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coding-guidelines.html
0001 <!DOCTYPE html>
0002 <html dir="ltr" lang="en">
0003 <head>
0004 <meta charset="utf-8">
0005 <meta name="keywords" content="" />
0006 <meta name="description" content="Ascraeus coding guidelines document" />
0007 <title>phpBB3 • Coding Guidelines</title>
0008
0009 <link href="stylesheet.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />
0010
0011 </head>
0012
0013 <body id="phpbb" class="section-docs">
0014
0015 <div id="wrap">
0016 <a id="top" name="top" accesskey="t"></a>
0017 <div id="page-header">
0018 <div class="headerbar">
0019 <div class="inner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span>
0020
0021 <div id="doc-description">
0022 <a href="../index.php" id="logo"><img src="site_logo.gif" alt="" /></a>
0023 <h1>Coding Guidelines</h1>
0024 <p>Ascraeus coding guidelines document</p>
0025 <p style="display: none;"><a href="#start_here">Skip</a></p>
0026 </div>
0027
0028 <span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div>
0029 </div>
0030 </div>
0031
0032 <a name="start_here"></a>
0033
0034 <div id="page-body">
0035
0036 <!-- BEGIN DOCUMENT -->
0037
0038 <p>These are the phpBB Coding Guidelines for Ascraeus, all attempts should be made to follow them as closely as possible.</p>
0039
0040 <h1>Coding Guidelines</h1>
0041
0042 <div class="paragraph menu">
0043 <div class="inner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span>
0044
0045 <div class="content">
0046
0047 <ol>
0048 <li><a href="#defaults">Defaults</a>
0049 <ol style="list-style-type: lower-roman;">
0050 <li><a href="#editorsettings">Editor Settings</a></li>
0051 <li><a href="#fileheader">File Header</a></li>
0052 <li><a href="#locations">File Locations</a></li>
0053 <li><a href="#constants">Special Constants</a></li>
0054 </ol>
0055 </li>
0056 <li><a href="#code">Code Layout/Guidelines</a>
0057 <ol style="list-style-type: lower-roman;">
0058 <li><a href="#namingvars">Variable/Function/Class Naming</a></li>
0059 <li><a href="#codelayout">Code Layout</a></li>
0060 <li><a href="#sql">SQL/SQL Layout</a></li>
0061 <li><a href="#optimizing">Optimizations</a></li>
0062 <li><a href="#general">General Guidelines</a></li>
0063 <li><a href="#phprestrictions">Restrictions on the Use of PHP</a></li>
0064 </ol>
0065 </li>
0066 <li><a href="#styling">Styling</a>
0067 <ol style="list-style-type: lower-roman;">
0068 <li><a href="#cfgfiles">Style Config Files</a></li>
0069 <li><a href="#genstyling">General Styling Rules</a></li>
0070 </ol></li>
0071 <li><a href="#templating">Templating</a>
0072 <ol style="list-style-type: lower-roman;">
0073 <li><a href="#templates">General Templating</a></li>
0074 <li><a href="#stylestree">Styles Tree</a></li>
0075 <li><a href="#template-events">Template Events</a></li>
0076 </ol></li>
0077 <li><a href="#charsets">Character Sets and Encodings</a></li>
0078 <li><a href="#translation">Translation (<abbr title="Internationalisation">i18n</abbr>/<abbr title="Localisation">L10n</abbr>) Guidelines</a>
0079 <ol style="list-style-type: lower-roman;">
0080 <li><a href="#standardisation">Standardisation</a></li>
0081 <li><a href="#otherconsiderations">Other considerations</a></li>
0082 <li><a href="#placeholders">Working with placeholders</a></li>
0083 <li><a href="#usingplurals">Using plurals</a></li>
0084 <li><a href="#writingstyle">Writing Style</a></li>
0085 </ol>
0086 </li>
0087 <li><a href="#disclaimer">Copyright and disclaimer</a></li>
0088 </ol>
0089
0090 </div>
0091
0092 <span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div>
0093 </div>
0094
0095 <hr />
0096
0097 <a name="defaults"></a><h2>1. Defaults</h2>
0098
0099 <div class="paragraph">
0100 <div class="inner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span>
0101
0102 <div class="content">
0103
0104 <a name="editorsettings"></a><h3>1.i. Editor Settings</h3>
0105
0106 <h4>Tabs vs Spaces:</h4>
0107 <p>In order to make this as simple as possible, we will be using tabs, not spaces. We enforce 4 (four) spaces for one tab - therefore you need to set your tab width within your editor to 4 spaces. Make sure that when you <strong>save</strong> the file, it's saving tabs and not spaces. This way, we can each have the code be displayed the way we like it, without breaking the layout of the actual files.</p>
0108 <p>Tabs in front of lines are no problem, but having them within the text can be a problem if you do not set it to the amount of spaces every one of us uses. Here is a short example of how it should look like:</p>
0109
0110 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0111 {TAB}$mode{TAB}{TAB}= $request->variable('mode', '');
0112 {TAB}$search_id{TAB}= $request->variable('search_id', '');
0113 </pre></div>
0114
0115 <p>If entered with tabs (replace the {TAB}) both equal signs need to be on the same column.</p>
0116
0117 <h3>Linefeeds:</h3>
0118 <p>Ensure that your editor is saving files in the UNIX (LF) line ending format. This means that lines are terminated with a newline, not with Windows Line endings (CR/LF combo) as they are on Win32 or Classic Mac (CR) Line endings. Any decent editor should be able to do this, but it might not always be the default setting. Know your editor. If you want advice for an editor for your Operating System, just ask one of the developers. Some of them do their editing on Win32.</p>
0119
0120 <a name="fileheader"></a><h3>1.ii. File Layout</h3>
0121
0122 <h4>Standard header for new files:</h4>
0123 <p>This template of the header must be included at the start of all phpBB files: </p>
0124
0125 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0126 /**
0127 *
0128 * This file is part of the phpBB Forum Software package.
0129 *
0130 * @copyright (c) phpBB Limited <https://www.phpbb.com>
0131 * @license GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPL-2.0)
0132 *
0133 * For full copyright and license information, please see
0134 * the docs/CREDITS.txt file.
0135 *
0136 */
0137 </pre></div>
0138
0139 <p>Please see the <a href="#locations">File Locations section</a> for the correct package name.</p>
0140
0141 <h4>PHP closing tags</h4>
0142
0143 <p>A file containg only PHP code should not end with the optional PHP closing tag <strong>?></strong> to avoid issues with whitespace following it.</p>
0144
0145 <h4>Newline at end of file</h4>
0146
0147 <p>All files should end in a newline so the last line does not appear as modified in diffs, when a line is appended to the file.</p>
0148
0149 <h4>Files containing inline code:</h4>
0150
0151 <p>For those files you have to put an empty comment directly after the header to prevent the documentor assigning the header to the first code element found.</p>
0152
0153 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0154 /**
0155 * {HEADER}
0156 */
0157
0158 /**
0159 */
0160 {CODE}
0161 </pre></div>
0162
0163 <h4>Files containing only functions:</h4>
0164
0165 <p>Do not forget to comment the functions (especially the first function following the header). Each function should have at least a comment of what this function does. For more complex functions it is recommended to document the parameters too.</p>
0166
0167 <h4>Files containing only classes:</h4>
0168
0169 <p>Do not forget to comment the class. Classes need a separate @package definition, it is the same as the header package name. Apart from this special case the above statement for files containing only functions needs to be applied to classes and it's methods too.</p>
0170
0171 <h4>Code following the header but only functions/classes file:</h4>
0172
0173 <p>If this case is true, the best method to avoid documentation confusions is adding an ignore command, for example:</p>
0174
0175 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0176 /**
0177 * {HEADER}
0178 */
0179
0180 /**
0181 * @ignore
0182 */
0183 Small code snipped, mostly one or two defines or an if statement
0184
0185 /**
0186 * {DOCUMENTATION}
0187 */
0188 class ...
0189 </pre></div>
0190
0191 <a name="locations"></a><h3>1.iii. File Locations</h3>
0192
0193 <p>Functions used by more than one page should be placed in functions.php, functions specific to one page should be placed on that page (at the bottom) or within the relevant sections functions file. Some files in <code>/includes</code> are holding functions responsible for special sections, for example uploading files, displaying "things", user related functions and so forth.</p>
0194
0195 <p>The following packages are defined, and related new features/functions should be placed within the mentioned files/locations, as well as specifying the correct package name. The package names are bold within this list:</p>
0196
0197 <ul>
0198 <li><strong>phpBB3</strong><br />Core files and all files not assigned to a separate package</li>
0199 <li><strong>acm</strong><br /><code>/phpbb/cache</code><br />Cache System</li>
0200 <li><strong>acp</strong><br /><code>/adm</code>, <code>/includes/acp</code>, <code>/includes/functions_admin.php</code><br />Administration Control Panel</li>
0201 <li><strong>dbal</strong><br /><code>/phpbb/db</code>, <code>/includes/db</code><br />Database Abstraction Layer.
0202 <ul>
0203 <li><code>/phpbb/db/driver/</code><br />Database Abstraction Layer classes</li>
0204 <li><code>/phpbb/db/migration/</code><br />Migrations are used for updating the database from one release to another</li>
0205 </ul>
0206 </li>
0207 <li><strong>diff</strong><br /><code>/includes/diff</code><br />Diff Engine</li>
0208 <li><strong>docs</strong><br /><code>/docs</code><br />phpBB Documentation</li>
0209 <li><strong>images</strong><br /><code>/images</code><br />All global images not connected to styles</li>
0210 <li><strong>install</strong><br /><code>/install</code><br />Installation System</li>
0211 <li><strong>language</strong><br /><code>/language</code><br />All language files</li>
0212 <li><strong>login</strong><br /><code>/phpbb/auth</code><br />Login Authentication Plugins</li>
0213 <li><strong>VC</strong><br /><code>/includes/captcha</code><br />CAPTCHA</li>
0214 <li><strong>mcp</strong><br /><code>mcp.php</code>, <code>/includes/mcp</code>, <code>report.php</code><br />Moderator Control Panel</li>
0215 <li><strong>ucp</strong><br /><code>ucp.php</code>, <code>/includes/ucp</code><br />User Control Panel</li>
0216 <li><strong>utf</strong><br /><code>/includes/utf</code><br />UTF8-related functions/classes</li>
0217 <li><strong>search</strong><br /><code>/phpbb/search</code>, <code>search.php</code><br />Search System</li>
0218 <li><strong>styles</strong><br /><code>/styles</code><br />phpBB Styles/Templates/Themes</li>
0219 </ul>
0220
0221 <a name="constants"></a><h3>1.iv. Special Constants</h3>
0222
0223 <p>There are some special constants application developers are able to utilize to bend some of phpBB's internal functionality to suit their needs.</p>
0224
0225 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0226 PHPBB_MSG_HANDLER (overwrite message handler)
0227 PHPBB_DB_NEW_LINK (overwrite new_link parameter for sql_connect)
0228 PHPBB_ROOT_PATH (overwrite $phpbb_root_path)
0229 PHPBB_ADMIN_PATH (overwrite $phpbb_admin_path)
0230 PHPBB_USE_BOARD_URL_PATH (use generate_board_url() for image paths instead of $phpbb_root_path)
0231 PHPBB_DISABLE_ACP_EDITOR (disable ACP style editor for templates)
0232 PHPBB_DISABLE_CONFIG_CHECK (disable ACP config.php writeable check)
0233
0234 PHPBB_ACM_MEMCACHE_PORT (overwrite memcached port, default is 11211)
0235 PHPBB_ACM_MEMCACHE_COMPRESS (overwrite memcached compress setting, default is disabled)
0236 PHPBB_ACM_MEMCACHE_HOST (overwrite memcached host name, default is localhost)
0237
0238 PHPBB_ACM_REDIS_HOST (overwrite redis host name, default is localhost)
0239 PHPBB_ACM_REDIS_PORT (overwrite redis port, default is 6379)
0240 PHPBB_ACM_REDIS_PASSWORD (overwrite redis password, default is empty)
0241 PHPBB_ACM_REDIS_DB (overwrite redis default database)
0242
0243 PHPBB_QA (Set board to QA-Mode, which means the updater also checks for RC-releases)
0244 </pre></div>
0245
0246 <h4>PHPBB_USE_BOARD_URL_PATH</h4>
0247
0248 <p>If the <code>PHPBB_USE_BOARD_URL_PATH</code> constant is set to true, phpBB uses generate_board_url() (this will return the boards url with the script path included) on all instances where web-accessible images are loaded. The exact locations are:</p>
0249
0250 <ul>
0251 <li>/phpbb/user.php - \phpbb\user::img()</li>
0252 <li>/includes/functions_content.php - smiley_text()</li>
0253 </ul>
0254
0255 <p>Path locations for the following template variables are affected by this too:</p>
0256
0257 <ul>
0258 <li>{T_ASSETS_PATH} - assets (non-style specific, static resources)</li>
0259 <li>{T_THEME_PATH} - styles/xxx/theme</li>
0260 <li>{T_TEMPLATE_PATH} - styles/xxx/template</li>
0261 <li>{T_SUPER_TEMPLATE_PATH} - styles/xxx/template</li>
0262 <li>{T_IMAGES_PATH} - images/</li>
0263 <li>{T_SMILIES_PATH} - $config['smilies_path']/</li>
0264 <li>{T_AVATAR_PATH} - $config['avatar_path']/</li>
0265 <li>{T_AVATAR_GALLERY_PATH} - $config['avatar_gallery_path']/</li>
0266 <li>{T_ICONS_PATH} - $config['icons_path']/</li>
0267 <li>{T_RANKS_PATH} - $config['ranks_path']/</li>
0268 <li>{T_UPLOAD_PATH} - $config['upload_path']/</li>
0269 <li>{T_STYLESHEET_LINK} - styles/xxx/theme/stylesheet.css</li>
0270 <li>New template variable {BOARD_URL} for the board url + script path.</li>
0271 </ul>
0272
0273 </div>
0274
0275 <div class="back2top"><a href="#wrap" class="top">Back to Top</a></div>
0276
0277 <span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div>
0278 </div>
0279
0280 <hr />
0281
0282 <a name="code"></a><h2>2. Code Layout/Guidelines</h2>
0283
0284 <div class="paragraph">
0285 <div class="inner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span>
0286
0287 <div class="content">
0288
0289 <p>Please note that these guidelines apply to all php, html, javascript and css files.</p>
0290
0291 <a name="namingvars"></a><h3>2.i. Variable/Function/Class Naming</h3>
0292
0293 <p>We will not be using any form of hungarian notation in our naming conventions. Many of us believe that hungarian naming is one of the primary code obfuscation techniques currently in use.</p>
0294
0295 <h4>Variable Names:</h4>
0296 <p>In PHP, variable names should be in all lowercase, with words separated by an underscore, example:</p>
0297
0298 <div class="indent">
0299 <p><code>$current_user</code> is right, but <code>$currentuser</code> and <code> $currentUser</code> are not.</p>
0300 </div>
0301
0302 <p>In JavaScript, variable names should use camel case:</p>
0303
0304 <div class="indent">
0305 <p><code>currentUser</code> is right, but <code>currentuser</code> and <code>current_user</code> are not.</p>
0306 </div>
0307
0308 <p>Names should be descriptive, but concise. We don't want huge sentences as our variable names, but typing an extra couple of characters is always better than wondering what exactly a certain variable is for. </p>
0309
0310 <h4>Loop Indices:</h4>
