Add Plugin/Service Provider Class

[vlucas]

The more apps I create with Bullet, the more I wish certain ways I configure and use Bullet were more modular and portable across other Bullet apps. I think it's time to look at creating a more serious/structured way to register a service with Bullet. I think a class file and interface should be used so that: (1) It is easy to register and autoload, and (2) so that it has predicable methods that we can call to add the desired functionality.

Example use cases:

• Doctrine ORM
• Twig or other template engine
• Better exception/error handling (like with #38)
• many, many others...

Example Class file

use Bullet\Plugin, Bullet\PluginInterface;

class TwigPlugin extends Plugin implements PluginInterface
{
    public function run()
    {
        // do stuff with $this->app (instance of Bullet that is injected in constructor)
    }
}

Thoughts?

[mackenza]

this seems consistent with other frameworks (who tend to refer to these as ServiceProviders rather then Plugins but semantics aren't important... to me at least... heh).

Basically you need a way to inject the App container into the plugin so that it can make use of its functionality. For instance, a Twig plugin could use template path from $app for the Twig_Loader_Filesystem() in Twig.

Would the plugin also need to create stuff back in the Bullet App? I am trying to think of a use case where this might be needed but should part of the PluginInterface be something that does an App::addMethod?

[vlucas]

I only choose Plugin because it's a more common name that people might search for - i.e. "bullet twig plugin" vs "bullet twig service provider".

[vlucas]

Looks like Pimple beat me to it and added a ServiceProvider to Pimple in v2.1: https://github.com/fabpot/Pimple/pull/124

I will upgrade to Pimple v2 in the next major point release.

[sam2332]

when will this major point be do you have a eta for the milestone?

[vlucas]

No ETA, just haven't pulled the trigger yet because going from Pimple 1.x -> 2.x will be a breaking change.

[sam2332]

oh alright

[shadowhand]

@vlucas do you have a branch that uses Pimple v2?

edit: it appears that Pimple is now at v3, as of one month ago.

[vlucas]

Yes indeed. I will get this updated to v3 now :)

[vlucas]

I just tagged a version 1.4.0 release that uses Pimple 3.x. Note that this is a BREAKING CHANGE, so this will be a lesson to all of you who don't version lock your composer dependencies :)

[shadowhand]

:+1: