What is this....XPL?

[TimTimTimma]

I was inspired today, i dunno by what but I was in the mood and now I am on an adventure to write my own markup/scripting language. I am calling it XPL which stands for:

eXtensible Precompiled Language

It is a mix of xhtml, css, and php. My goal for this inner language of php is to make the blending of regular xhtml code with the syntax of php easier, aswell as making webpages using xhtml, xml, css easier by leaps and bounds.

Below is what I have coded so far, I don't plan on devoting to much time to this since, I am devoting most of my attention to PHPublisher, however I figured I would post it here and ask for some criticism and what you think overall about the idea :-)

<?php
/***********************************************************************
/
/ Language: eXtensible Precompiled Language
/ Mix of: xhtml, xml, css, and php
/ Goal: To make the blending of xhtml/html and php easier, aswell as
/ making webpages using xhtml, xml, css easier by leaps and bounds.
/ Version: 0.01 
/
/**********************************************************************/

define("_CONSTRUCT_ERROR", "\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; font-weigth: bold;\">CONSTRUCTION ERROR:</p>");

//
// xhref
// (XPL 0.01)
// xhref -- Creates an xhtml valid web link
// xhref($_HYPERLINK_P, $_TITLE_P, $_TARGET_P [, $_ID_P[, $_CLASS_P]])
// Rturns a valid weblink on success, or returns an error on failure
//

function xhref($_HYPERLINK_P = "", $_TITLE_P = "", $_TARGET_P = "", $_ID_P = "", $_CLASS_P = ""){
	if(isset($_ID_P)){
		$_ID = "id=\"".$_ID_P."\" ";
		$_ID_ERROR = ",\"".$_ID_P."\"";
	}
	if(isset($_CLASS)){
		if(ereg('^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+$', $_CLASS_P) !== TRUE){
			die(_CONSTRUCT_ERROR."<p>Illegal characters in use in the CLASS parameter in the xhref() function. Illegal Character: <strong>".$_CLASS_P."</strong></p>");
		}
		$_CLASS = "class=\"".$_CLASS_P."\" ";
		$_CLASS_ERROR = ",\"".$_CLASS_P."\"";
	}
	$_HYPERLINK = trim($_HYPERLINK_P);
	$_TARGET = strtolower(trim($_TARGET_P));
	$_ERROR = "xhref(\"".$_HYPERLINK_P."\", \"".$_TITLE_P."\",\"".$_TARGET_P."\"".$_ID_ERROR.$_CLASS_ERROR.")";
	if(isset($_HYPERLINK) && isset($_TITLE_P) && isset($_TARGET)){
		switch($_TARGET)
		{
			case "_blank":
			case "_parent":			
			case "_self":			
			case "_top":
				continue;
			break;			
			default:		
				die(_CONSTRUCT_ERROR."<p>Incorrect parameter values in use in the xhref() function. Incorrect Code: <strong>".$_ERROR."</strong></p>");
			break;
		}
		return "<a href=\"".$_HYPERLINK."\" target=\"".$_TARGET."\" ".$_ID.$_CLASS.">".$_TITLE_P."</a>\n";
	}else{
		die(_CONSTRUCT_ERROR."<p>Missing required parameters in use in the xhref() function. Incorrect Code: <strong>".$_ERROR."</strong></p>");
	}
}

//
// xspan
// (XPL 0.01)
// xspan -- Creates a xhtml <span> tag
// xspan($_CONTENT_P [, $_ID_P[, $_CLASS_P]])
// Rturns a xhtml <span> tag on success, or an error on failure
//

function xspan($_CONTENT_P = "", $_ID_P = "", $_CLASS_P = ""){
	if(isset($_ID_P)){
		$_ID = "id=\"".$_ID_P."\" ";
		$_ID_ERROR = ",\"".$_ID_P."\"";
	}
	if(isset($_CLASS_P)){
		if(ereg('^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+$', $_CLASS_P) !== TRUE){
			die(_CONSTRUCT_ERROR."<p>Illegal characters in use in the CLASS parameter in the xspan() function. Illegal Character(s): <strong>".$_CLASS_P."</strong></p>");
		}
		$_CLASS = "class=\"".$_CLASS_P."\" ";
		$_CLASS_ERROR = ",\"".$_CLASS_P."\"";
	}
	$_ERROR = "xspan(\"".$_CONTENT_P."\"".$_ID_ERROR.$_CLASS_ERROR.")";
	if(isset($_CONTENT_P)){
		echo "<span ".$_ID.$_CLASS.">".$_CONTENT_P."</span>\n";
	}else{
		die(_CONSTRUCT_ERROR."<p>Missing required parameters in use in the xspan() function. Incorrect Code: <strong>".$_ERROR."</strong></p>");
	}
}