0311 <p>The <em>only</em> situation where a one-character variable name is allowed is when it's the index for some looping construct. In this case, the index of the outer loop should always be $i. If there's a loop inside that loop, its index should be $j, followed by $k, and so on. If the loop is being indexed by some already-existing variable with a meaningful name, this guideline does not apply, example:</p>
0312
0313 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0314 for ($i = 0; $i < $outer_size; $i++)
0315 {
0316 for ($j = 0; $j < $inner_size; $j++)
0317 {
0318 foo($i, $j);
0319 }
0320 }
0321 </pre></div>
0322
0323 <h4>Function Names:</h4>
0324 <p>Functions should also be named descriptively. We're not programming in C here, we don't want to write functions called things like "stristr()". Again, all lower-case names with words separated by a single underscore character in PHP, and camel caps in JavaScript. Function names should be prefixed with "phpbb_" and preferably have a verb in them somewhere. Good function names are <code>phpbb_print_login_status()</code>, <code>phpbb_get_user_data()</code>, etc. Constructor functions in JavaScript should begin with a capital letter.</p>
0325
0326 <h4>Function Arguments:</h4>
0327 <p>Arguments are subject to the same guidelines as variable names. We don't want a bunch of functions like: <code>do_stuff($a, $b, $c)</code>. In most cases, we'd like to be able to tell how to use a function by just looking at its declaration. </p>
0328
0329 <h4>Class Names:</h4>
0330
0331 <p>Apart from following the rules for function names, all classes should meet the following conditions:</p>
0332 <ul>
0333 <li>Every class must be defined in a separate file.</li>
0334 <li>The classes have to be located in a subdirectory of <code>phpbb/</code>.</li>
0335 <li>Classnames must be namespaced with <code>\phpbb\</code> to avoid name clashes.</li>
0336 <li>Class names/namespaces have to reflect the location of the file they are defined in. The namespace must be the directory in which the file is located. So the directory names must not contain any underscores, but the filename may.</li>
0337 <li>Directories should typically be a singular noun (e.g. <code>dir</code> in the example below, not <code>dirs</code>.</li>
0338 </ul>
0339
0340 <p>So given the following example directory structure you would result in the below listed lookups</p>
0341 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0342 phpbb/
0343 class_name.php
0344 dir/
0345 class_name.php
0346 subdir/
0347 class_name.php
0348 </pre></div>
0349
0350 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0351 \phpbb\class_name - phpbb/class_name.php
0352 \phpbb\dir\class_name - phpbb/dir/class_name.php
0353 \phpbb\dir\subdir\class_name - phpbb/dir/subdir/class_name.php
0354 </pre></div>
0355
0356
0357 <h4>Summary:</h4>
0358 <p>The basic philosophy here is to not hurt code clarity for the sake of laziness. This has to be balanced by a little bit of common sense, though; <code>phpbb_print_login_status_for_a_given_user()</code> goes too far, for example -- that function would be better named <code>phpbb_print_user_login_status()</code>, or just <code>phpbb_print_login_status()</code>.</p>
0359
0360 <h4>Special Namings: </h4>
0361 <p>For all emoticons use the term <code>smiley</code> in singular and <code>smilies</code> in plural. For emails we use the term <code>email</code> (without dash between “e” and “m”).</p>
0362
0363 <a name="codelayout"></a><h3>2.ii. Code Layout</h3>
0364
0365 <h4>Always include the braces:</h4>
0366 <p>This is another case of being too lazy to type 2 extra characters causing problems with code clarity. Even if the body of some construct is only one line long, do <em>not</em> drop the braces. Just don't, examples:</p>
0367
0368 <p class="bad">// These are all wrong. </p>
0369
0370 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0371 if (condition) do_stuff();
0372
0373 if (condition)
0374 do_stuff();
0375
0376 while (condition)
0377 do_stuff();
0378
0379 for ($i = 0; $i < size; $i++)
0380 do_stuff($i);
0381 </pre></div>
0382
0383 <p class="good">// These are all right. </p>
0384 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0385 if (condition)
0386 {
0387 do_stuff();
0388 }
0389
0390 while (condition)
0391 {
0392 do_stuff();
0393 }
0394
0395 for ($i = 0; $i < size; $i++)
0396 {
0397 do_stuff();
0398 }
0399 </pre></div>
0400
0401 <h4>Where to put the braces:</h4>
0402 <p>In PHP code, braces always go on their own line. The closing brace should also always be at the same column as the corresponding opening brace, examples:</p>
0403
0404 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0405 if (condition)
0406 {
0407 while (condition2)
0408 {
0409 ...
0410 }
0411 }
0412 else
0413 {
0414 ...
0415 }
0416
0417 for ($i = 0; $i < $size; $i++)
0418 {
0419 ...
0420 }
0421
0422 while (condition)
0423 {
0424 ...
0425 }
0426
0427 function do_stuff()
0428 {
0429 ...
0430 }
0431 </pre></div>
0432
0433 <p>In JavaScript code, braces always go on the same line:</p>
0434
0435 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0436 if (condition) {
0437 while (condition2) {
0438 ...
0439 }
0440 } else {
0441 ...
0442 }
0443
0444 for (var i = 0; i < size; i++) {
0445 ...
0446 }
0447
0448 while (condition) {
0449 ...
0450 }
0451
0452 function do_stuff() {
0453 ...
0454 }
0455 </pre></div>
0456
0457 <h4>Use spaces between tokens:</h4>
0458 <p>This is another simple, easy step that helps keep code readable without much effort. Whenever you write an assignment, expression, etc.. Always leave <em>one</em> space between the tokens. Basically, write code as if it was English. Put spaces between variable names and operators. Don't put spaces just after an opening bracket or before a closing bracket. Don't put spaces just before a comma or a semicolon. This is best shown with a few examples, examples:</p>
0459
0460 <p>// Each pair shows the wrong way followed by the right way. </p>
0461
0462 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0463 $i=0;
0464 $i = 0;
0465
0466 if($i<7) ...
0467 if ($i < 7) ...
0468
0469 if ( ($i < 7)&&($j > 8) ) ...
0470 if ($i < 7 && $j > 8) ...
0471
0472 do_stuff( $i, 'foo', $b );
0473 do_stuff($i, 'foo', $b);
0474
0475 for($i=0; $i<$size; $i++) ...
0476 for ($i = 0; $i < $size; $i++) ...
0477
0478 $i=($j < $size)?0:1;
0479 $i = ($j < $size) ? 0 : 1;
0480 </pre></div>
0481
0482 <h4>Operator precedence:</h4>
0483 <p>Do you know the exact precedence of all the operators in PHP? Neither do I. Don't guess. Always make it obvious by using brackets to force the precedence of an equation so you know what it does. Remember to not over-use this, as it may harden the readability. Basically, do not enclose single expressions. Examples:</p>
0484
0485 <p class="bad">// what's the result? who knows. </p>
0486 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0487 $bool = ($i < 7 && $j > 8 || $k == 4);
0488 </pre></div>
0489
0490 <p class="bad">// now you can be certain what I'm doing here.</p>
0491 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0492 $bool = (($i < 7) && (($j < 8) || ($k == 4)));
0493 </pre></div>
0494
0495 <p class="good">// But this one is even better, because it is easier on the eye but the intention is preserved</p>
0496 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0497 $bool = ($i < 7 && ($j < 8 || $k == 4));
0498 </pre></div>
0499
0500 <h4>Quoting strings:</h4>
0501 <p>There are two different ways to quote strings in PHP - either with single quotes or with double quotes. The main difference is that the parser does variable interpolation in double-quoted strings, but not in single quoted strings. Because of this, you should <em>always</em> use single quotes <em>unless</em> you specifically need variable interpolation to be done on that string. This way, we can save the parser the trouble of parsing a bunch of strings where no interpolation needs to be done.</p>
0502 <p>Also, if you are using a string variable as part of a function call, you do not need to enclose that variable in quotes. Again, this will just make unnecessary work for the parser. Note, however, that nearly all of the escape sequences that exist for double-quoted strings will not work with single-quoted strings. Be careful, and feel free to break this guideline if it's making your code easier to read, examples:</p>
0503
0504 <p class="bad">// wrong </p>
0505 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0506 $str = "This is a really long string with no variables for the parser to find.";
0507
0508 do_stuff("$str");
0509 </pre></div>
0510
0511 <p class="good">// right</p>
0512 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0513 $str = 'This is a really long string with no variables for the parser to find.';
0514
0515 do_stuff($str);
0516 </pre></div>
0517
0518 <p class="bad">// Sometimes single quotes are just not right</p>
0519 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0520 $post_url = $phpbb_root_path . 'posting.' . $phpEx . '?mode=' . $mode . '&amp;start=' . $start;
0521 </pre></div>
0522
0523 <p class="good">// Double quotes are sometimes needed to not overcrowd the line with concatenations.</p>
0524 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0525 $post_url = "{$phpbb_root_path}posting.$phpEx?mode=$mode&amp;start=$start";
0526 </pre></div>
0527
0528 <p>In SQL statements mixing single and double quotes is partly allowed (following the guidelines listed here about SQL formatting), else one should try to only use one method - mostly single quotes.</p>
0529
0530 <h4>Commas after every array element:</h4>
0531 <p>If an array is defined with each element on its own line, you still have to modify the previous line to add a comma when appending a new element. PHP allows for trailing (useless) commas in array definitions. These should always be used so each element including the comma can be appended with a single line. In JavaScript, do not use the trailing comma, as it causes browsers to throw errors.</p>
0532
0533 <p class="bad">// wrong</p>
0534 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0535 $foo = array(
0536 'bar' => 42,
0537 'boo' => 23
0538 );
0539 </pre></div>
0540
0541 <p class="good">// right </p>
0542 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0543 $foo = array(
0544 'bar' => 42,
0545 'boo' => 23,
0546 );
0547 </pre></div>
0548
0549
0550 <h4>Associative array keys:</h4>
0551 <p>In PHP, it's legal to use a literal string as a key to an associative array without quoting that string. We don't want to do this -- the string should always be quoted to avoid confusion. Note that this is only when we're using a literal, not when we're using a variable, examples:</p>
0552
0553 <p class="bad">// wrong</p>
0554 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0555 $foo = $assoc_array[blah];
0556 </pre></div>
0557
0558 <p class="good">// right </p>
0559 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0560 $foo = $assoc_array['blah'];
0561 </pre></div>
0562
0563 <p class="bad">// wrong</p>
0564 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0565 $foo = $assoc_array["$var"];
0566 </pre></div>
0567
0568 <p class="good">// right </p>
0569 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0570 $foo = $assoc_array[$var];
0571 </pre></div>
0572
0573 <h4>Comments:</h4>
0574 <p>Each complex function should be preceded by a comment that tells a programmer everything they need to know to use that function. The meaning of every parameter, the expected input, and the output are required as a minimal comment. The function's behaviour in error conditions (and what those error conditions are) should also be present - but mostly included within the comment about the output.<br /><br />Especially important to document are any assumptions the code makes, or preconditions for its proper operation. Any one of the developers should be able to look at any part of the application and figure out what's going on in a reasonable amount of time.<br /><br />Avoid using <code>/* */</code> comment blocks for one-line comments, <code>//</code> should be used for one/two-liners.</p>
0575
0576 <h4>Magic numbers:</h4>
0577 <p>Don't use them. Use named constants for any literal value other than obvious special cases. Basically, it's ok to check if an array has 0 elements by using the literal 0. It's not ok to assign some special meaning to a number and then use it everywhere as a literal. This hurts readability AND maintainability. The constants <code>true</code> and <code>false</code> should be used in place of the literals 1 and 0 -- even though they have the same values (but not type!), it's more obvious what the actual logic is when you use the named constants. Typecast variables where it is needed, do not rely on the correct variable type (PHP is currently very loose on typecasting which can lead to security problems if a developer does not keep a very close eye on it).</p>
0578
0579 <h4>Shortcut operators:</h4>
0580 <p>The only shortcut operators that cause readability problems are the shortcut increment <code>$i++</code> and decrement <code>$j--</code> operators. These operators should not be used as part of an expression. They can, however, be used on their own line. Using them in expressions is just not worth the headaches when debugging, examples:</p>
0581
0582 <p class="bad">// wrong </p>
0583 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0584 $array[++$i] = $j;
0585 $array[$i++] = $k;
0586 </pre></div>
0587
0588 <p class="good">// right </p>
0589 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0590 $i++;
0591 $array[$i] = $j;
0592
0593 $array[$i] = $k;
0594 $i++;
0595 </pre></div>
0596
0597 <h4>Inline conditionals:</h4>
0598 <p>Inline conditionals should only be used to do very simple things. Preferably, they will only be used to do assignments, and not for function calls or anything complex at all. They can be harmful to readability if used incorrectly, so don't fall in love with saving typing by using them, examples:</p>
0599
0600 <p class="bad">// Bad place to use them</p>
0601 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0602 ($i < $size && $j > $size) ? do_stuff($foo) : do_stuff($bar);
0603 </pre></div>
0604
0605 <p class="good">// OK place to use them </p>
0606 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0607 $min = ($i < $j) ? $i : $j;
0608 </pre></div>
0609
0610 <h4>Don't use uninitialized variables.</h4>
0611 <p>For phpBB3, we intend to use a higher level of run-time error reporting. This will mean that the use of an uninitialized variable will be reported as a warning. These warnings can be avoided by using the built-in isset() function to check whether a variable has been set - but preferably the variable is always existing. For checking if an array has a key set this can come in handy though, examples:</p>
0612
0613 <p class="bad">// Wrong </p>
0614 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0615 if ($forum) ...
0616 </pre></div>
0617
0618 <p class="good">// Right </p>
0619 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0620 if (isset($forum)) ...
