[Soc 2006] phpAspect

Hello everyone,

My name is William Candillon. I'm developing the phpAspect project
(http://phpaspect.org) for the Google Summer of Code 2006.
My mentor is Sebastian Bergmann.

Phpaspect is a PHP language extension which implements aspect-oriented
programming. The phpaspect compiler weaves aspects implementing
crosscutting concerns into PHP source code. The weaving process is
static (before source code execution) and based on Lex & Yacc
analysis. The woven PHP source code can be executed with any PHP 5
version.

This new version that I'm writing for the google soc is written in C
and serialize automatically a PHP source code into an XML AST.
The aspects files are also serialized from PHP to XML AST.
Then I'll apply XSLT style sheet to the representation XML of the
aspects in order to generate a final XSLT style sheet which will
perform source code transformations on the business logic:
http://phpaspect.org/wiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=700&h=274&cache=cache&media=weaver2.png

Adopting this new approach will result in the following benefits. The
lexical and syntax analysis will be independent of any PHP version.
Existing XML tools like XSTL or XPath engine could be heavily reused
to make the implementation significantly shorter and improve weaving
performances.
Finally, it will introduce more flexibility in terms of the aspect
language. For example, I could use the power of Xpath expression to
introduce more logical operators in the aspect syntax. With this
architecture, the compatibility with PHP 6 and features like
namespaces will be very easy to implement.

I am open to any suggestions or comments about this project and the
implementing idea.

Best regards,

William

--
William Candillon
Telecom Lille Student
E-mail: wcandillon@elv.enic.fr
Tel: +33(0) 6 67 99 13 16
CV: http://wcandillon.netcv.org
Resume: http://wcandillon.en.netcv.org