Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:50288
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain dmi.me.uk designates 77.68.52.130 as permitted sender)
Message-ID: <4CE387DF.5050903@dmi.me.uk>
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:44:31 +0000
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.23) Gecko/20090812 Thunderbird/2.0.0.23 Mnenhy/0.7.6.666
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Alec <alecgorge@gmail.com>
CC: internals@lists.php.net
References: <AANLkTik703Bky+ZtjdzBMY8tr97m34jDSSMyoB9opJKR@mail.gmail.com>	<887FE7CFF6F8DE4BB3A9535F53AFD06A2C59B588@il-ex2.zend.net>	<AANLkTin9BQj4VhwBBBOYkhDV8uFrmgPvMTZ3L8LgdSBg@mail.gmail.com>	<887FE7CFF6F8DE4BB3A9535F53AFD06A2C59B6A0@il-ex2.zend.net> <AANLkTikOsWcA5X_M2KuM-4L2YtTY-Y6VqV3X_b4zNeFM@mail.gmail.com> <887FE7CFF6F8DE4BB3A9535F53AFD06A2C59D788@il-ex2.zend.net> <B1.AA.25421.72EF2EC4@pb1.pair.com>
In-Reply-To: <B1.AA.25421.72EF2EC4@pb1.pair.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] PHP 5.4 - Meta attribute (aka. Annotations) supportdiscussion
From: dave@dmi.me.uk (Dave Ingram)

 On 16/11/10 21:56, Alec wrote:
> [snip]
>
> attribute RestMethod('/do/something', 'Do Stuff', 'Does something.',
> array(
>     'arg1' => 'A cool argument!'
> ));
> public static DoSomething($arg1) {
> ...
>
> or
>
> attribute Example('arg', 'arg2', 3, (time() > 0 ? true : false));
> class Demo {
> ...
>
> That way it is clear that that line is an attribute. If the person
> doesn't know what an "attribute in PHP" is, they can Google it.
>
> This does the following:
> - No new branch of syntax is introduced like C# style annotations or
> parsed docblocks would. The syntax is very similar to standard PHP
> (the only thing missing is the "new" before the class name, and the
> only new thing is the word "attribute")
>
> - This doesn't add significant complexity. It essentially makes
> attributes autocalled class constructors. (As a side note, I don't
> think any part of PHP is significantly complex, it just isn't
> consistent--making it seem complex).
>
> - It is quite clear that that line is an attribute. People will be
> able to easily Google, find and read the PHP docs for an explanation.
As a karma-less user, I actually quite like this syntax and it feels
very PHP-like to me. Making it trivially easy for people to search for
the explanation of a feature is an excellent idea.


Dave