Inclusion of "utils.php" format_flags into the AST module (?)

[nikic]

Inclusion of "utils.php" format_flags into the AST module (?)

[nikic]

I've added an ast\get_metadata() function, which provides information about flags (and potentially other information in the future). This should be sufficient to implement whichever format you prefer on top of it.

The result format may not be final, I'm considering to make it return objects instead of associative arrays.

I find from a debugging perspective that it is easier to work with the flags as string array, and its not a significant performace drain (depends what you are doing of course). I want to be able to look at what flags an AST object has, to determine if I have missed something.

It would seem that "utils.php" formatting is an intergrated part of anyone's use of php-ast and therefore its changing parts at least should be integrated in some way (either as an array constant or an array get flags option, which I think would be most useful).

Well, as it is, I don't think that there is a use-case for the raw data in this array except for generating an array of the flags on a given node.

I would suggest to move it further inwards to the API and expose a Node->getFlagsArray($asText=false) function. Then in format_flags of utils.php, just implode the array. Or something similar.

[nikic]

I'm providing the metadata functionality because this is the part that is volatile and tightly coupled to the version of the extension. It provides the necessary information to implement the AST dumper as well as your desired functionality on top of it, without having to keep track of the data yourself. I'm generally not willing to implement anything in C that can be trivially implemented in PHP (aka, not performance critical and does not require FFI).

I'd much rather move forward on #29 (which should now be easier, as the strong coupling between utils.php and the extension version no longer exists) and provide the functionality in PHP (as get_flags($node) rather than $node->getFlags() in that case.)

Well, makes sense.

Btw, the use case was to make a PHP -> Java converter (http://www.runtimeconverter.com/) Its actually compiles and runs and doesn't just convert the syntax. It still needs a lot of work ie. features, like namespaces, but it is really working as a MVP / proof of concept.

[nikic]

Closing this issue as get_metdata() has been exposed making util.php compatible across versions, and I don't want to add the printing implementation to the extension itself.