0621 </pre></div>
0622
0623 <p class="good">// Also possible</p>
0624 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0625 if (isset($forum) && $forum == 5)
0626 </pre></div>
0627
0628 <p>The <code>empty()</code> function is useful if you want to check if a variable is not set or being empty (an empty string, 0 as an integer or string, NULL, false, an empty array or a variable declared, but without a value in a class). Therefore empty should be used in favor of <code>isset($array) && sizeof($array) > 0</code> - this can be written in a shorter way as <code>!empty($array)</code>.</p>
0629
0630 <h4>Switch statements:</h4>
0631 <p>Switch/case code blocks can get a bit long sometimes. To have some level of notice and being in-line with the opening/closing brace requirement (where they are on the same line for better readability), this also applies to switch/case code blocks and the breaks. An example:</p>
0632
0633 <p class="bad">// Wrong </p>
0634 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0635 switch ($mode)
0636 {
0637 case 'mode1':
0638 // I am doing something here
0639 break;
0640 case 'mode2':
0641 // I am doing something completely different here
0642 break;
0643 }
0644 </pre></div>
0645
0646 <p class="good">// Good </p>
0647 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0648 switch ($mode)
0649 {
0650 case 'mode1':
0651 // I am doing something here
0652 break;
0653
0654 case 'mode2':
0655 // I am doing something completely different here
0656 break;
0657
0658 default:
0659 // Always assume that a case was not caught
0660 break;
0661 }
0662 </pre></div>
0663
0664 <p class="good">// Also good, if you have more code between the case and the break </p>
0665 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0666 switch ($mode)
0667 {
0668 case 'mode1':
0669
0670 // I am doing something here
0671
0672 break;
0673
0674 case 'mode2':
0675
0676 // I am doing something completely different here
0677
0678 break;
0679
0680 default:
0681
0682 // Always assume that a case was not caught
0683
0684 break;
0685 }
0686 </pre></div>
0687
0688 <p>Even if the break for the default case is not needed, it is sometimes better to include it just for readability and completeness.</p>
0689
0690 <p>If no break is intended, please add a comment instead. An example:</p>
0691
0692 <p class="good">// Example with no break </p>
0693 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0694 switch ($mode)
0695 {
0696 case 'mode1':
0697
0698 // I am doing something here
0699
0700 // no break here
0701
0702 case 'mode2':
0703
0704 // I am doing something completely different here
0705
0706 break;
0707
0708 default:
0709
0710 // Always assume that a case was not caught
0711
0712 break;
0713 }
0714 </pre></div>
0715
0716 <h4>Class Members</h4>
0717 <p>Use the explicit visibility qualifiers <code>public</code>, <code>private</code> and <code>protected</code> for all properties instead of <code>var</code>.
0718
0719 <p>Place the <code>static</code> qualifier before the visibility qualifiers.</p>
0720
0721 <p class="bad">//Wrong </p>
0722 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0723 var $x;
0724 private static function f()
0725 </pre></div>
0726
0727 <p class="good">// Right </p>
0728 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0729 public $x;
0730 static private function f()
0731 </pre></div>
0732
0733 <h4>Constants</h4>
0734 <p>Prefer class constants over global constants created with <code>define()</code>.</p>
0735
0736 <a name="sql"></a><h3>2.iii. SQL/SQL Layout</h3>
0737
0738 <h4>Common SQL Guidelines: </h4>
0739 <p>All SQL should be cross-DB compatible, if DB specific SQL is used alternatives must be provided which work on all supported DB's (MySQL3/4/5, MSSQL (7.0 and 2000), PostgreSQL (8.3+), SQLite, Oracle8, ODBC (generalised if possible)).</p>
0740 <p>All SQL commands should utilise the DataBase Abstraction Layer (DBAL)</p>
0741
0742 <h4>SQL code layout:</h4>
0743 <p>SQL Statements are often unreadable without some formatting, since they tend to be big at times. Though the formatting of sql statements adds a lot to the readability of code. SQL statements should be formatted in the following way, basically writing keywords: </p>
0744
0745 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0746 $sql = 'SELECT *
0747 <-one tab->FROM ' . SOME_TABLE . '
0748 <-one tab->WHERE a = 1
0749 <-two tabs->AND (b = 2
0750 <-three tabs->OR b = 3)
0751 <-one tab->ORDER BY b';
0752 </pre></div>
0753
0754 <p>Here the example with the tabs applied:</p>
0755
0756 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0757 $sql = 'SELECT *
0758 FROM ' . SOME_TABLE . '
0759 WHERE a = 1
0760 AND (b = 2
0761 OR b = 3)
0762 ORDER BY b';
0763 </pre></div>
0764
0765 <h4>SQL Quotes: </h4>
0766 <p>Use double quotes where applicable. (The variables in these examples are typecasted to integers beforehand.) Examples: </p>
0767
0768 <p class="bad">// These are wrong.</p>
0769 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0770 "UPDATE " . SOME_TABLE . " SET something = something_else WHERE a = $b";
0771
0772 'UPDATE ' . SOME_TABLE . ' SET something = ' . $user_id . ' WHERE a = ' . $something;
0773 </pre></div>
0774
0775 <p class="good">// These are right. </p>
0776
0777 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0778 'UPDATE ' . SOME_TABLE . " SET something = something_else WHERE a = $b";
0779
0780 'UPDATE ' . SOME_TABLE . " SET something = $user_id WHERE a = $something";
0781 </pre></div>
0782
0783 <p>In other words use single quotes where no variable substitution is required or where the variable involved shouldn't appear within double quotes. Otherwise use double quotes.</p>
0784
0785 <h4>Avoid DB specific SQL: </h4>
0786 <p>The "not equals operator", as defined by the SQL:2003 standard, is "<>"</p>
0787
0788 <p class="bad">// This is wrong.</p>
0789 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0790 $sql = 'SELECT *
0791 FROM ' . SOME_TABLE . '
0792 WHERE a != 2';
0793 </pre></div>
0794
0795 <p class="good">// This is right. </p>
0796 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0797 $sql = 'SELECT *
0798 FROM ' . SOME_TABLE . '
0799 WHERE a <> 2';
0800 </pre></div>
0801
0802 <h4>Common DBAL methods: </h4>
0803
0804 <h4>sql_escape():</h4>
0805
0806 <p>Always use <code>$db->sql_escape()</code> if you need to check for a string within an SQL statement (even if you are sure the variable cannot contain single quotes - never trust your input), for example:</p>
0807
0808 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0809 $sql = 'SELECT *
0810 FROM ' . SOME_TABLE . "
0811 WHERE username = '" . $db->sql_escape($username) . "'";
0812 </pre></div>
0813
0814 <h4>sql_query_limit():</h4>
0815
0816 <p>We do not add limit statements to the sql query, but instead use <code>$db->sql_query_limit()</code>. You basically pass the query, the total number of lines to retrieve and the offset.</p>
0817
0818 <p><strong>Note: </strong> Since Oracle handles limits differently and because of how we implemented this handling you need to take special care if you use <code>sql_query_limit</code> with an sql query retrieving data from more than one table.</p>
0819
0820 <p>Make sure when using something like "SELECT x.*, y.jars" that there is not a column named jars in x; make sure that there is no overlap between an implicit column and the explicit columns.</p>
0821
0822 <h4>sql_build_array():</h4>
0823
0824 <p>If you need to UPDATE or INSERT data, make use of the <code>$db->sql_build_array()</code> function. This function already escapes strings and checks other types, so there is no need to do this here. The data to be inserted should go into an array - <code>$sql_ary</code> - or directly within the statement if one or two variables needs to be inserted/updated. An example of an insert statement would be:</p>
0825
0826 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0827 $sql_ary = array(
0828 'somedata' => $my_string,
0829 'otherdata' => $an_int,
0830 'moredata' => $another_int,
0831 );
0832
0833 $db->sql_query('INSERT INTO ' . SOME_TABLE . ' ' . $db->sql_build_array('INSERT', $sql_ary));
0834 </pre></div>
0835
0836 <p>To complete the example, this is how an update statement would look like:</p>
0837
0838 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0839 $sql_ary = array(
0840 'somedata' => $my_string,
0841 'otherdata' => $an_int,
0842 'moredata' => $another_int,
0843 );
0844
0845 $sql = 'UPDATE ' . SOME_TABLE . '
0846 SET ' . $db->sql_build_array('UPDATE', $sql_ary) . '
0847 WHERE user_id = ' . (int) $user_id;
0848 $db->sql_query($sql);
0849 </pre></div>
0850
0851 <p>The <code>$db->sql_build_array()</code> function supports the following modes: <code>INSERT</code> (example above), <code>INSERT_SELECT</code> (building query for <code>INSERT INTO table (...) SELECT value, column ...</code> statements), <code>UPDATE</code> (example above) and <code>SELECT</code> (for building WHERE statement [AND logic]).</p>
0852
0853 <h4>sql_multi_insert():</h4>
0854
0855 <p>If you want to insert multiple statements at once, please use the separate <code>sql_multi_insert()</code> method. An example:</p>
0856
0857 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0858 $sql_ary = array();
0859
0860 $sql_ary[] = array(
0861 'somedata' => $my_string_1,
0862 'otherdata' => $an_int_1,
0863 'moredata' => $another_int_1,
0864 );
0865
0866 $sql_ary[] = array(
0867 'somedata' => $my_string_2,
0868 'otherdata' => $an_int_2,
0869 'moredata' => $another_int_2,
0870 );
0871
0872 $db->sql_multi_insert(SOME_TABLE, $sql_ary);
0873 </pre></div>
0874
0875 <h4>sql_in_set():</h4>
0876
0877 <p>The <code>$db->sql_in_set()</code> function should be used for building <code>IN ()</code> and <code>NOT IN ()</code> constructs. Since (specifically) MySQL tend to be faster if for one value to be compared the <code>=</code> and <code><></code> operator is used, we let the DBAL decide what to do. A typical example of doing a positive match against a number of values would be:</p>
0878
0879 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0880 $sql = 'SELECT *
0881 FROM ' . FORUMS_TABLE . '
0882 WHERE ' . $db->sql_in_set('forum_id', $forum_ids);
0883 $db->sql_query($sql);
0884 </pre></div>
0885
0886 <p>Based on the number of values in $forum_ids, the query can look differently.</p>
0887
0888 <p class="good">// SQL Statement if $forum_ids = array(1, 2, 3);</p>
0889
0890 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0891 SELECT FROM phpbb_forums WHERE forum_id IN (1, 2, 3)
0892 </pre></div>
0893
0894 <p class="good">// SQL Statement if $forum_ids = array(1) or $forum_ids = 1</p>
0895
0896 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0897 SELECT FROM phpbb_forums WHERE forum_id = 1
0898 </pre></div>
0899
0900 <p>Of course the same is possible for doing a negative match against a number of values:</p>
0901
0902 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0903 $sql = 'SELECT *
0904 FROM ' . FORUMS_TABLE . '
0905 WHERE ' . $db->sql_in_set('forum_id', $forum_ids, <strong>true</strong>);
0906 $db->sql_query($sql);
0907 </pre></div>
0908
0909 <p>Based on the number of values in $forum_ids, the query can look differently here too.</p>
0910
0911 <p class="good">// SQL Statement if $forum_ids = array(1, 2, 3);</p>
0912
0913 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0914 SELECT FROM phpbb_forums WHERE forum_id <strong>NOT</strong> IN (1, 2, 3)
0915 </pre></div>
0916
0917 <p class="good">// SQL Statement if $forum_ids = array(1) or $forum_ids = 1</p>
0918
0919 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0920 SELECT FROM phpbb_forums WHERE forum_id <strong><></strong> 1
0921 </pre></div>
0922
0923 <p>If the given array is empty, an error will be produced.</p>
0924
0925 <h4>sql_build_query():</h4>
0926
0927 <p>The <code>$db->sql_build_query()</code> function is responsible for building sql statements for SELECT and SELECT DISTINCT queries if you need to JOIN on more than one table or retrieve data from more than one table while doing a JOIN. This needs to be used to make sure the resulting statement is working on all supported db's. Instead of explaining every possible combination, I will give a short example:</p>
0928
0929 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0930 $sql_array = array(
0931 'SELECT' => 'f.*, ft.mark_time',
0932
0933 'FROM' => array(
0934 FORUMS_WATCH_TABLE => 'fw',
0935 FORUMS_TABLE => 'f',
0936 ),
0937
0938 'LEFT_JOIN' => array(
0939 array(
0940 'FROM' => array(FORUMS_TRACK_TABLE => 'ft'),
0941 'ON' => 'ft.user_id = ' . $user->data['user_id'] . ' AND ft.forum_id = f.forum_id',
0942 ),
0943 ),
0944
0945 'WHERE' => 'fw.user_id = ' . $user->data['user_id'] . '
0946 AND f.forum_id = fw.forum_id',
0947
0948 'ORDER_BY' => 'left_id',
0949 );
0950
0951 $sql = $db->sql_build_query('SELECT', $sql_array);
0952 </pre></div>
0953
0954 <p>The possible first parameter for sql_build_query() is SELECT or SELECT_DISTINCT. As you can see, the logic is pretty self-explaining. For the LEFT_JOIN key, just add another array if you want to join on to tables for example. The added benefit of using this construct is that you are able to easily build the query statement based on conditions - for example the above LEFT_JOIN is only necessary if server side topic tracking is enabled; a slight adjustement would be:</p>
0955
0956 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0957 $sql_array = array(
0958 'SELECT' => 'f.*',
0959
0960 'FROM' => array(
0961 FORUMS_WATCH_TABLE => 'fw',
0962 FORUMS_TABLE => 'f',
0963 ),
0964
0965 'WHERE' => 'fw.user_id = ' . $user->data['user_id'] . '
0966 AND f.forum_id = fw.forum_id',
0967
0968 'ORDER_BY' => 'left_id',
0969 );
0970
0971 if ($config['load_db_lastread'])
0972 {
0973 $sql_array['LEFT_JOIN'] = array(
0974 array(
0975 'FROM' => array(FORUMS_TRACK_TABLE => 'ft'),
0976 'ON' => 'ft.user_id = ' . $user->data['user_id'] . ' AND ft.forum_id = f.forum_id',
0977 ),
0978 );
0979
0980 $sql_array['SELECT'] .= ', ft.mark_time ';
0981 }
0982 else
0983 {
0984 // Here we read the cookie data
0985 }
0986
0987 $sql = $db->sql_build_query('SELECT', $sql_array);
0988 </pre></div>
0989
0990 <a name="optimizing"></a><h3>2.iv. Optimizations</h3>
0991
0992 <h4>Operations in loop definition: </h4>
0993 <p>Always try to optimize your loops if operations are going on at the comparing part, since this part is executed every time the loop is parsed through. For assignments a descriptive name should be chosen. Example:</p>
0994
0995 <p class="bad">// On every iteration the sizeof function is called</p>
0996 <div class="codebox"><pre>
0997 for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($post_data); $i++)
0998 {
0999 do_something();
1000 }
1001 </pre></div>
1002
1003 <p class="good">// You are able to assign the (not changing) result within the loop itself</p>
1004 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1005 for ($i = 0, $size = sizeof($post_data); $i < $size; $i++)
1006 {
1007 do_something();
1008 }
1009 </pre></div>
1010
1011 <h4>Use of in_array(): </h4>