//
// xdiv
// (XPL 0.01)
// xdiv -- Alias of xspan
// xdiv($_CONTENT_P [, $_ID_P[, $_STYLE_P]])
// Rturns a xhtml <div> tag on success or an error on failure. Almost exactly like the xspan() function
// xdiv() allows for the use of "text/css" in the function, instead of only allowing the 
// optional class field.
//

function xdiv($_CONTENT_P = "", $_ID_P = "", $_STYLE_P = ""){
	if(isset($_ID_P)){
		$_ID = "id=\"".$_ID_P."\" ";
		$_ID_ERROR = ",\"".$_ID_P."\"";
	}
	if(isset($_STYLE_P)){
		$_STYLE = "style=\"".$_STYLE_P."\" ";
		$_STYLE_ERROR = ",\"".$_STYLE_P."\"";
	}
	$_ERROR = "xdiv(\"".$_CONTENT_P."\"".$_ID_ERROR.$_STYLE_ERROR.")";
	if(isset($_CONTENT_P)){
		echo "<div ".$_ID.$_STYLE.">".$_CONTENT_P."</div>\n";
	}else{
		die(_CONSTRUCT_ERROR."<p>Missing required parameters in use in the xdiv() function. Incorrect Code: <strong>".$_ERROR."</strong></p>");
	}
}

xdiv("Check it out!!! Its XPL xhtml generated content!", "My First XPL Content!", "margin-bottom: 25px; font-weight: bold;");
xdiv("".xhref("http://phpublisher.net", "Click here to check out PHPublisher!", "_self", "PHPublisher")."", "My First XPL Web Link!", "margin: 25px;");

?>

[halojoy]

hmmmm...

Once upon a time was a guy.
He wanted some way to handle his HTML code on the server side.
He wrote an interpretater program that had functions for this.

In beginning he called his 'language' for Personal Home Page = PHP
As this little program php.exe was helping Apache Web Server
to put his personal homepage contents onto the internet.

This man, having this idea of his own, was Rasmus Lerdorf.
The year was 1994.
He is main reason why we all are here, at PHPbuilder.com !!

THIS is OUR MAN Rasmus Lerdorf - image

lerdorf.com - yes, he is still using .php pages at his website

##############################################

Now you ask halojoy, what this has got to do with this Topic by TimTimTimma?
Well, if you cant figure it out. No big deal.
You need to have an imaginative mind, that is what halojoy will tell you.

World has seen many people with original ideas.
Ideas noone had expressed before them.
Henry Ford
Edison
Einstein
Darwin
Rasmus Lerdorf

Only a few new ideas will survive or be really innovative and accepted.
There are mainstream people and there are outsiders,
brave enough to think beyond and different.

We can call them dissidents,
like Joe Hill and Martin Luther King in USA, Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Solsenitskyn in USSR.
When it comes to progress, not much has come out of being mainstream or belong to the in-crowd, the jetset.

Progress has mainly been lead by 'crazy thinking outsiders'.
Brave enough to go their own unique way.
They are a special kind.

I did it My Way /Frank Sinatra in memory

######################################################

Wikipedia tells us:

History
PHP was originally designed as a small set of Perl scripts, followed by a rewritten set of CGI binaries written in C
by the Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 to display his résumé and to collect certain data, such as how much traffic his page was receiving.

"Personal Home Page Tools" was publicly released on 8th June 1995 after Lerdorf combined it with his own Form Interpreter to create PHP/FI.
Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, two Israeli developers of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, rewrote the parser in 1997 and formed the base of PHP 3.
They also changed the name to its current recursive form. After months in beta, the development team officially released PHP/FI 2 in November 1997.
Public testing of PHP 3 began immediately and the official launch came in June 1998. Suraski and Gutmans then started a new rewrite of PHP's core,
producing the Zend engine in 1999 (a page at www.zend.com states that PHP 3 was powered by Zend Engine 0.5).
They also founded Zend Technologies in Ramat Gan, Israel which has since overseen the PHP advances. In May 2000, PHP 4, powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released.
On July 13, 2004, PHP 5 was released, powered by Zend Engine II (formerly known as Zend Engine 2).

PHP 5.1 is currently in beta testing (beta 2) and will include new features such as PDO (PHP Data Objects) and more performance enhancements taking advantage of the new Zend Engine 2.

