Status php library development

[m_mind]

Hi all,

Currently I'm looking into the possibilities of integrating Alfresco into our project environment which is written in PHP.
For this I want to use the remote PHP libraries which I downloaded from the SVN repository (http://svn.alfresco.com/repos/alfresco-open-mirror/alfresco/HEAD/root/modules/php-sdk/source/php/rem...).
As some of the methods mentioned in the PHP api are not available (for example $node->copy()), I checked whether or not I was using the latest version.
It turned out that the last commit has been over a year ago.

Is remote PHP code still developed in some other place, or has it been discontinued?

Thanks in advance,

Peter

[dwilson]

I'm not sure the official response, but from my perspective we just converted our PHP web application to use RESTful web scripts to retrieve data instead of the heavy & incomplete PHP API that uses SOAP.   The javascript library behind web scripts isn't without quirks, but it is more complete and definitely more actively maintained than the PHP API.

Hope that helps.

[m_mind]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.
I think I'll also have to go that way or else I'll have to write the needed functions in PHP which isn't a problem, but not what I expected when I had a look at the PHP API before I started with the implementation.

I hope some official response will follow so other developers know what there up to if they want to use the PHP library.

[strophi]

Hi,

it seems that the php library was a only a marketing trick to fish in the php community as same as the anouncement of an alfresco ubuntu package  was a (vaporware) try to fish in the ubuntu community. I think (or should i say hope) these communities will honour this by avoiding alfresco.

I like alfresco software, but i have to convince my (windows based) organsiations managent to pay for alfresco.
There is no way to produce a tiny simple prototype (for me dumb ass) to show the power of alfresco to those who will pay, without even minimal support from the forums, see all the zero answer threads… Alfresco will say, thats not alfrescos problem, but community problem, to come out of this situation. But it is Alfrescos problem.

Alfresco showed me that I'm a dumb ass, who was or is betting on the wrong horse.

sadly and disappointed,

strophi

[dwilson]

…minimal support from the forums, see all the zero answer threads… Alfresco will say, thats not alfrescos problem, but community problem, to come out of this situation. But it is Alfrescos problem.

I've brought this exact issue up several times via different methods and received the same response.  It turns out 98% of Alfresco's customer support energy goes to enterprise customers on an entirely separate information portal.  (where answers are not shared to this forum for reference.)  I understand and appreciate the argument, they have to pay the bills by caring for paying customers, however I believe Alfresco's popularity would surge if they treated the community with more attention.  For each Labs customer that doesn't at this moment have the budget to pay for enterprise, there is a colleague, other project, or future employer of that Labs customer that might have the budget for enterprise and needs to hear about the great experience with Labs… not the sometimes frustrating zero-answer thread experience I've had myself and heard from others.  :?

My advice for Alfresco, hire even just one community manager that is on the forums & the wiki all day long providing answers to the "known issue" questions, updating the unfinished skeleton wiki pages, marking post subjects with "SOLVED" or not, building FAQs, improving the forum search functionality… etc.   Just one FTE doing only these things.  I have to believe the investment will pay off and your community will thrive & thank you.

Cheers.

[mrogers]

Its a little unfair to say that there's zero support.   I for one post several times a day, and I'm not the only alfrescan doing so.   I've even replied to dwilson on this particular subject.

There are a couple of facts of life with the php library.   We in the Dev Team are concentrating on building out the Java Script API and some time in future need to rework all the scripting APIs for JSR 223.   It all comes down to resources and prioirties and the php interface, although on the roadmap, is not at the top of the list at the moment.

In the meantime were open to contributions to the PHP api.   Is anyone out there interested in taking the php api forward?

[dwilson]

Thanks mrogers, I greatly appreciate your reply to this thread.   By your stats it is clear you are certainly a more active Alfresco employee, and that is great to see.  And you might have even been talking about replying to my similar thread late last year created at a point of frustration: http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=15855

Strophi's words were a bit strong, although to be fair neither of us claimed zero support, just "minimal".   By "zero" we were both specifically referring to the no response threads that are relatively common here.  I've personally spent many, many hours searching these forums for answers, only to see my exact question posted even a year earlier with no reply on numerous occasions.  It's worth noting that I'm a member of several other commercial open source community forums and do not see these problems there.

All in all, I do appreciate that some steps are being taken to improve the situation. (e.g. Member Reply Points, your own replies, etc.)    But it could truly be a wise investment having a dedicated staff member (not necessarily a full engineer) who spends 8hrs/day nursing the forum, the wiki, FAQs, and the thousands of valuable Labs members in general.

Best,
Dave

[m_mind]

Thanks for you reply mrogers.
Not to offend you or any of the Alfresco employees, but I must agree with dwilson and strophi about the low response on the forums.
I've been testing whether or not Alfresco would be suitable for our company and a lot of the issues I encounter seems to be multiple times on the forum without any real answer except people confirming or asking if someone knows how to fix it.
Please don't take the following personal, but I must say that I find it strange that this topic doesn't have any reaction from an Alfresco employee in about a month, but when someone starts talking negative about Alfresco a reply is posted within a couple of hours, which I can understand from your point of view, but it does  emphasizes dwilson point of having a community manager.

Again, I mean no offense, but those are just my observations.

Peter

[mikeh]

Hi all

I understand your frustrations. Believe me, we'd love to spend more time answering the forum posts, but (as I've pointed out previously) often we're just too busy to do so.

The Alfresco Community is at a difficult growing stage: too big for just the Alfresco employees to take care of and too immature for it to be self-sustaining.

I'll pass your suggestions for a full-time "Community Expert" on to our Community Manager, Nancy. In the meantime, please be assured that we do value you guys and are trying our hardest as individuals to answer posts where possible - and definitely appreciate those of you who do the same.

Thanks,
Mike

[wabson]

Just a few thoughts on this debate.

As mikeh says, we all wish we had more time to be able to devote to the forums, but this is a difficult issue because the deep knowledge of the Alfresco employees that seems to be so valued by the contributors on this topic only comes from working with the code day in, day out. It is not fair to say that they are too busy looking after paying customers, as most engineers' time goes into building the open source code that is available to all, rather than into dealing with support requests.

As dwilson suggests, one option is to employ dedicated people to provide forum responses, while this might help in the short term given the current growth rate of the community using Alfresco it is not something that would be sustainable in the longer term. In contrast, if community members are able to help each other then that is sustainable as numbers grow. Note that when I talk about the community, I'm including our own employees in that. Developing an us-and-them approach is not helpful to anyone.

Where there are failures in the ability of the forums to provide timely information to those who are trying to get help on Alfresco, that is a collective failure of us all, not just of those of us who happen to be employed by Alfresco, like myself. Any solutions to that need to be debated in the open by all under a collective responsibility.

It's therefore encouraging to see such debate taking place, but any suggestion that Alfresco as a company should simply 'provide' solutions to this problem shows a misunderstanding of open source communities.

Whilst there are no doubt improvements that can be made to the support on the forums, if you are looking to get a response back within a specific time period or from specific groups of people such as Alfresco employees, then you are almost certainly looking in the wrong place. For that, Alfresco provides support subscriptions to our customers.

Thanks,
Will.