1012 <p>Try to avoid using in_array() on huge arrays, and try to not place them into loops if the array to check consist of more than 20 entries. in_array() can be very time consuming and uses a lot of cpu processing time. For little checks it is not noticeable, but if checked against a huge array within a loop those checks alone can take several seconds. If you need this functionality, try using isset() on the arrays keys instead, actually shifting the values into keys and vice versa. A call to <code>isset($array[$var])</code> is a lot faster than <code>in_array($var, array_keys($array))</code> for example.</p>
1013
1014
1015 <a name="general"></a><h3>2.v. General Guidelines</h3>
1016
1017 <h4>General things:</h4>
1018 <p>Never trust user input (this also applies to server variables as well as cookies).</p>
1019 <p>Try to sanitize values returned from a function.</p>
1020 <p>Try to sanitize given function variables within your function.</p>
1021 <p>The auth class should be used for all authorisation checking.</p>
1022 <p>No attempt should be made to remove any copyright information (either contained within the source or displayed interactively when the source is run/compiled), neither should the copyright information be altered in any way (it may be added to).</p>
1023
1024 <h4>Variables: </h4>
1025 <p>Make use of the <code>\phpbb\request\request</code> class for everything.</p>
1026 <p>The $request->variable() method determines the type to set from the second parameter (which determines the default value too). If you need to get a scalar variable type, you need to tell this the variable() method explicitly. Examples:</p>
1027
1028 <p class="bad">// Old method, do not use it</p>
1029 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1030 $start = (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['start'])) ? intval($HTTP_GET_VARS['start']) : intval($HTTP_POST_VARS['start']);
1031 $submit = (isset($HTTP_POST_VARS['submit'])) ? true : false;
1032 </pre></div>
1033
1034 <p class="good">// Use request var and define a default variable (use the correct type)</p>
1035 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1036 $start = $request->variable('start', 0);
1037 $submit = $request->is_set_post('submit');
1038 </pre></div>
1039
1040 <p class="bad">// $start is an int, the following use of $request->variable() therefore is not allowed</p>
1041 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1042 $start = $request->variable('start', '0');
1043 </pre></div>
1044
1045 <p class="good">// Getting an array, keys are integers, value defaults to 0</p>
1046 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1047 $mark_array = $request->variable('mark', array(0));
1048 </pre></div>
1049
1050 <p class="good">// Getting an array, keys are strings, value defaults to 0</p>
1051 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1052 $action_ary = $request->variable('action', array('' => 0));
1053 </pre></div>
1054
1055 <h4>Login checks/redirection: </h4>
1056 <p>To show a forum login box use <code>login_forum_box($forum_data)</code>, else use the <code>login_box()</code> function.</p>
1057
1058 <p><code>$forum_data</code> should contain at least the <code>forum_id</code> and <code>forum_password</code> fields. If the field <code>forum_name</code> is available, then it is displayed on the forum login page.</p>
1059
1060 <p>The <code>login_box()</code> function can have a redirect as the first parameter. As a thumb of rule, specify an empty string if you want to redirect to the users current location, else do not add the <code>$SID</code> to the redirect string (for example within the ucp/login we redirect to the board index because else the user would be redirected to the login screen).</p>
1061
1062 <h4>Sensitive Operations: </h4>
1063 <p>For sensitive operations always let the user confirm the action. For the confirmation screens, make use of the <code>confirm_box()</code> function.</p>
1064
1065 <h4>Altering Operations: </h4>
1066 <p>For operations altering the state of the database, for instance posting, always verify the form token, unless you are already using <code>confirm_box()</code>. To do so, make use of the <code>add_form_key()</code> and <code>check_form_key()</code> functions. </p>
1067 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1068 add_form_key('my_form');
1069
1070 if ($submit)
1071 {
1072 if (!check_form_key('my_form'))
1073 {
1074 trigger_error('FORM_INVALID');
1075 }
1076 }
1077 </pre></div>
1078
1079 <p>The string passed to <code>add_form_key()</code> needs to match the string passed to <code>check_form_key()</code>. Another requirement for this to work correctly is that all forms include the <code>{S_FORM_TOKEN}</code> template variable.</p>
1080
1081
1082 <h4>Sessions: </h4>
1083 <p>Sessions should be initiated on each page, as near the top as possible using the following code:</p>
1084
1085 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1086 $user->session_begin();
1087 $auth->acl($user->data);
1088 $user->setup();
1089 </pre></div>
1090
1091 <p>The <code>$user->setup()</code> call can be used to pass on additional language definition and a custom style (used in viewforum).</p>
1092
1093 <h4>Errors and messages: </h4>
1094 <p>All messages/errors should be outputted by calling <code>trigger_error()</code> using the appropriate message type and language string. Example:</p>
1095
1096 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1097 trigger_error('NO_FORUM');
1098 </pre></div>
1099
1100 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1101 trigger_error($user->lang['NO_FORUM']);
1102 </pre></div>
1103
1104 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1105 trigger_error('NO_MODE', E_USER_ERROR);
1106 </pre></div>
1107
1108 <h4>Url formatting</h4>
1109
1110 <p>All urls pointing to internal files need to be prepended by the <code>$phpbb_root_path</code> variable. Within the administration control panel all urls pointing to internal files need to be prepended by the <code>$phpbb_admin_path</code> variable. This makes sure the path is always correct and users being able to just rename the admin folder and the acp still working as intended (though some links will fail and the code need to be slightly adjusted).</p>
1111
1112 <p>The <code>append_sid()</code> function from 2.0.x is available too, though it does not handle url alterations automatically. Please have a look at the code documentation if you want to get more details on how to use append_sid(). A sample call to append_sid() can look like this:</p>
1113
1114 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1115 append_sid("{$phpbb_root_path}memberlist.$phpEx", 'mode=group&amp;g=' . $row['group_id'])
1116 </pre></div>
1117
1118 <h4>General function usage: </h4>
1119
1120 <p>Some of these functions are only chosen over others because of personal preference and have no benefit other than maintaining consistency throughout the code.</p>
1121
1122 <ul>
1123 <li>
1124 <p>Use <code>sizeof</code> instead of <code>count</code></p>
1125 </li>
1126 <li>
1127 <p>Use <code>strpos</code> instead of <code>strstr</code></p>
1128 </li>
1129 <li>
1130 <p>Use <code>else if</code> instead of <code>elseif</code></p>
1131 </li>
1132 <li>
1133 <p>Use <code>false</code> (lowercase) instead of <code>FALSE</code></p>
1134 </li>
1135 <li>
1136 <p>Use <code>true</code> (lowercase) instead of <code>TRUE</code></p>
1137 </li>
1138 </ul>
1139
1140 <h4>Exiting</h4>
1141
1142 <p>Your page should either call <code>page_footer()</code> in the end to trigger output through the template engine and terminate the script, or alternatively at least call the <code>exit_handler()</code>. That call is necessary because it provides a method for external applications embedding phpBB to be called at the end of the script.</p>
1143
1144 <a name="phprestrictions"></a><h3>2.vi. Restrictions on the Use of PHP</h3>
1145
1146 <h4>Dynamic code execution:</h4>
1147
1148 <p>Never execute dynamic PHP code (generated or in a constant string) using any of the following PHP functions:</p>
1149
1150 <ul>
1151 <li><strong>eval</strong></li>
1152 <li><strong>create_function</strong></li>
1153 <li><strong>preg_replace</strong> with the <strong>e</strong> modifier in the pattern</li>
1154 </ul>
1155
1156 <p>If absolutely necessary a file should be created, and a mechanism for creating this file prior to running phpBB should be provided as a setup process.</p>
1157
1158 <p>The <strong>e</strong> modifier in <strong>preg_replace</strong> can be replaced by <strong>preg_replace_callback</strong> and objects to encapsulate state that is needed in the callback code.</p>
1159
1160 <h4>Other functions, operators, statements and keywords:</h4>
1161
1162 <p>The following PHP statements should also not be used in phpBB:</p>
1163
1164 <ul>
1165 <li><strong>goto</strong></li>
1166 </ul>
1167
1168 </div>
1169
1170 <div class="back2top"><a href="#wrap" class="top">Back to Top</a></div>
1171
1172 <span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div>
1173 </div>
1174
1175 <hr />
1176
1177 <a name="styling"></a><h2>3. Styling</h2>
1178 <div class="paragraph">
1179 <div class="inner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span>
1180
1181 <div class="content">
1182 <a name="cfgfiles"></a><h3>3.i. Style Config Files</h3>
1183 <p>Style cfg files are simple name-value lists with the information necessary for installing a style. The important part of the style configuration file is assigning an unique name.</p>
1184 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1185 # General Information about this style
1186 name = prosilver_duplicate
1187 copyright = © phpBB Limited, 2007
1188 style_version = 3.1.0
1189 phpbb_version = 3.1.0
1190
1191 # Defining a different template bitfield
1192 # template_bitfield = lNg=
1193
1194 # Parent style
1195 # Set value to empty or to this style's name if this style does not have a parent style
1196 parent = prosilver
1197 </pre></div>
1198 <a name="genstyling"></a><h3>3.2. General Styling Rules</h3>
1199 <p>Templates should be produced in a consistent manner. Where appropriate they should be based off an existing copy, e.g. index, viewforum or viewtopic (the combination of which implement a range of conditional and variable forms). Please also note that the indentation and coding guidelines also apply to templates where possible.</p>
1200
1201 <p>The outer table class <code>forumline</code> has gone and is replaced with <code>tablebg</code>.</p>
1202 <p>When writing <code><table></code> the order <code><table class="" cellspacing="" cellpadding="" border="" align=""></code> creates consistency and allows everyone to easily see which table produces which "look". The same applies to most other tags for which additional parameters can be set, consistency is the major aim here.</p>
1203 <p>Each block level element should be indented by one tab, same for tabular elements, e.g. <code><tr></code> <code><td></code> etc., whereby the intendiation of <code><table></code> and the following/ending <code><tr></code> should be on the same line. This applies not to div elements of course.</p>
1204 <p>Don't use <code><span></code> more than is essential ... the CSS is such that text sizes are dependent on the parent class. So writing <code><span class="gensmall"><span class="gensmall">TEST</span></span></code> will result in very very small text. Similarly don't use span at all if another element can contain the class definition, e.g.</p>
1205
1206 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1207 <td><span class="gensmall">TEST</span></td>
1208 </pre></div>
1209
1210 <p>can just as well become:</p>
1211 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1212 <td class="gensmall">TEST</td>
1213 </pre></div>
1214
1215 <p>Try to match text class types with existing useage, e.g. don't use the nav class where viewtopic uses gensmall for example.</p>
1216
1217 <p>Row colours/classes are now defined by the template, use an <code>IF S_ROW_COUNT</code> switch, see viewtopic or viewforum for an example.</p>
1218
1219 <p>Remember block level ordering is important.</p>
1220
1221 <p>Use a standard cellpadding of 2 and cellspacing of 0 on outer tables. Inner tables can vary from 0 to 3 or even 4 depending on the need.</p>
1222
1223 <p><strong>Use div container/css for styling and table for data representation.</strong></p>
1224
1225 <p>The separate catXXXX and thXXX classes are gone. When defining a header cell just use <code><th></code> rather than <code><th class="thHead"></code> etc. Similarly for cat, don't use <code><td class="catLeft"></code> use <code><td class="cat"></code> etc.</p>
1226
1227 <p>Try to retain consistency of basic layout and class useage, i.e. _EXPLAIN text should generally be placed below the title it explains, e.g. <code>{L_POST_USERNAME}<br /><span class="gensmall">{L_POST_USERNAME_EXPLAIN}</span></code> is the typical way of handling this ... there may be exceptions and this isn't a hard and fast rule.</p>
1228
1229 <p>Try to keep template conditional and other statements tabbed in line with the block to which they refer.</p>
1230
1231 <p class="good">this is correct</p>
1232 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1233 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN test --></span>
1234 <tr>
1235 <td>{test.TEXT}</td>
1236 </tr>
1237 <span class="comment"><!-- END test --></span>
1238 </pre></div>
1239
1240 <p class="good">this is also correct:</p>
1241 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1242 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN test --></span>
1243 <tr>
1244 <td>{test.TEXT}</td>
1245 </tr>
1246 <span class="comment"><!-- END test --></span>
1247 </pre></div>
1248
1249 <p>it gives immediate feedback on exactly what is looping - decide which way to use based on the readability.</p>
1250
1251 </div>
1252
1253 <div class="back2top"><a href="#wrap" class="top">Back to Top</a></div>
1254
1255 <span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div>
1256 </div>
1257
1258 <hr />
1259
1260 <a name="templating"></a><h2>4. Templating</h2>
1261 <div class="paragraph">
1262 <div class="inner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span>
1263
1264 <div class="content">
1265 <a name="templates"></a><h3>4.i. General Templating</h3>
1266
1267 <h4>File naming</h4>
1268 <p>Firstly templates now take the suffix ".html" rather than ".tpl". This was done simply to make the lives of some people easier wrt syntax highlighting, etc.</p>
1269
1270 <h4>Variables</h4>
1271 <p>All template variables should be named appropriately (using underscores for spaces), language entries should be prefixed with L_, system data with S_, urls with U_, javascript urls with UA_, language to be put in javascript statements with LA_, all other variables should be presented 'as is'.</p>
1272
1273 <p>L_* template variables are automatically mapped to the corresponding language entry if the code does not set (and therefore overwrite) this variable specifically and if the language entry exists. For example <code>{L_USERNAME}</code> maps to <code>$user->lang['USERNAME']</code>. The LA_* template variables are handled within the same way, but properly escaped so they can be put in javascript code. This should reduce the need to assign loads of new language variables in MODifications.
1274 </p>
1275
1276 <h4>Blocks/Loops</h4>
1277 <p>The basic block level loop remains and takes the form:</p>
1278 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1279 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN loopname --></span>
1280 markup, {loopname.X_YYYYY}, etc.
