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To: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>
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Organization: Spikesource, Inc.
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:38:42 -0800
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Reliable header sending mechanism in php 6
From: enugroho@spikesource.com (Ezra Nugroho)

On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 14:50 +1000, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
> Ezra Nugroho wrote:
> > Can I ask for the following support, at least to begin conversation
> > about it if it hasn't been done before.
> > 
> > Currently, the header() function still carries the following warning in
> > its online documentation:
> > 
> > "Remember that header() must be called before any actual output is sent,
> > either by normal HTML tags, blank lines in a file, or from PHP. It is a
> > very common error to read code with include(), or require(), functions,
> > or another file access function, and have spaces or empty lines that are
> > output before header() is called. The same problem exists when using a
> > single PHP/HTML file."
> > 
> > This is quite annoying since this makes header() or setcookie() calls to
> > be unreliable. 
> > 
> > I am aware that it can be done more reliably by turning the output
> > buffering on. This is less of an issue if you are writing your own
> > webapp. However, this is much more difficult if a person writes a
> > library for other people's consumptions. The library cannot enforce
> > output buffering in the webapp.
> > 
> > Can we please give it a thought in PHP 6? Maybe by turning output
> > buffering on by default, or even by enforcing output buffering.
> > 
> > In Java, you can get the request object, and the response object of a
> > web request. I find this very useful and reliable.
> > 
> > Any thoughts or comments about this?
> 
> There is nothing unreliable about is as far as I am concerned.  You have
> full control over output buffering from your script.  Forcing people to
>  buffer output by default will mean higher memory usage and higher
> latency for existing scripts with no gain given their code is working today.


In my mind, it is still unreliable...
When I write my library, how can I enforce people who adopt it to enable
ob?

Furthermore, I think it's quite annoying that some functions may not
work just because of an inclusion of a blank space somewhere in a file
that you don't maintain.

As php applications get bigger, and developers have only a small scope
of the big picture, the reliability of the functions becomes bigger and
bigger deal.