or I can use everything you've already adviced?
Thanks in advance.

I forgot to say actually this forum is not about the "Abrahams Twitter PHP Library" 😃 it is about the PHP Library of Alfresco.
So actually it is not a "similar problem" it is totally different , and you are totally wrong in this forum with this question.

mikeh

The correct way to move forward with this is to raise a JIRA ticket and detail what your contribution is. We will then get you to sign a Contributors Agreement and take it from there.

Many thanks,
Mike

P.S. Nancy is no longer with Alfresco, which might be why you didn't get a response.

ddanninger

Thank you for your fast response 😃

i raised a jira ticket -> http://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALF-9819.

Didnt know that nancy is no long with Alfresco. So whos now the contact person for the community - Jeff Potts?

best regards
dominik

mikeh

So whos now the contact person for the community - Jeff Potts?

Yep, spot on.

Thanks,
Mike

jpotts

There are several different paths code contributions can take.

1. Submitted through Jira

Things like patches and enhancements can be submitted through Jira, like you've done. Engineering will review the ticket. If the code is something they decide to incorporate into core, they will ask you to complete a code contribution agreement, and then they'll take it from there.

2. Nomination into the ACCP

Anyone in the community can nominate code into the Alfresco Community Contributor Program (ACCP). The ACCP is an Apache-style process by which code contributions are reviewed and eventually recommended for inclusion in the core product. Accepted contributions start as an "incubator" and then move into Community and are then recommended for inclusion in Enterprise.

3. Maintained as a separate project

Some code contributions make more sense to be maintained as a separate project. It may be that the project is broader than Alfresco (a CMIS-based add-on, for example), or it might be something that is Alfresco-specific, but which Alfresco Engineering doesn't have the resources to support ongoing.

The downside of this third category, from a developer's perspective, is that there is a risk of lower adoption by not being part of the core distribution. One way we are going to try to address this is by creating a new site which will act as a directory of add-ons. The code can reside and be managed in whatever system makes sense to the project team. The directory will simply point to it. The benefit is that the catalog can be rated, commented upon, favorited, etc.

4. Code can be proactively harvested by Engineering

Some projects exist as separate projects and then are sought out by Engineering as they seek to address a need within the product. Alfresco 4.0 has several new features made possible by community contributions that were harvested in this way.

Obviously, these are not mutually exclusive options. A given package might take all of these paths.

With regard to Alfresco's PHP API, this is a project that we are actively seeking additional contributors to help us with. So it is highly likely that you'll see the PHP API (and several other integrations and add-ons) get separated from the core into their own standalone projects as soon as people who are interested in maintaining them are identified.

Jeff

ddanninger

Hi jeff,

thanks for your reply to this topic too. And your description about the several different ways.

The PHP API dont need to be in the core for sure, it would be great enough to handle it as standalone package. If there is an official PHP API then it would be just necessary to be published on the wiki and stuff like that. That developers are not confused about the PHP API anymore.

Looking forward to see what will happen about the PHP Library.

Best regards
Dominik

wabson

Dominik, you might also be interested in the PHP client that is part of the Apache Chemistry project, which uses CMIS to talk to any CMIS-compatible repository, rather than just Alfresco.

http://chemistry.apache.org/php/phpclient.html

Cheers,
Will.

ddanninger

thanks for this link,

but actually if you really just wanna work with alfresco and do more kind of bigger things it is not really useful to just use cmis. CMIS is in my opinion still limited. Maybe good solution for 4.0 but not sure 😃

Good solution for sure if you wanna support all cmis-compatible repositories. But if u just wanna work with alfresco an additional PHP API is in my opinion a "must have".

best regards
dominik