1281 <span class="comment"><!-- END loopname --></span>
1282 </pre></div>
1283
1284 <p>A bit later loops will be explained further. To not irritate you we will explain conditionals as well as other statements first.</p>
1285
1286 <h4>Including files</h4>
1287 <p>Something that existed in 2.0.x which no longer exists in 3.x is the ability to assign a template to a variable. This was used (for example) to output the jumpbox. Instead (perhaps better, perhaps not but certainly more flexible) we now have INCLUDE. This takes the simple form:</p>
1288
1289 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1290 <span class="comment"><!-- INCLUDE filename --></span>
1291 </pre></div>
1292
1293 <p>You will note in the 3.x templates the major sources start with <code><!-- INCLUDE overall_header.html --></code> or <code><!-- INCLUDE simple_header.html --></code>, etc. In 2.0.x control of "which" header to use was defined entirely within the code. In 3.x the template designer can output what they like. Note that you can introduce new templates (i.e. other than those in the default set) using this system and include them as you wish ... perhaps useful for a common "menu" bar or some such. No need to modify loads of files as with 2.0.x.</p>
1294
1295 <p>Added in <strong>3.0.6</strong> is the ability to include a file using a template variable to specify the file, this functionality only works for root variables (i.e. not block variables).</p>
1296 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1297 <span class="comment"><!-- INCLUDE {FILE_VAR} --></span>
1298 </pre></div>
1299
1300 <p>Template defined variables can also be utilised.</p>
1301
1302 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1303 <span class="comment"><!-- DEFINE $SOME_VAR = 'my_file.html' --></span>
1304 <span class="comment"><!-- INCLUDE {$SOME_VAR} --></span>
1305 </pre></div>
1306
1307 <h4>PHP</h4>
1308 <p>A contentious decision has seen the ability to include PHP within the template introduced. This is achieved by enclosing the PHP within relevant tags:</p>
1309
1310 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1311 <span class="comment"><!-- PHP --></span>
1312 echo "hello!";
1313 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDPHP --></span>
1314 </pre></div>
1315
1316 <p>You may also include PHP from an external file using:</p>
1317
1318 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1319 <span class="comment"><!-- INCLUDEPHP somefile.php --></span>
1320 </pre></div>
1321
1322 <p>it will be included and executed inline.<br /><br />A note, it is very much encouraged that template designers do not include PHP. The ability to include raw PHP was introduced primarily to allow end users to include banner code, etc. without modifying multiple files (as with 2.0.x). It was not intended for general use ... hence <!-- w --><a href="https://www.phpbb.com">www.phpbb.com</a><!-- w --> will <strong>not</strong> make available template sets which include PHP. And by default templates will have PHP disabled (the admin will need to specifically activate PHP for a template).</p>
1323
1324 <h4>Conditionals/Control structures</h4>
1325 <p>The most significant addition to 3.x are conditions or control structures, "if something then do this else do that". The system deployed is very similar to Smarty. This may confuse some people at first but it offers great potential and great flexibility with a little imagination. In their most simple form these constructs take the form:</p>
1326
1327 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1328 <span class="comment"><!-- IF expr --></span>
1329 markup
1330 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1331 </pre></div>
1332
1333 <p>expr can take many forms, for example:</p>
1334
1335 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1336 <span class="comment"><!-- IF loop.S_ROW_COUNT is even --></span>
1337 markup
1338 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1339 </pre></div>
1340
1341 <p>This will output the markup if the S_ROW_COUNT variable in the current iteration of loop is an even value (i.e. the expr is TRUE). You can use various comparison methods (standard as well as equivalent textual versions noted in square brackets) including (<code>not, or, and, eq, neq, is</code> should be used if possible for better readability):</p>
1342
1343 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1344 == [eq]
1345 != [neq, ne]
1346 <> (same as !=)
1347 !== (not equivalent in value and type)
1348 === (equivalent in value and type)
1349 > [gt]
1350 < [lt]
1351 >= [gte]
1352 <= [lte]
1353 && [and]
1354 || [or]
1355 % [mod]
1356 ! [not]
1357 +
1358 -
1359 *
1360 /
1361 ,
1362 << (bitwise shift left)
1363 >> (bitwise shift right)
1364 | (bitwise or)
1365 ^ (bitwise xor)
1366 & (bitwise and)
1367 ~ (bitwise not)
1368 is (can be used to join comparison operations)
1369 </pre></div>
1370
1371 <p>Basic parenthesis can also be used to enforce good old BODMAS rules. Additionally some basic comparison types are defined:</p>
1372
1373 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1374 even
1375 odd
1376 div
1377 </pre></div>
1378
1379 <p>Beyond the simple use of IF you can also do a sequence of comparisons using the following:</p>
1380
1381 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1382 <span class="comment"><!-- IF expr1 --></span>
1383 markup
1384 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSEIF expr2 --></span>
1385 markup
1386 .
1387 .
1388 .
1389 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSEIF exprN --></span>
1390 markup
1391 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSE --></span>
1392 markup
1393 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1394 </pre></div>
1395
1396 <p>Each statement will be tested in turn and the relevant output generated when a match (if a match) is found. It is not necessary to always use ELSEIF, ELSE can be used alone to match "everything else".<br /><br />So what can you do with all this? Well take for example the colouration of rows in viewforum. In 2.0.x row colours were predefined within the source as either row color1, row color2 or row class1, row class2. In 3.x this is moved to the template, it may look a little daunting at first but remember control flows from top to bottom and it's not too difficult:</p>
1397
1398 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1399 <table>
1400 <span class="comment"><!-- IF loop.S_ROW_COUNT is even --></span>
1401 <tr class="row1">
1402 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSE --></span>
1403 <tr class="row2">
1404 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1405 <td>HELLO!</td>
1406 </tr>
1407 </table>
1408 </pre></div>
1409
1410 <p>This will cause the row cell to be output using class row1 when the row count is even, and class row2 otherwise. The S_ROW_COUNT parameter gets assigned to loops by default. Another example would be the following: </p>
1411
1412 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1413 <table>
1414 <span class="comment"><!-- IF loop.S_ROW_COUNT > 10 --></span>
1415 <tr bgcolor="#FF0000">
1416 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSEIF loop.S_ROW_COUNT > 5 --></span>
1417 <tr bgcolor="#00FF00">
1418 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSEIF loop.S_ROW_COUNT > 2 --></span>
1419 <tr bgcolor="#0000FF">
1420 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSE --></span>
1421 <tr bgcolor="#FF00FF">
1422 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1423 <td>hello!</td>
1424 </tr>
1425 </table>
1426 </pre></div>
1427
1428 <p>This will output the row cell in purple for the first two rows, blue for rows 2 to 5, green for rows 5 to 10 and red for remainder. So, you could produce a "nice" gradient effect, for example.<br /><br />What else can you do? Well, you could use IF to do common checks on for example the login state of a user:</p>
1429
1430 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1431 <span class="comment"><!-- IF S_USER_LOGGED_IN --></span>
1432 markup
1433 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1434 </pre></div>
1435
1436 <p>This replaces the existing (fudged) method in 2.0.x using a zero length array and BEGIN/END.</p>
1437
1438 <h4>Extended syntax for Blocks/Loops</h4>
1439
1440 <p>Back to our loops - they had been extended with the following additions. Firstly you can set the start and end points of the loop. For example:</p>
1441
1442 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1443 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN loopname(2) --></span>
1444 markup
1445 <span class="comment"><!-- END loopname --></span>
1446 </pre></div>
1447
1448 <p>Will start the loop on the third entry (note that indexes start at zero). Extensions of this are:
1449 <br /><br />
1450 <code>loopname(2)</code>: Will start the loop on the 3rd entry<br />
1451 <code>loopname(-2)</code>: Will start the loop two entries from the end<br />
1452 <code>loopname(3,4)</code>: Will start the loop on the fourth entry and end it on the fifth<br />
1453 <code>loopname(3,-4)</code>: Will start the loop on the fourth entry and end it four from last<br />
1454 </p>
1455
1456 <p>A further extension to begin is BEGINELSE:</p>
1457
1458 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1459 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN loop --></span>
1460 markup
1461 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGINELSE --></span>
1462 markup
1463 <span class="comment"><!-- END loop --></span>
1464 </pre></div>
1465
1466 <p>This will cause the markup between <code>BEGINELSE</code> and <code>END</code> to be output if the loop contains no values. This is useful for forums with no topics (for example) ... in some ways it replaces "bits of" the existing "switch_" type control (the rest being replaced by conditionals).</p>
1467
1468 <p>Another way of checking if a loop contains values is by prefixing the loops name with a dot:</p>
1469
1470 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1471 <span class="comment"><!-- IF .loop --></span>
1472 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN loop --></span>
1473 markup
1474 <span class="comment"><!-- END loop --></span>
1475 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSE --></span>
1476 markup
1477 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1478 </pre></div>
1479
1480 <p>You are even able to check the number of items within a loop by comparing it with values within the IF condition:</p>
1481
1482 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1483 <span class="comment"><!-- IF .loop > 2 --></span>
1484 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN loop --></span>
1485 markup
1486 <span class="comment"><!-- END loop --></span>
1487 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSE --></span>
1488 markup
1489 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1490 </pre></div>
1491
1492 <p>Nesting loops cause the conditionals needing prefixed with all loops from the outer one to the inner most. An illustration of this:</p>
1493
1494 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1495 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN firstloop --></span>
1496 {firstloop.MY_VARIABLE_FROM_FIRSTLOOP}
1497
1498 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN secondloop --></span>
1499 {firstloop.secondloop.MY_VARIABLE_FROM_SECONDLOOP}
1500 <span class="comment"><!-- END secondloop --></span>
1501 <span class="comment"><!-- END firstloop --></span>
1502 </pre></div>
1503
1504 <p>Sometimes it is necessary to break out of nested loops to be able to call another loop within the current iteration. This sounds a little bit confusing and it is not used very often. The following (rather complex) example shows this quite good - it also shows how you test for the first and last row in a loop (i will explain the example in detail further down):</p>
1505
1506 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1507 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN l_block1 --></span>
1508 <span class="comment"><!-- IF l_block1.S_SELECTED --></span>
1509 <strong>{l_block1.L_TITLE}</strong>
1510 <span class="comment"><!-- IF S_PRIVMSGS --></span>
1511
1512 <span class="comment"><!-- the ! at the beginning of the loop name forces the loop to be not a nested one of l_block1 --></span>
1513 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN !folder --></span>
1514 <span class="comment"><!-- IF folder.S_FIRST_ROW --></span>
1515 <ul class="nav">
1516 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1517
1518 <li><a href="{folder.U_FOLDER}">{folder.FOLDER_NAME}</a></li>
1519
1520 <span class="comment"><!-- IF folder.S_LAST_ROW --></span>
1521 </ul>
1522 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1523 <span class="comment"><!-- END !folder --></span>
1524
1525 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1526
1527 <ul class="nav">
1528 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN l_block2 --></span>
1529 <li>
1530 <span class="comment"><!-- IF l_block1.l_block2.S_SELECTED --></span>
1531 <strong>{l_block1.l_block2.L_TITLE}</strong>
1532 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSE --></span>
1533 <a href="{l_block1.l_block2.U_TITLE}">{l_block1.l_block2.L_TITLE}</a>
1534 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1535 </li>
1536 <span class="comment"><!-- END l_block2 --></span>
1537 </ul>
1538 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSE --></span>
1539 <a class="nav" href="{l_block1.U_TITLE}">{l_block1.L_TITLE}</a>
1540 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1541 <span class="comment"><!-- END l_block1 --></span>
1542 </pre></div>
1543
1544 <p>Let us first concentrate on this part of the example:</p>
1545
1546 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1547 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN l_block1 --></span>
1548 <span class="comment"><!-- IF l_block1.S_SELECTED --></span>
1549 markup
1550 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSE --></span>
1551 <a class="nav" href="{l_block1.U_TITLE}">{l_block1.L_TITLE}</a>
1552 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1553 <span class="comment"><!-- END l_block1 --></span>
1554 </pre></div>
1555
1556 <p>Here we open the loop l_block1 and do some things if the value S_SELECTED within the current loop iteration is true, else we write the blocks link and title. Here, you see <code>{l_block1.L_TITLE}</code> referenced - you remember that L_* variables get automatically assigned the corresponding language entry? This is true, but not within loops. The L_TITLE variable within the loop l_block1 is assigned within the code itself.</p>
1557
1558 <p>Let's have a closer look at the markup:</p>
1559
1560 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1561 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN l_block1 --></span>
1562 .
1563 .
1564 <span class="comment"><!-- IF S_PRIVMSGS --></span>
1565
1566 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN !folder --></span>
1567 <span class="comment"><!-- IF folder.S_FIRST_ROW --></span>
1568 <ul class="nav">
1569 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1570
1571 <li><a href="{folder.U_FOLDER}">{folder.FOLDER_NAME}</a></li>
1572
1573 <span class="comment"><!-- IF folder.S_LAST_ROW --></span>
1574 </ul>
1575 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1576 <span class="comment"><!-- END !folder --></span>
1577
1578 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1579 .
1580 .
1581 <span class="comment"><!-- END l_block1 --></span>
1582 </pre></div>
1583
1584 <p>The <code><!-- IF S_PRIVMSGS --></code> statement clearly checks a global variable and not one within the loop, since the loop is not given here. So, if S_PRIVMSGS is true we execute the shown markup. Now, you see the <code><!-- BEGIN !folder --></code> statement. The exclamation mark is responsible for instructing the template engine to iterate through the main loop folder. So, we are now within the loop folder - with <code><!-- BEGIN folder --></code> we would have been within the loop <code>l_block1.folder</code> automatically as is the case with l_block2:</p>
1585
1586 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1587 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN l_block1 --></span>
1588 .
1589 .
1590 <ul class="nav">
1591 <span class="comment"><!-- BEGIN l_block2 --></span>
1592 <li>
1593 <span class="comment"><!-- IF l_block1.l_block2.S_SELECTED --></span>
1594 <strong>{l_block1.l_block2.L_TITLE}</strong>
1595 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSE --></span>
1596 <a href="{l_block1.l_block2.U_TITLE}">{l_block1.l_block2.L_TITLE}</a>
1597 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1598 </li>
1599 <span class="comment"><!-- END l_block2 --></span>
1600 </ul>
1601 .
1602 .
1603 <span class="comment"><!-- END l_block1 --></span>
1604 </pre></div>
1605
1606 <p>You see the difference? The loop l_block2 is a member of the loop l_block1 but the loop folder is a main loop.</p>
1607
1608 <p>Now back to our folder loop:</p>
1609
1610 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1611 <span class="comment"><!-- IF folder.S_FIRST_ROW --></span>
1612 <ul class="nav">
1613 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1614
1615 <li><a href="{folder.U_FOLDER}">{folder.FOLDER_NAME}</a></li>
1616
1617 <span class="comment"><!-- IF folder.S_LAST_ROW --></span>
1618 </ul>
1619 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1620 </pre></div>
1621
1622 <p>You may have wondered what the comparison to S_FIRST_ROW and S_LAST_ROW is about. If you haven't guessed already - it is checking for the first iteration of the loop with <code>S_FIRST_ROW</code> and the last iteration with <code>S_LAST_ROW</code>. This can come in handy quite often if you want to open or close design elements, like the above list. Let us imagine a folder loop build with three iterations, it would go this way:</p>
1623
1624 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1625 <ul class="nav"> <span class="comment"><!-- written on first iteration --></span>
1626 <li>first element</li> <span class="comment"><!-- written on first iteration --></span>
1627 <li>second element</li> <span class="comment"><!-- written on second iteration --></span>
1628 <li>third element</li> <span class="comment"><!-- written on third iteration --></span>
1629 </ul> <span class="comment"><!-- written on third iteration --></span>
1630 </pre></div>
1631
1632 <p>As you can see, all three elements are written down as well as the markup for the first iteration and the last one. Sometimes you want to omit writing the general markup - for example:</p>
1633
1634 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1635 <span class="comment"><!-- IF folder.S_FIRST_ROW --></span>
1636 <ul class="nav">
1637 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSEIF folder.S_LAST_ROW --></span>
1638 </ul>
1639 <span class="comment"><!-- ELSE --></span>
1640 <li><a href="{folder.U_FOLDER}">{folder.FOLDER_NAME}</a></li>
1641 <span class="comment"><!-- ENDIF --></span>
1642 </pre></div>
1643
1644 <p>would result in the following markup:</p>
1645
1646 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1647 <ul class="nav"> <span class="comment"><!-- written on first iteration --></span>
1648 <li>second element</li> <span class="comment"><!-- written on second iteration --></span>
1649 </ul> <span class="comment"><!-- written on third iteration --></span>
1650 </pre></div>
1651
1652 <p>Just always remember that processing is taking place from top to bottom.</p>
1653
1654 <h4>Forms</h4>
1655 <p>If a form is used for a non-trivial operation (i.e. more than a jumpbox), then it should include the <code>{S_FORM_TOKEN}</code> template variable.</p>
1656 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1657 <form method="post" id="mcp" action="{U_POST_ACTION}">
1658
1659 <fieldset class="submit-buttons">
1660 <input type="reset" value="{L_RESET}" name="reset" class="button2" />
1661 <input type="submit" name="action[add_warning]" value="{L_SUBMIT}" class="button1" />
1662 {S_FORM_TOKEN}
1663 </fieldset>
1664 </form>
1665 </pre></div><br />
1666
1667 <a name="stylestree"></a><h3>4.ii. Styles Tree</h3>
1668 <p>When basing a new style on an existing one, it is not necessary to provide all the template files. By declaring the base style name in the <strong>parent</strong> field in the style configuration file, the style can be set to reuse template files from the parent style.</p>
1669
1670 <p>The effect of doing so is that the template engine will use the template files in the new style where they exist, but fall back to files in the parent style otherwise.</p>
1671
1672 <p>We strongly encourage the use of parent styles for styles based on the bundled styles, as it will ease the update procedure.</p>
1673
1674 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1675 # General Information about this style
1676 name = Custom Style
1677 copyright = © phpBB Limited, 2007
1678 style_version = 3.1.0-b1
1679 phpbb_version = 3.1.0-b1
1680
1681 # Defining a different template bitfield
1682 # template_bitfield = lNg=
1683
1684 # Parent style
1685 # Set value to empty or to this style's name if this style does not have a parent style
1686 parent = prosilver
1687 </pre></div>
1688
1689 <a name="template-events"></a><h3>4.iii. Template Events</h3>
1690 <p>Template events must follow this format: <code><!-- EVENT event_name --></code></p>
1691 <p>Using the above example, files named <code>event_name.html</code> located within extensions will be injected into the location of the event.</p>
1692
1693 <h4>Template event naming guidelines:</h4>
1694 <ul>
1695 <li>An event name must be all lowercase, with each word separated by an underscore.</li>
1696 <li>An event name must briefly describe the location and purpose of the event.</li>
1697 <li>
1698 An event name must end with one of the following suffixes:
1699 <ul>
1700 <li><code>_prepend</code> - This event adds an item to the beginning of a block of related items, or adds to the beginning of individual items in a block.</li>
1701 <li><code>_append</code> - This event adds an item to the end of a block of related items, or adds to the end of individual items in a block.</li>
1702 <li><code>_before</code> - This event adds content directly before the specified block</li>
1703 <li><code>_after</code> - This event adds content directly after the specified block</li>
1704 </ul>
1705 </li>
1706 </ul>
1707
1708 <h4>Template event documentation</h4>
1709 <p>Events must be documented in <code>phpBB/docs/events.md</code> in alphabetical order based on the event name. The format is as follows:</p>
1710
1711 <ul><li>An event found in only one template file:
1712 <div class="codebox"><pre>event_name
1713 ===
1714 * Location: styles/<style_name>/template/filename.html
1715 * Purpose: A brief description of what this event should be used for.
