Manual talk:Coding conventions
Contents
| Thread title | Replies | Last modified |
|---|---|---|
| Standards for CodeSniffer | 5 | 07:47, 11 April 2012 |
| The lisp for MW mode in emacs does not work in 23.4.1 | 0 | 00:35, 20 February 2012 |
| Dedicated pages per programming language | 0 | 18:18, 20 December 2011 |
| Documentation, even if this is MediaWiki | 8 | 01:38, 6 December 2011 |
| Globals and Top-Level Functions | 1 | 23:40, 5 December 2011 |
| eg prefix for extension config variables | 6 | 22:12, 5 December 2011 |
| ef prefix | 1 | 07:16, 5 December 2011 |
| wg prefix | 2 | 07:15, 5 December 2011 |
| Deprecate private variables and methods? | 3 | 07:11, 5 December 2011 |
| What about carriage returns between sections of code? | 1 | 07:09, 5 December 2011 |
- Checking code for a coding standard without automatic checking is very inefficient.
- There is PHP_CodeSniffer which supports a lot of PHP standards (PEAR, Zend, PHPCS, Squiz, Kohana...)
- But none of these standards are compatible with MediaWiki coding standards.
- Do MediaWiki-standard for PHP_CodeSniffer exists? May be anyone know? Сan anyone easily make it?
Yeah, I second this. The staff is working on a phpUnderControl instance, so I'm sure they will get around to this eventually.
We have stylize.php which will automagically convert code to proper standard.
Where is that? I don't see it in the maintenance directory.
If anyone is interested, I have created a very basic MediaWiki coding style and it is now hosted by the Wikimedia Fundation as mediawiki/tools/codesniffer.git
Gerrit: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#q,project:mediawiki/tools/codesniffer,n,z
To clone it:
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/tools/codesniffer
I just pasted the MW mode into .emacs for emacs 23.4.1 from ftp.gnu.org, and it did not load correctly when I tried to open MediaWiki's index.php file. I don't really know lisp, so I can't really debug what happened.
I've generalized this page to be a code conventions portal. Branching off specific languages to other dedicated pages. The "do as PHP unless stated otherwise" is getting old because JavaScript, for instance, is simply very different than PHP. And although the end result in syntax may be similar at times, the reasoning behind is very different. Therefor it's better to describe it in the right context with examples that make sense.
See also the Restructure MediaWiki.org-thread on Project:Current issues.
I propose merging in these guidelines to improve the quality of code documentation and increase code readability.
Sounds like a good idea.
Sounds nice, except for the part about using @since...do we really want that?
I don't see any reason not to have it, and a lot of reason to do have it. I figure it's not really possible to add it to all current code accuratly, but I'd be very nice if people just added it when writing new code.
I like almost all of your proposals, just a bit skeptical with the @since. I have noticed, you have been using this in your extensions but even if you tag something as @since 0.1 and in 0.2 the whole function changes and gets new arguments, I am not sure you would update it to @since 0.2 or add a note. One way would be using multiple @since in this case and adding a note behind that how it was different back then. Anyway, I have missed this many times in MW core, would be so much easier to keep backwards compatibility if this were documented properly! Especially for public functions but also for important constants and globals.
Go go gadget wikimerger!
This thread is over a year old...how did so many old threads get bumped?
Because of the conversion to LQT :-)
Since Manual:Global variables discourages the use of globals, this Manual:Coding conventions should encourage the use of static class members and functions in lieu of globals and top-level functions. Instead of
$wgVersion; $wgTitle; function wfFuncname() { ... }
it could encourage
class SomeClass { public static $version; public static $title; public static function funcname() { ... } }
How about using eg as prefix for extension configuration variables? Some extensions do it and I have adopted the style for my extensions as well. I find it quite handy with code completion to have all extension globals coming up fast.
It was in there for three years; see r70755 and comments. That's why you've seen other extensions do it.
I don't quite understand, so it's no longer best practice to use it for extensions? Why not?
It's not that it's not best practice, it's that it snuck into the coding conventions under the radar, people read it as gospel, and now we've got $eg and ef all over the place when nobody ever really recommended it to begin with.
You can call your config globals $the_most_awsome_variable_in_the_world if you really wanted to, it doesn't matter in a practical sense.
See also Manual:Coding_conventions#Variables.
I've seen some extension use the 'ef' prefix for global function names (presumably standing for 'extension function'). Is this a proper coding convention or some unholy bastardization? Is 'wf' or 'ef' preferred for global function names in extensions?
ef has been used since ancient times, but it's not super common now. In most cases modern style puts hook functions as static methods on a class, leaving few or no raw top-level functions to be so named.
I was wondering if there was any specific reason why the prefix 'wg' is used with global variables. I am looking at starting a project and was wondering if I should just pick a couple letters as a prefix or if there is a system I should be using to choose the letters. Thanks.
It stands for "Wikipedia Global". I'm not sure that qualifies as a system. :-)
Ok, thanks. Not sure why I didn't see that article before.
Shall we deprecate private variables and methods? They seem evil, since they make it more cumbersome to extend classes.
We're actually trying to use them in new code because they help in separating abstractions and give us better better control over proper interfaces to access data. You can't force people to uses accessor methods if they still can access class variables directly. Unfortunately, due to PHP's low entry requirements, many PHP programmers know nothing about proper OOP/OOD and produce such opuses instead.
When is it good to include blank lines? I usually include a blank line between functions, classes, etc. But is it also good style to include blank lines between, say, major code sections within a function? That leads to the question of what counts as a major section of code within a function; I find it to be a pretty arbitrary/subjective decision, and ultimately having a lot of blank lines just hinders the reader from seeing very much of the code without scrolling.
