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Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 12:09:47 -0600
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Subject: RFC: YAML Support for PHP (Syck)
From: php-internals@whytheluckystiff.net (why the lucky stiff)

Hi.

I'm a long-time PHP developer and author of YAML for Ruby.  The last few
months I've been sick of not having a YAML extension for PHP, so I
started working on a YAML extension that could be leveraged by scripting
languages which provide a C API to access the symbol table.  The
extension is Syck.  I have released 0.15 today.

I've made great progress in the last month or two and am ready to start
stabilizing this sucker and get some user input.  Right now I simply
provide a syck_load() function which takes a YAML string and builds
native PHP structures.

YAML has had good success in the Ruby, Perl and Python worlds.  The
extension has been given a spot in forthcoming releases of Ruby.  Much
discussion has occurred on the Yaml-Core list concerning how to best
approach PHP data structures.  It will be good to see this work pay off
a working extension.  Please come join the list if you are interested.
We could absolutely use the input. 

Release notes in YAML below.  Thank you.

---
released: { name: Syck, version: 0.15 }
for: [ Ruby, PHP, Python ]
by: why the lucky stiff
about: >

  Syck is a YAML parser, an extension for scripting
  languages, written in C.  

  So what is YAML?  YAML is a new language for data.
  Describe objects in plain text.  Load the data into
  your scripting language as arrays, dictionaries,
  classes, or primitives.

links:
  YAML: http://www.yaml.org/
  YAML Cookbook: http://yaml4r.sf.net/cookbook/
  YAML Type Repository: http://yaml.org/type/
  YAML Specification: http://yaml.org/spec/
  Syck: http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/syck/
  Syck Benchmarks: http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2003/03/19
  Tarball @ SourceForge: http://aleron.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/yaml4r/syck-0.15.tar.gz

status: >

  Syck is about 60% compliant with the YAML spec.  Most of
  the remaining issues deal with whitespace.  Syck also doesn't
  yet support any of the shortcut syntax optimizations from the
  specification.

  The extensions are quite usable, though.  Ruby, PHP and Python
  can load from a string containing YAML.  Ruby also has support
  for stream loading from any IO object.

benchmarks: >

  Syck is quite speedy, although not as swift as most language's
  native serialization.

  Syck runs at about:

  30-35% of the speed of Ruby's Marshal.
  15-50% of the speed of PHP's deserialize().
  600% of the speed of Python's Pickle.
  33-40% of the speed of Python's cPickle.

  (Based on various types of structured data.)

installation: >

  Syck contains working extensions for the Ruby, PHP, and Python
  languages.  Each requires compilation of the libsyck library,
  followed by compilation of the extension.

  To compile libsyck, first download libsyck.

    tar xzvf syck-0.15.tar.gz
    cd syck-0.15
    ./configure
    make
    sudo make install

  To install the Ruby extension:

    cd ext/ruby/ext
    ruby extconf.rb
    make
    sudo make install

  To install the Python extension:

    cd ext/python
    python setup.py build
    sudo python setup.py install

  To install the PHP extension:

    sh make_module.sh
    sudo make install (if you weren't root during make_module.sh)
    php -q syck.php

examples: |

  To load this document in Ruby: 

     ($:~)$ irb
     >> require 'syck'
     => true
     >> yp = YAML::Syck::Parser.new( {} )
     => #<YAML::Syck::Parser:0x8058530>
     >> yp.load( File.open( 'syck-0.15.yml' ) )
     => {"status"=>"Syck is about 60% compliant ..."}

  To load this document in PHP: 

     ($:~)$ php -a
     Interactive mode enabled

     <? dl( 'syck.so' ); print_r( syck_load( implode( '', file( 'syck-0.15.yml' ) ) ) ); ?>
  
     .. php then outputs ..

     X-Powered-By: PHP/4.2.3
     Content-type: text/html
     
     Array
     (   
         [released] => Array
             (   
                 [name] => Syck
                 [version] => 0.15
             )

     .. and so on ..

  To load this document in Python: 

     ($:~)$ python
     Python 2.1.3 (#1, Jul 11 2002, 17:52:24) 
     [GCC 2.95.3 20010315 (release) [FreeBSD]] on freebsd4
     Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
     >>> import syck
     >>> f = open( 'syck-0.15.yml' )
     >>> syck.load( f.read() )
     {'by': 'why the lucky stiff', ... }