1716 This may span multiple lines.
1717 * Since: Version since when the event was added
1718 </pre></div></li>
1719 <li>An event found in multiple template files:
1720 <div class="codebox"><pre>event_name
1721 ===
1722 * Locations:
1723 + first/file/path.html
1724 + second/file/path.html
1725 * Purpose: Same as above.
1726 * Since: 3.1.0-b1
1727 </pre></div>
1728 <li>An event that is found multiple times in a file should have the number of instances in parenthesis next to the filename.
1729 <div class="codebox"><pre>event_name
1730 ===
1731 * Locations:
1732 + first/file/path.html (2)
1733 + second/file/path.html
1734 * Purpose: Same as above.
1735 * Since: 3.1.0-b1
1736 </pre></div></li>
1737 <li>An actual example event documentation:
1738 <div class="codebox"><pre>forumlist_body_last_post_title_prepend
1739 ====
1740 * Locations:
1741 + styles/prosilver/template/forumlist_body.html
1742 + styles/subsilver2/template/forumlist_body.html
1743 * Purpose: Add content before the post title of the latest post in a forum on the forum list.
1744 * Since: 3.1.0-a1
1745 </pre></div></ul><br />
1746
1747 </div>
1748
1749 <div class="back2top"><a href="#wrap" class="top">Back to Top</a></div>
1750
1751 <span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div>
1752 </div>
1753
1754 <hr />
1755
1756
1757
1758 <a name="charsets"></a><h2>5. Character Sets and Encodings</h2>
1759
1760 <div class="paragraph">
1761 <div class="inner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span>
1762
1763 <div class="content">
1764
1765
1766
1767 <h4>What are Unicode, UCS and UTF-8?</h4>
1768 <p>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Character_Set">Universal Character Set (UCS)</a> described in ISO/IEC 10646 consists of a large amount of characters. Each of them has a unique name and a code point which is an integer number. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode">Unicode</a> - which is an industry standard - complements the Universal Character Set with further information about the characters' properties and alternative character encodings. More information on Unicode can be found on the <a href="http://www.unicode.org/">Unicode Consortium's website</a>. One of the Unicode encodings is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8">8-bit Unicode Transformation Format (UTF-8)</a>. It encodes characters with up to four bytes aiming for maximum compatibility with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII">American Standard Code for Information Interchange</a> which is a 7-bit encoding of a relatively small subset of the UCS.</p>
1769
1770 <h4>phpBB's use of Unicode</h4>
1771 <p>Unfortunately PHP does not faciliate the use of Unicode prior to version 6. Most functions simply treat strings as sequences of bytes assuming that each character takes up exactly one byte. This behaviour still allows for storing UTF-8 encoded text in PHP strings but many operations on strings have unexpected results. To circumvent this problem we have created some alternative functions to PHP's native string operations which use code points instead of bytes. These functions can be found in <code>/includes/utf/utf_tools.php</code>. They are also covered in the <a href="http://area51.phpbb.com/docs/code/">phpBB3 Sourcecode Documentation</a>. A lot of native PHP functions still work with UTF-8 as long as you stick to certain restrictions. For example <code>explode</code> still works as long as the first and the last character of the delimiter string are ASCII characters.</p>
1772
1773 <p>phpBB only uses the ASCII and the UTF-8 character encodings. Still all Strings are UTF-8 encoded because ASCII is a subset of UTF-8. The only exceptions to this rule are code sections which deal with external systems which use other encodings and character sets. Such external data should be converted to UTF-8 using the <code>utf8_recode()</code> function supplied with phpBB. It supports a variety of other character sets and encodings, a full list can be found below.</p>
1774
1775 <p>With <code>$request->variable()</code> you can either allow all UCS characters in user input or restrict user input to ASCII characters. This feature is controlled by the method's third parameter called <code>$multibyte</code>. You should allow multibyte characters in posts, PMs, topic titles, forum names, etc. but it's not necessary for internal uses like a <code>$mode</code> variable which should only hold a predefined list of ASCII strings anyway.</p>
1776
1777 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1778 // an input string containing a multibyte character
1779 $_REQUEST['multibyte_string'] = 'Käse';
1780
1781 // print request variable as a UTF-8 string allowing multibyte characters
1782 echo $request->variable('multibyte_string', '', true);
1783 // print request variable as ASCII string
1784 echo $request->variable('multibyte_string', '');
1785 </pre></div>
1786
1787 <p>This code snippet will generate the following output:</p>
1788
1789 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1790 Käse
1791 K??se
1792 </pre></div>
1793
1794 <h4>Case Folding</h4>
1795
1796 <p>Case insensitive comparison of strings is no longer possible with <code>strtolower</code> or <code>strtoupper</code> as some characters have multiple lower case or multiple upper case forms depending on their position in a word. The <code>utf8_strtolower</code> and the <code>utf8_strtoupper</code> functions suffer from the same problem so they can only be used to display upper/lower case versions of a string but they cannot be used for case insensitive comparisons either. So instead you should use case folding which gives you a case insensitive version of the string which can be used for case insensitive comparisons. An NFC normalized string can be case folded using <code>utf8_case_fold_nfc()</code>.</p>
1797
1798 <p class="bad">// Bad - The strings might be the same even if strtolower differs</p>
1799
1800 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1801 if (strtolower($string1) == strtolower($string2))
1802 {
1803 echo '$string1 and $string2 are equal or differ in case';
1804 }
1805 </pre></div>
1806
1807 <p class="good">// Good - Case folding is really case insensitive</p>
1808
1809 <div class="codebox"><pre>
1810 if (utf8_case_fold_nfc($string1) == utf8_case_fold_nfc($string2))
1811 {
1812 echo '$string1 and $string2 are equal or differ in case';
1813 }
1814 </pre></div>
1815
1816 <h4>Confusables Detection</h4>
1817
1818 <p>phpBB offers a special method <code>utf8_clean_string</code> which can be used to make sure string identifiers are unique. This method uses Normalization Form Compatibility Composition (NFKC) instead of NFC and replaces similarly looking characters with a particular representative of the equivalence class. This method is currently used for usernames and group names to avoid confusion with similarly looking names.</p>
1819
1820 </div>
1821
1822 <div class="back2top"><a href="#wrap" class="top">Back to Top</a></div>
1823
1824 <span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div>
1825 </div>
1826
1827 <hr />
1828
1829 <a name="translation"></a><h2>6. Translation (<abbr title="Internationalisation">i18n</abbr>/<abbr title="Localisation">L10n</abbr>) Guidelines</h2>
1830
1831 <div class="paragraph">
1832 <div class="inner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span>
1833
1834 <div class="content">
1835
1836 <a name="standardisation"></a><h3>6.i. Standardisation</h3>
1837
1838 <h4>Reason:</h4>
1839
1840 <p>phpBB is one of the most translated open-source projects, with the current stable version being available in over 60 localisations. Whilst the ad hoc approach to the naming of language packs has worked, for phpBB3 and beyond we hope to make this process saner which will allow for better interoperation with current and future web browsers.</p>
1841
1842 <h4>Encoding:</h4>
1843
1844 <p>With phpBB3, the output encoding for the forum in now UTF-8, a Universal Character Encoding by the Unicode Consortium that is by design a superset to US-ASCII and ISO-8859-1. By using one character set which simultaenously supports all scripts which previously would have required different encodings (eg: ISO-8859-1 to ISO-8859-15 (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Thai, Hebrew, Arabic); GB2312 (Simplified Chinese); Big5 (Traditional Chinese), EUC-JP (Japanese), EUC-KR (Korean), VISCII (Vietnamese); et cetera), we remove the need to convert between encodings and improves the accessibility of multilingual forums.</p>
1845
1846 <p>The impact is that the language files for phpBB must now also be encoded as UTF-8, with a caveat that the files must <strong>not contain</strong> a <abbr title="Byte-Order-Mark">BOM</abbr> for compatibility reasons with non-Unicode aware versions of PHP. For those with forums using the Latin character set (ie: most European languages), this change is transparent since UTF-8 is superset to US-ASCII and ISO-8859-1.</p>
1847
1848 <h4>Language Tag:</h4>
1849
1850 <p>The <abbr title="Internet Engineering Task Force">IETF</abbr> recently published <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4646">RFC 4646</a> for tags used to identify languages, which in combination with <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4647">RFC 4647</a> obseletes the older <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3066">RFC 3006</a> and older-still <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1766">RFC 1766</a>. <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4646">RFC 4646</a> uses <a href="http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php">ISO 639-1/ISO 639-2</a>, <a href="http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html">ISO 3166-1 alpha-2</a>, <a href="http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html">ISO 15924</a> and <a href="http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49.htm">UN M.49</a> to define a language tag. Each complete tag is composed of subtags which are not case sensitive and can also be empty.</p>
1851
1852 <p>Ordering of the subtags in the case that they are all non-empty is: <code>language</code>-<code>script</code>-<code>region</code>-<code>variant</code>-<code>extension</code>-<code>privateuse</code>. Should any subtag be empty, its corresponding hyphen would also be ommited. Thus, the language tag for English will be <code>en</code> <strong>and not</strong> <code>en-----</code>.</p>
1853
1854 <p>Most language tags consist of a two- or three-letter language subtag (from <a href="http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php">ISO 639-1/ISO 639-2</a>). Sometimes, this is followed by a two-letter or three-digit region subtag (from <a href="http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html">ISO 3166-1 alpha-2</a> or <a href="http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49.htm">UN M.49</a>). Some examples are:</p>
1855
1856 <table>
1857 <caption>Examples of various possible language tags as described by RFC 4646 and RFC 4647</caption>
1858 <thead>
1859 <tr>
1860 <th scope="col">Language tag</th>
1861 <th scope="col">Description</th>
1862 <th scope="col">Component subtags</th>
1863 </tr>
1864 </thead>
1865 <tbody>
1866 <tr>
1867 <td><code>en</code></td>
1868 <td>English</td>
1869 <td><code>language</code></td>
1870 </tr>
1871 <tr>
1872 <td><code>mas</code></td>
1873 <td>Masai</td>
1874 <td><code>language</code></td>
1875 </tr>
1876 <tr>
1877 <td><code>fr-CA</code></td>
1878 <td>French as used in Canada</td>
1879 <td><code>language</code>+<code>region</code></td>
1880 </tr>
1881 <tr>
1882 <td><code>en-833</code></td>
1883 <td>English as used in the Isle of Man</td>
1884 <td><code>language</code>+<code>region</code></td>
1885 </tr>
1886 <tr>
1887 <td><code>zh-Hans</code></td>
1888 <td>Chinese written with Simplified script</td>
1889 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code></td>
1890 </tr>
1891 <tr>
1892 <td><code>zh-Hant-HK</code></td>
1893 <td>Chinese written with Traditional script as used in Hong Kong</td>
1894 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code>+<code>region</code></td>
1895 </tr>
1896 <tr>
1897 <td><code>de-AT-1996</code></td>
1898 <td>German as used in Austria with 1996 orthography</td>
1899 <td><code>language</code>+<code>region</code>+<code>variant</code></td>
1900 </tr>
1901 </tbody>
1902 </table>
1903
1904 <p>The ultimate aim of a language tag is to convey the needed <strong>useful distingushing information</strong>, whilst keeping it as <strong>short as possible</strong>. So for example, use <code>en</code>, <code>fr</code> and <code>ja</code> as opposed to <code>en-GB</code>, <code>fr-FR</code> and <code>ja-JP</code>, since we know English, French and Japanese are the native language of Great Britain, France and Japan respectively.</p>
1905
1906 <p>Next is the <a href="http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html">ISO 15924</a> language script code and when one should or shouldn't use it. For example, whilst <code>en-Latn</code> is syntaxically correct for describing English written with Latin script, real world English writing is <strong>more-or-less exclusively in the Latin script</strong>. For such languages like English that are written in a single script, the <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry"><abbr title="Internet Assigned Numbers Authority">IANA</abbr> Language Subtag Registry</a> has a "Suppress-Script" field meaning the script code <strong>should be ommitted</strong> unless a specific language tag requires a specific script code. Some languages are <strong>written in more than one script</strong> and in such cases, the script code <strong>is encouraged</strong> since an end-user may be able to read their language in one script, but not the other. Some examples are:</p>
1907
1908 <table>
1909 <caption>Examples of using a language subtag in combination with a script subtag</caption>
1910 <thead>
1911 <tr>
1912 <th scope="col">Language tag</th>
1913 <th scope="col">Description</th>
1914 <th scope="col">Component subtags</th>
1915 </tr>
1916 </thead>
