In XOOPS 2.6.0 alpha 2, some familiar services that were traditionally internal parts of the core were separated into modules. Some examples are: avatars, comments, and notifications

The separated module approach achieves some important benefits:

● Modules can be updated independently.
● Modules can have private resources, such as templates, configurations, maintenance pages.
● Modules can be omitted if not needed, saving some resources.

But there are potential benefits to separation that were not realized:

● The service modules were not easily replaced with alternate implementations
● References using hard coded module names litter the entire system wherever a service is needed

In XOOPS 2.6.0 we'll introduce a " Service Manager " component:

● Services located by service name, not provider
● Service interface established by Contract
● Returns a standardized Response object that includes result, status and messages
● Request is based on a well known interface
● Actual provider does not matter to caller
● No need to check for a specific module
● If the service is not available, that status is returned just like any other error condition.
● Service providers are only instantiated when explicitly requested, and then kept for the duration of the PHP run.
● A locate event is not triggered until a named service is first requested, so if a service is not used, it has no overhead cost.
● If no providers for a service are installed, the locate trigger has little cost, and any subsequent calls go straight to a NullProvider that minimizes resource use.

Richard Griffith , our Core Team leader , has created a presentation to show you how XOOPS 2.6.0 will implement the Service Manager, and how to use it. You can see the presentation on SlideShare



This is the second presentation from our new " XOOPS 2.6.0 Education Series ", where we will share with new features being developed for XOOPS 2.6.0, and show you how to use them.

The first presentation was about Asset Management using Assetic

XOOPS 2.6.0 is currently in development, in pre-Alpha 3 stage.

There is a lot of new development going into XOOPS 2.6.0, as you can see from these articles:

XOOPS is back, and with a vengeance!

Major improvements to XOOPS 2.6.0, Alpha 3 release is getting closer!

and after adding Doctrine , PHPUnit , Composer , Assetic , and several other cool things, Service Manager is another component that will simplify XOOPS development!

You can contribute to the XOOPS 2.6.0 development by forking it from GitHub , and submitting your code there.

We would also like to thank Slider84 from XOOPS France for his help in creating the template for this presentation!

Viva XOOPS!