/halojoy - the one and only unique one
19 July 2005 in Sweden
🙂

[Weedpacket]

Giving it a name like "XPL" - especially with the X standing for "eXtensible", tends to make a programmer these days expect to see a dialect of XML being defined.

[LoganK]

When I heard "XPL", I thought it had something to do with Mozilla's XUL...

No offense, but why make and use functions to write an XHTML hyperlink when all of us (correction: most of us) knew HTML before PHP and therefore can make a hyperlink with extreme ease?

[TimTimTimma]

because the web will not forever be coded in html or even xhtml for that matter..We WILL eventually transition to a completely XML based web styled by XSL NOT CSS. Its important that this transition is made with as much ease as possible, considering alot of people will eventually be forced to learn new things if they wanna stay with the times..

I myself have already begun the path down learning xml, and after understanding the syntax alittle more I will move onto xsl and build my pages that way when browsers support it, right now IE, FireFox is the only browser I can find that actually outputs the correct screen display for xml & xsl

[LoganK]

What is "XSL"?

[thorpe]

extensible stylesheet language.

[LoganK]

Wow

There's just so man "X...L" languages these days...
I'm glad to be working with PHP 😃

[justsomeone]

TimTimTimma wrote:

We WILL eventually transition to a completely XML based web styled by XSL NOT CSS.

How reassuring to be so confident about the future. I don't share your confidence.

I wish you the best of luck with your project(s). Regardless of whether or not everything on the web migrates to XML/XSL, some content will, and your proposal may make that easier.

[Shrike]

Why call it precompiled when it is interpreted just like any other PHP script? If it is extensible how do I create a ShrikeElement? Also if it's a new language is it Turing Complete?

[TimTimTimma]

no Its not, its a alittle more complex markup language, however the idea to be turing universal doe make the gears in my head turn.. Anything is possible at this point..

[Richardtagger]

whats the point, things work as they are 😉

[Shrike]

TimTimTimma wrote:

no Its not, its a alittle more complex markup language, however the idea to be turing universal doe make the gears in my head turn.. Anything is possible at this point..

It's not a markup language, it's a PHP script which generates XHTML markup. PHP is already Turing Complete.

[Shrike]

LoganK wrote:

When I heard "XPL", I thought it had something to do with Mozilla's XUL...

No offense, but why make and use functions to write an XHTML hyperlink when all of us (correction: most of us) knew HTML before PHP and therefore can make a hyperlink with extreme ease?

Abstracting HTML elements with PHP can be quite useful - take a look at PEAR::Html_Quickform.

[LoganK]

Shrike wrote:

Abstracting HTML elements with PHP can be quite useful - take a look at PEAR::Html_Quickform.

Rather than me using a class (or whatever PEAR::Html_Quickform is), I find it a lot easier to simply write "<form action='blah' method='blah'>", and write everything out by hand. Call me an old-timer, but I like the simpler ways, where everything is done and coded by me so I know it'll work 🙂

[Shrike]

I've written a form handler which is similar to Html_Quickform and it is a hell of a lot easier than handcoding forms. I'll put it in Code Critique so you can have a look.

[Weedpacket]

And it's a lot easier for a PHP program to use PEAR::Html_Quickform to build a form dynamically than it is for it to ask a human to write it by hand.

[LoganK]

Perhaps you guys think so, but I like doing some things by myself, mainly because - I can see right there what the HTML is going to be. If I use some of those auto-form-generators, I have to make it output the form, view it in my browser, then CTRL+U (Firefox) to see the source code for the form. And all of that is pretty lengthy if I just made a typo, as opposed to me just seing right there: "<form action='blah.php?test=blah' method='psot'>". Uh oh! Typo alert! I can see it right there like a big, red, warning sign. 😉

I'll take a look at your code in the Code Critique forum. I won't be biased because I like doing it by hand 😃

[Shrike]

If you write the HTML which the class generates then there won't be any need to check! 🙂

[LoganK]

Maybe method was a bad example. But if I have a class which, for example, has a function called setUp() which makes the form (1 parameter, action), and I type this:

$form->setUp("usreedit.php?id=3");

And then have a whole lot of processing, then later on, when I want to debug, it'll be harder for me to find out why the form is not POSTing data to useredit.php. Plus for me, seeing a class/function call like that will be skipped over (or put at a lesser precendent) in my mind, than actually being able to see "<form action='usreedit.php?id=3' method='post'>".

This debate could go on for a while, because it's root is this: is it better to use other, pre-made things or solutions or is it better to code stuff yourself. And that's a debate which can last a long time 🙂. So we might as well either close the thread or move this to some other forum (like the Echo Lounge).