[development] PHP 5 > aggregator.module rewrite to XML API?

[Alexander Barth]

Monday, June 18, 2007, 12:03:48 PM, you wrote:

>> I'm all for pushing PHP5, but I'm not sure I want to take such an  
>> extreme stance.  As I mentioned in my blog post, let's start by  
>> making some features PHP5 only.  Like, let's rewrite the aggregator  
>> module with PHP5's simplified XML parser API.  That's disruptive too,  
>> but at least we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot, rather than  

> I'm against this, personally - I'd much rather see us standardize around
> an external library like SimplePie.

> RSS and Atom parsers are a very very
> complicated thing, and our parsing issue queue is quite indicative of 
> that. I'd much rather use a library that is /dedicated/ to that task 
> then the parser we currently have.

Especially after Aron's measurements, that show SimplePie being
more than 20 times slower than the Drupal's core parser
(http://groups.drupal.org/node/4519) I am beginning to lose hope in a
one parser for all solution.

The said complexity and variety of feed formats and use cases is
rather asking for a pluggable architecture where you can chose what
parser suits you best.

> What if, instead of rewriting aggregator, we simply shove it out of core
> (ala archive.module) and recommend people use something like Feed Parser
> or SimpleFeed, both of which use and require SimplePie, both require a
> healthy dose of loving, and both offer a much stronger API?

In core or not, we I think we need a _common_ solution. Ian just posted it
before - I repeat it nevertheless: Aron Novak is working for his SoC
project on an aggregation solution that should replace aggregator module
in core and provide a fundament for contrib modules.

See here: http://groups.drupal.org/rss-aggregation
and: http://aggregation.novaak.net

Alex





  


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Alexander Barth
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