1917 <tbody>
1918 <tr>
1919 <td><code>en-Brai</code></td>
1920 <td>English written in Braille script</td>
1921 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code></td>
1922 </tr>
1923 <tr>
1924 <td><code>en-Dsrt</code></td>
1925 <td>English written in Deseret (Mormon) script</td>
1926 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code></td>
1927 </tr>
1928 <tr>
1929 <td><code>sr-Latn</code></td>
1930 <td>Serbian written in Latin script</td>
1931 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code></td>
1932 </tr>
1933 <tr>
1934 <td><code>sr-Cyrl</code></td>
1935 <td>Serbian written in Cyrillic script</td>
1936 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code></td>
1937 </tr>
1938 <tr>
1939 <td><code>mn-Mong</code></td>
1940 <td>Mongolian written in Mongolian script</td>
1941 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code></td>
1942 </tr>
1943 <tr>
1944 <td><code>mn-Cyrl</code></td>
1945 <td>Mongolian written in Cyrillic script</td>
1946 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code></td>
1947 </tr>
1948 <tr>
1949 <td><code>mn-Phag</code></td>
1950 <td>Mongolian written in Phags-pa script</td>
1951 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code></td>
1952 </tr>
1953 <tr>
1954 <td><code>az-Cyrl-AZ</code></td>
1955 <td>Azerbaijani written in Cyrillic script as used in Azerbaijan</td>
1956 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code>+<code>region</code></td>
1957 </tr>
1958 <tr>
1959 <td><code>az-Latn-AZ</code></td>
1960 <td>Azerbaijani written in Latin script as used in Azerbaijan</td>
1961 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code>+<code>region</code></td>
1962 </tr>
1963 <tr>
1964 <td><code>az-Arab-IR</code></td>
1965 <td>Azerbaijani written in Arabic script as used in Iran</td>
1966 <td><code>language</code>+<code>script</code>+<code>region</code></td>
1967 </tr>
1968 </tbody>
1969 </table>
1970
1971 <p>Usage of the three-digit <a href="http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49.htm">UN M.49</a> code over the two-letter <a href="http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html">ISO 3166-1 alpha-2</a> code should hapen if a macro-geographical entity is required and/or the <a href="http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html">ISO 3166-1 alpha-2</a> is ambiguous.</p>
1972
1973 <p>Examples of English using marco-geographical regions:</p>
1974
1975 <table>
1976 <caption>Coding for English using macro-geographical regions (examples for English of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 vs. UN M.49 code)</caption>
1977 <thead>
1978 <tr>
1979 <th scope="col">ISO 639-1/ISO 639-2 + ISO 3166-1 alpha-2</th>
1980 <th scope="col" colspan="2">ISO 639-1/ISO 639-2 + UN M.49 (Example macro regions)</th>
1981 </tr>
1982 </thead>
1983 <tbody>
1984 <tr>
1985 <td><dl><dt><code>en-AU</code></dt><dd>English as used in <strong>Australia</strong></dd></dl></td>
1986 <td rowspan="2"><dl><dt><code>en-053</code></dt><dd>English as used in <strong>Australia & New Zealand</strong></dd></dl></td>
1987 <td rowspan="3"><dl><dt><code>en-009</code></dt><dd>English as used in <strong>Oceania</strong></dd></dl></td>
1988 </tr>
1989 <tr>
1990 <td><dl><dt><code>en-NZ</code></dt><dd>English as used in <strong>New Zealand</strong></dd></dl></td>
1991 </tr>
1992 <tr>
1993 <td><dl><dt><code>en-FJ</code></dt><dd>English as used in <strong>Fiji</strong></dd></dl></td>
1994 <td><dl><dt><code>en-054 </code></dt><dd>English as used in <strong>Melanesia</strong></dd></dl></td>
1995 </tr>
1996 </tbody>
1997 </table>
1998
1999 <p>Examples of Spanish using marco-geographical regions:</p>
2000
2001 <table>
2002 <caption>Coding for Spanish macro-geographical regions (examples for Spanish of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 vs. UN M.49 code)</caption>
2003 <thead>
2004 <tr>
2005 <th scope="col">ISO 639-1/ISO 639-2 + ISO 3166-1 alpha-2</th>
2006 <th scope="col" colspan="2">ISO 639-1/ISO 639-2 + UN M.49 (Example macro regions)</th>
2007 </tr>
2008 </thead>
2009 <tbody>
2010 <tr>
2011 <td><dl><dt><code>es-PR</code></dt><dd>Spanish as used in <strong>Puerto Rico</strong></dd></dl></td>
2012 <td rowspan="3"><dl><dt><code>es-419</code></dt><dd>Spanish as used in <strong>Latin America & the Caribbean</strong></dd></dl></td>
2013 <td rowspan="4"><dl><dt><code>es-019</code></dt><dd>Spanish as used in <strong>the Americas</strong></dd></dl></td>
2014 </tr>
2015 <tr>
2016 <td><dl><dt><code>es-HN</code></dt><dd>Spanish as used in <strong>Honduras</strong></dd></dl></td>
2017 </tr>
2018 <tr>
2019 <td><dl><dt><code>es-AR</code></dt><dd>Spanish as used in <strong>Argentina</strong></dd></dl></td>
2020 </tr>
2021 <tr>
2022 <td><dl><dt><code>es-US</code></dt><dd>Spanish as used in <strong>United States of America</strong></dd></dl></td>
2023 <td><dl><dt><code>es-021</code></dt><dd>Spanish as used in <strong>North America</strong></dd></dl></td>
2024 </tr>
2025 </tbody>
2026 </table>
2027
2028 <p>Example of where the <a href="http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html">ISO 3166-1 alpha-2</a> is ambiguous and why <a href="http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49.htm">UN M.49</a> might be preferred:</p>
2029
2030 <table>
2031 <caption>Coding for ambiguous ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 regions</caption>
2032 <thead>
2033 <tr>
2034 <th scope="col" colspan="2"><code>CS</code> assignment pre-1994</th>
2035 <th scope="col" colspan="2"><code>CS</code> assignment post-1994</th>
2036 </tr>
2037 </thead>
2038 <tbody>
2039 <tr>
2040 <td colspan="2">
2041 <dl>
2042 <dt><code>CS</code></dt><dd><strong>Czechoslovakia</strong> (ISO 3166-1)</dd>
2043 <dt><code>200</code></dt><dd><strong>Czechoslovakia</strong> (UN M.49)</dd>
2044 </dl>
2045 </td>
2046 <td colspan="2">
2047 <dl>
2048 <dt><code>CS</code></dt><dd><strong>Serbian & Montenegro</strong> (ISO 3166-1)</dd>
2049 <dt><code>891</code></dt><dd><strong>Serbian & Montenegro</strong> (UN M.49)</dd>
2050 </dl>
2051 </td>
2052 </tr>
2053 <tr>
2054 <td>
2055 <dl>
2056 <dt><code>CZ</code></dt><dd><strong>Czech Republic</strong> (ISO 3166-1)</dd>
2057 <dt><code>203</code></dt><dd><strong>Czech Republic</strong> (UN M.49)</dd>
2058 </dl>
2059 </td>
2060 <td>
2061 <dl>
2062 <dt><code>SK</code></dt><dd><strong>Slovakia</strong> (ISO 3166-1)</dd>
2063 <dt><code>703</code></dt><dd><strong>Slovakia</strong> (UN M.49)</dd>
2064 </dl>
2065 </td>
2066 <td>
2067 <dl>
2068 <dt><code>RS</code></dt><dd><strong>Serbia</strong> (ISO 3166-1)</dd>
2069 <dt><code>688</code></dt><dd><strong>Serbia</strong> (UN M.49)</dd>
2070 </dl>
2071 </td>
2072 <td>
2073 <dl>
2074 <dt><code>ME</code></dt><dd><strong>Montenegro</strong> (ISO 3166-1)</dd>
2075 <dt><code>499</code></dt><dd><strong>Montenegro</strong> (UN M.49)</dd>
2076 </dl>
2077 </td>
2078 </tr>
2079 </tbody>
2080 </table>
2081
2082 <h4>Macro-languages & Topolects:</h4>
2083
2084 <p><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4646">RFC 4646</a> anticipates features which shall be available in (currently draft) <a href="http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/">ISO 639-3</a> which aims to provide as complete enumeration of languages as possible, including living, extinct, ancient and constructed languages, whether majour, minor or unwritten. A new feature of <a href="http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/">ISO 639-3</a> compared to the previous two revisions is the concept of <a href="http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/macrolanguages.asp">macrolanguages</a> where Arabic and Chinese are two such examples. In such cases, their respective codes of <code>ar</code> and <code>zh</code> is very vague as to which dialect/topolect is used or perhaps some terse classical variant which may be difficult for all but very educated users. For such macrolanguages, it is recommended that the sub-language tag is used as a suffix to the macrolanguage tag, eg:</p>
2085
2086 <table>
2087 <caption>Macrolanguage subtag + sub-language subtag examples</caption>
2088 <thead>
2089 <tr>
2090 <th scope="col">Language tag</th>
2091 <th scope="col">Description</th>
2092 <th scope="col">Component subtags</th>
2093 </tr>
2094 </thead>
2095 <tbody>
2096 <tr>
2097 <td><code>zh-cmn</code></td>
2098 <td>Mandarin (Putonghau/Guoyu) Chinese</td>
2099 <td><code>macrolanguage</code>+<code>sublanguage</code></td>
2100 </tr>
2101 <tr>
2102 <td><code>zh-yue</code></td>
2103 <td>Yue (Cantonese) Chinese</td>
2104 <td><code>macrolanguage</code>+<code>sublanguage</code></td>
2105 </tr>
2106 <tr>
2107 <td><code>zh-cmn-Hans</code></td>
2108 <td>Mandarin (Putonghau/Guoyu) Chinese written in Simplified script</td>
2109 <td><code>macrolanguage</code>+<code>sublanguage</code>+<code>script</code></td>
2110 </tr>
2111 <tr>
2112 <td><code>zh-cmn-Hant</code></td>
2113 <td>Mandarin (Putonghau/Guoyu) Chinese written in Traditional script</td>
2114 <td><code>macrolanguage</code>+<code>sublanguage</code>+<code>script</code></td>
2115 </tr>
2116 <tr>
2117 <td><code>zh-nan-Latn-TW</code></td>
2118 <td>Minnan (Hoklo) Chinese written in Latin script (POJ Romanisation) as used in Taiwan</td>
2119 <td><code>macrolanguage</code>+<code>sublanguage</code>+<code>script</code>+<code>region</code></td>
2120 </tr>
2121 </tbody>
2122 </table>
2123
2124 <a name="otherconsiderations"></a><h3>6.ii. Other considerations</h3>
2125
2126 <h4>Normalisation of language tags for phpBB:</h4>
2127
2128 <p>For phpBB, the language tags are <strong>not</strong> used in their raw form and instead converted to all lower-case and have the hyphen <code>-</code> replaced with an underscore <code>_</code> where appropriate, with some examples below:</p>
2129
2130 <table>
2131 <caption>Language tag normalisation examples</caption>
2132 <thead>
2133 <tr>
2134 <th scope="col">Raw language tag</th>
2135 <th scope="col">Description</th>
2136 <th scope="col">Value of <code>USER_LANG</code><br />in <code>./common.php</code></th>
2137 <th scope="col">Language pack directory<br />name in <code>/language/</code></th>
2138 </tr>
2139 </thead>
2140 <tbody>
2141 <tr>
2142 <td><code>en</code></td>
2143 <td>British English</td>
2144 <td><code>en</code></td>
2145 <td><code>en</code></td>
2146 </tr>
2147 <tr>
2148 <td><code>de-AT</code></td>
2149 <td>German as used in Austria</td>
2150 <td><code>de-at</code></td>
2151 <td><code>de_at</code></td>
2152 </tr>
2153 <tr>
2154 <td><code>es-419</code></td>
2155 <td>Spanish as used in Latin America & Caribbean</td>
2156 <td><code>en-419</code></td>
2157 <td><code>en_419</code></td>
2158 </tr>
2159 <tr>
2160 <td><code>zh-yue-Hant-HK</code></td>
2161 <td>Cantonese written in Traditional script as used in Hong Kong</td>
2162 <td><code>zh-yue-hant-hk</code></td>
2163 <td><code>zh_yue_hant_hk</code></td>
2164 </tr>
2165 </tbody>
2166 </table>
2167
2168 <h4>How to use <code>iso.txt</code>:</h4>
2169
2170 <p>The <code>iso.txt</code> file is a small UTF-8 encoded plain-text file which consists of three lines:</p>
2171
2172 <ol>
2173 <li><code>Language's English name</code></li>
2174 <li><code>Language's local name</code></li>
2175 <li><code>Authors information</code></li>
2176 </ol>
2177
2178 <p><code>iso.txt</code> is automatically generated by the language pack submission system on phpBB.com. You don't have to create this file yourself if you plan on releasing your language pack on phpBB.com, but do keep in mind that phpBB itself does require this file to be present.</p>
2179
2180 <p>Because language tags themselves are meant to be machine read, they can be rather obtuse to humans and why descriptive strings as provided by <code>iso.txt</code> are needed. Whilst <code>en-US</code> could be fairly easily deduced to be "English as used in the United States", <code>de-CH</code> is more difficult less one happens to know that <code>de</code> is from "<span lang="de">Deutsch</span>", German for "German" and <code>CH</code> is the abbreviation of the official Latin name for Switzerland, "<span lang="la">Confoederatio Helvetica</span>".</p>
2181
2182 <p>For the English language description, the language name is always first and any additional attributes required to describe the subtags within the language code are then listed in order separated with commas and enclosed within parentheses, eg:</p>
2183
2184 <table>
2185 <caption>English language description examples for iso.txt</caption>
2186 <thead>
2187 <tr>
2188 <th scope="col">Raw language tag</th>
2189 <th scope="col">English description within <code>iso.txt</code></th>
2190 </tr>
2191 </thead>
2192 <tbody>
2193 <tr>
2194 <td><code>en</code></td>
2195 <td>British English</td>
2196 </tr>
2197 <tr>
2198 <td><code>en-US</code></td>
2199 <td>English (United States)</td>
2200 </tr>
2201 <tr>
2202 <td><code>en-053</code></td>
2203 <td>English (Australia & New Zealand)</td>
2204 </tr>
2205 <tr>
2206 <td><code>de</code></td>
2207 <td>German</td>
2208 </tr>
2209 <tr>
2210 <td><code>de-CH-1996</code></td>
2211 <td>German (Switzerland, 1996 orthography)</td>
2212 </tr>
2213 <tr>
2214 <td><code>gws-1996</code></td>
2215 <td>Swiss German (1996 orthography)</td>
2216 </tr>
2217 <tr>
2218 <td><code>zh-cmn-Hans-CN</code></td>
2219 <td>Mandarin Chinese (Simplified, Mainland China)</td>
2220 </tr>
2221 <tr>
2222 <td><code>zh-yue-Hant-HK</code></td>
2223 <td>Cantonese Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong)</td>
2224 </tr>
2225 </tbody>
2226 </table>
2227
2228 <p>For the localised language description, just translate the English version though use whatever appropriate punctuation typical for your own locale, assuming the language uses punctuation at all.</p>
2229
2230 <h4>Unicode bi-directional considerations:</h4>
2231
2232 <p>Because phpBB is now UTF-8, all translators must take into account that certain strings may be shown when the directionality of the document is either opposite to normal or is ambiguous.</p>
2233
2234 <p>The various Unicode control characters for bi-directional text and their HTML enquivalents where appropriate are as follows:</p>
2235
2236 <table>
2237 <caption>Unicode bidirectional control characters & HTML elements/entities</caption>
2238 <thead>
2239 <tr>
2240 <th scope="col">Unicode character<br />abbreviation</th>
2241 <th scope="col">Unicode<br />code-point</th>
2242 <th scope="col">Unicode character<br />name</th>
2243 <th scope="col">Equivalent HTML<br />markup/entity</th>
2244 <th scope="col">Raw character<br />(enclosed between '')</th>
2245 </tr>
2246 </thead>
2247 <tbody>
2248 <tr>
2249 <td><code>LRM</code></td>
2250 <td><code>U+200E</code></td>
2251 <td>Left-to-Right Mark</td>
2252 <td><code>&lrm;</code></td>
2253 <td>'‎'</td>
2254 </tr>
2255 <tr>
2256 <td><code>RLM</code></td>
2257 <td><code>U+200F</code></td>
2258 <td>Right-to-Left Mark</td>
2259 <td><code>&rlm;</code></td>
2260 <td>'‏'</td>
2261 </tr>
2262 <tr>
2263 <td><code>LRE</code></td>
2264 <td><code>U+202A</code></td>
2265 <td>Left-to-Right Embedding</td>
2266 <td><code>dir="ltr"</code></td>
2267 <td>'‪'</td>
2268 </tr>
2269 <tr>
2270 <td><code>RLE</code></td>
2271 <td><code>U+202B</code></td>
2272 <td>Right-to-Left Embedding</td>
2273 <td><code>dir="rtl"</code></td>
2274 <td>'‫'</td>
2275 </tr>
2276 <tr>
2277 <td><code>PDF</code></td>
2278 <td><code>U+202C</code></td>
2279 <td>Pop Directional Formatting</td>
2280 <td><code></bdo></code></td>
2281 <td>'‬'</td>
2282 </tr>
2283 <tr>
2284 <td><code>LRO</code></td>
2285 <td><code>U+202D</code></td>
2286 <td>Left-to-Right Override</td>
2287 <td><code><bdo dir="ltr"></code></td>
2288 <td>'‭'</td>
2289 </tr>
2290 <tr>
2291 <td><code>RLO</code></td>
2292 <td><code>U+202E</code></td>
2293 <td>Right-to-Left Override</td>
2294 <td><code><bdo dir="rtl"></code></td>
2295 <td>'‮'</td>
2296 </tr>
2297 </tbody>
2298 </table>
2299
2300 <p>For <code>iso.txt</code>, the directionality of the text can be explicitly set using special Unicode characters via any of the three methods provided by left-to-right/right-to-left markers/embeds/overrides, as without them, the ordering of characters will be incorrect, eg:</p>
2301
2302 <table>
2303 <caption>Unicode bidirectional control characters iso.txt</caption>
2304 <thead>
2305 <tr>
2306 <th scope="col">Directionality</th>
2307 <th scope="col">Raw character view</th>
2308 <th scope="col">Display of localised<br />description in <code>iso.txt</code></th>
2309 <th scope="col">Ordering</th>
2310 </tr>
2311 </thead>
2312 <tbody>
2313 <tr>
2314 <td><code>dir="ltr"</code></td>
2315 <td>English (Australia & New Zealand)</td>
2316 <td dir="ltr">English (Australia & New Zealand)</td>
2317 <td class="good">Correct</td>
2318 </tr>
2319 <tr>
2320 <td><code>dir="rtl"</code></td>
2321 <td>English (Australia & New Zealand)</td>
2322 <td dir="rtl">English (Australia & New Zealand)</td>
2323 <td class="bad">Incorrect</td>
2324 </tr>
2325 <tr>
2326 <td><code>dir="rtl"</code> with <code>LRM</code></td>
2327 <td>English (Australia & New Zealand)<code>U+200E</code></td>
2328 <td dir="rtl">English (Australia & New Zealand)‎</td>
2329 <td class="good">Correct</td>
2330 </tr>
2331 <tr>
2332 <td><code>dir="rtl"</code> with <code>LRE</code> & <code>PDF</code></td>
2333 <td><code>U+202A</code>English (Australia & New Zealand)<code>U+202C</code></td>
2334 <td dir="rtl">‪English (Australia & New Zealand)‬</td>
2335 <td class="good">Correct</td>
2336 </tr>
2337 <tr>
2338 <td><code>dir="rtl"</code> with <code>LRO</code> & <code>PDF</code></td>
2339 <td><code>U+202D</code>English (Australia & New Zealand)<code>U+202C</code></td>
2340 <td dir="rtl">‭English (Australia & New Zealand)‬</td>
2341 <td class="good">Correct</td>
2342 </tr>
2343 </tbody>
2344 </table>
2345
2346 <p>In choosing which of the three methods to use, in the majority of cases, the <code>LRM</code> or <code>RLM</code> to put a "strong" character to fully enclose an ambiguous punctuation character and thus make it inherit the correct directionality is sufficient.</p>
2347 <p>Within some cases, there may be mixed scripts of a left-to-right and right-to-left direction, so using <code>LRE</code> & <code>RLE</code> with <code>PDF</code> may be more appropriate. Lastly, in very rare instances where directionality must be forced, then use <code>LRO</code> & <code>RLO</code> with <code>PDF</code>.</p>
2348 <p>For further information on authoring techniques of bi-directional text, please see the W3C tutorial on <a href="http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/bidi-xhtml/">authoring techniques for XHTML pages with bi-directional text</a>.</p>
2349
2350 <a name="placeholders"></a><h3>6.iii. Working with placeholders</h3>
2351
2352 <p>As phpBB is translated into languages with different ordering rules to that of English, it is possible to show specific values in any order deemed appropriate. Take for example the extremely simple "Page <em>X</em> of <em>Y</em>", whilst in English this could just be coded as:</p>
2353
2354 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2355 ...
2356 'PAGE_OF' => 'Page %s of %s',
2357 /* Just grabbing the replacements as they
2358 come and hope they are in the right order */
2359 ...
2360 </pre></div>
2361
2362 <p>… a clearer way to show explicit replacement ordering is to do:</p>
2363
2364 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2365 ...
2366 'PAGE_OF' => 'Page %1$s of %2$s',
2367 /* Explicit ordering of the replacements,
2368 even if they are the same order as English */
2369 ...
2370 </pre></div>
2371
2372 <p>Why bother at all? Because some languages, the string transliterated back to English might read something like:</p>
2373
2374 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2375 ...
2376 'PAGE_OF' => 'Total of %2$s pages, currently on page %1$s',
2377 /* Explicit ordering of the replacements,
2378 reversed compared to English as the total comes first */
2379 ...
2380 </pre></div>
2381
2382 <a name="usingplurals"></a><h3>6.iv. Using plurals</h3>
2383
2384 <p>
2385 The english language is very simple when it comes to plurals.<br />
2386 You have <code>0 elephants</code>, <code>1 elephant</code>, or <code>2+ elephants</code>. So basically you have 2 different forms: one singular and one plural.<br />
2387 But for some other languages this is quite more difficult. Let's take the Bosnian language as another example:<br />
2388 You have <code>[1/21/31] slon</code>, <code>[2/3/4] slona</code>, <code>[0/5/6] slonova</code> and <code>[7/8/9/11] ...</code> and some more difficult rules.
2389 </p>
2390
2391 <p>The <a href="https://wiki.phpbb.com/Plural_Rules">plural system</a> takes care of this and can be used as follows:</p>
2392
2393 <p>The PHP code will basically look like this:</p>
2394
2395 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2396 ...
2397 $user->lang('NUMBER_OF_ELEPHANTS', $number_of_elephants);
2398 ...
2399 </pre></div>
2400
2401 <p>And the English translation would be:</p>
2402
2403 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2404 ...
2405 'NUMBER_OF_ELEPHANTS' => array(
2406 0 => 'You have no elephants', // Optional special case for 0
2407 1 => 'You have 1 elephant', // Singular
2408 2 => 'You have %d elephants', // Plural
2409 ),
2410 ...
2411 </pre></div>
2412
2413 <p>While the Bosnian translation can have more cases:</p>
2414
2415 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2416 ...
2417 'NUMBER_OF_ELEPHANTS' => array(
2418 0 => 'You have no slonova', // Optional special case for 0
2419 1 => 'You have %d slon', // Used for 1, 21, 31, ..
2420 2 => 'You have %d slona', // Used for 5, 6,
2421 3 => ...
2422 ),
2423 ...
2424 </pre></div>
2425
2426 <p><strong>NOTE:</strong> It is okay to use plurals for an unknown number compared to a single item, when the number is not known and displayed:</p>
2427 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2428 ...
2429 'MODERATOR' => 'Moderator', // Your board has 1 moderator
2430 'MODERATORS' => 'Moderators', // Your board has multiple moderators
2431 ...
2432 </pre></div>
2433
2434 <a name="writingstyle"></a><h3>6.v. Writing Style</h3>
2435
2436 <h4>Miscellaneous tips & hints:</h4>
2437
2438 <p>As the language files are PHP files, where the various strings for phpBB are stored within an array which in turn are used for display within an HTML page, rules of syntax for both must be considered. Potentially problematic characters are: <code>'</code> (straight quote/apostrophe), <code>"</code> (straight double quote), <code><</code> (less-than sign), <code>></code> (greater-than sign) and <code>&</code> (ampersand).</p>
2439
2440 <p class="bad">// Bad - The un-escapsed straight-quote/apostrophe will throw a PHP parse error</p>
2441
2442 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2443 ...
2444 'CONV_ERROR_NO_AVATAR_PATH'
2445 => 'Note to developer: you must specify $convertor['avatar_path'] to use %s.',
2446 ...
2447 </pre></div>
2448
2449 <p class="good">// Good - Literal straight quotes should be escaped with a backslash, ie: \</p>
2450
2451 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2452 ...
2453 'CONV_ERROR_NO_AVATAR_PATH'
2454 => 'Note to developer: you must specify $convertor[\'avatar_path\'] to use %s.',
2455 ...
2456 </pre></div>
2457
2458 <p>However, because phpBB3 now uses UTF-8 as its sole encoding, we can actually use this to our advantage and not have to remember to escape a straight quote when we don't have to:</p>
2459
2460 <p class="bad">// Bad - The un-escapsed straight-quote/apostrophe will throw a PHP parse error</p>
2461
2462 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2463 ...
2464 'USE_PERMISSIONS' => 'Test out user's permissions',
2465 ...
2466 </pre></div>
2467
2468 <p class="good">// Okay - However, non-programmers wouldn't type "user\'s" automatically</p>
2469
2470 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2471 ...
2472 'USE_PERMISSIONS' => 'Test out user\'s permissions',
2473 ...
2474 </pre></div>
2475
2476 <p class="good">// Best - Use the Unicode Right-Single-Quotation-Mark character</p>
2477
2478 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2479 ...
2480 'USE_PERMISSIONS' => 'Test out user’s permissions',
2481 ...
2482 </pre></div>
2483
2484 <p>The <code>"</code> (straight double quote), <code><</code> (less-than sign) and <code>></code> (greater-than sign) characters can all be used as displayed glyphs or as part of HTML markup, for example:</p>
2485
2486 <p class="bad">// Bad - Invalid HTML, as segments not part of elements are not entitised</p>
2487
2488 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2489 ...
2490 'FOO_BAR' => 'PHP version < 5.3.3.<br />
2491 Visit "Downloads" at <a href="http://www.php.net/">www.php.net</a>.',
2492 ...
2493 </pre></div>
2494
2495 <p class="good">// Okay - No more invalid HTML, but "&quot;" is rather clumsy</p>
2496
2497 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2498 ...
2499 'FOO_BAR' => 'PHP version &lt; 5.3.3.<br />
2500 Visit &quot;Downloads&quot; at <a href="http://www.php.net/">www.php.net</a>.',
2501 ...
2502 </pre></div>
2503
2504 <p class="good">// Best - No more invalid HTML, and usage of correct typographical quotation marks</p>
2505
2506 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2507 ...
2508 'FOO_BAR' => 'PHP version &lt; 5.3.3.<br />
2509 Visit “Downloads” at <a href="http://www.php.net/">www.php.net</a>.',
2510 ...
2511 </pre></div>
2512
2513 <p>Lastly, the <code>&</code> (ampersand) must always be entitised regardless of where it is used:</p>
2514
2515 <p class="bad">// Bad - Invalid HTML, none of the ampersands are entitised</p>
2516
2517 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2518 ...
2519 'FOO_BAR' => '<a href="http://somedomain.tld/?foo=1&bar=2">Foo & Bar</a>.',
2520 ...
2521 </pre></div>
2522
2523 <p class="good">// Good - Valid HTML, amperands are correctly entitised in all cases</p>
2524
2525 <div class="codebox"><pre>
2526 ...
2527 'FOO_BAR' => '<a href="http://somedomain.tld/?foo=1&amp;bar=2">Foo &amp; Bar</a>.',
2528 ...
2529 </pre></div>
2530
2531 <p>As for how these charcters are entered depends very much on choice of Operating System, current language locale/keyboard configuration and native abilities of the text editor used to edit phpBB language files. Please see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode#Input_methods">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode#Input_methods</a> for more information.</p>
2532
2533 <h4>Spelling, punctuation, grammar, et cetera:</h4>
2534
2535 <p>The default language pack bundled with phpBB is <strong>British English</strong> using <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/">Cambridge University Press</a> spelling and is assigned the language code <code>en</code>. The style and tone of writing tends towards formal and translations <strong>should</strong> emulate this style, at least for the variant using the most compact language code. Less formal translations or those with colloquialisms <strong>must</strong> be denoted as such via either an <code>extension</code> or <code>privateuse</code> tag within its language code.</p>
2536
2537 </div>
2538
2539 <div class="back2top"><a href="#wrap" class="top">Back to Top</a></div>
2540
2541 <span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div>
2542 </div>
2543
2544 <hr />
2545
2546 <a name="disclaimer"></a><h2>7. Copyright and disclaimer</h2>
2547
2548 <div class="paragraph">
2549 <div class="inner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span>
2550
2551 <div class="content">
2552
2553 <p>phpBB is free software, released under the terms of the <a href="http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.php">GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPL-2.0)</a>. Copyright © <a href="https://www.phpbb.com">phpBB Limited</a>. For full copyright and license information, please see the docs/CREDITS.txt file.</p>
2554
2555 </div>
2556
2557 <div class="back2top"><a href="#wrap" class="top">Back to Top</a></div>
2558
2559 <span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div>
2560 </div>
2561
2562 <!-- END DOCUMENT -->
2563
2564 <div id="page-footer">
2565 <div class="version"> </div>
2566 </div>
2567 </div></div>
2568
2569 <div>
2570 <a id="bottom" name="bottom" accesskey="z"></a>
2571 </div>
2572
2573 </body>
2574 </html>
2575