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Table of Contents
Submitting Code
ADOdb is a community project, and its continued existence is reliant on both feature added by the maintainers and user submissions. To minimize wasted coding time and elongated discussion threads, here are a few guidelines
What is ADOdb?
Many people simply use ADOdb for single platform coding, to minimize the learning time involved in using PHP level database drivers. But ADOdb is also a cross database extraction layer, which allows the same code to be used across multiple platforms. So if you submit feature, it should be usable across multiple databases. Firstly, here's how we rank the drivers:
| Importance | Drivers |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Native MySQL [mysqli], Native PostgreSQL [pgsql], Native SQL Server [mssqlnative], Native Oracle [oci8] |
| Tier 2 | PDO (alltypes)[pdo_],ODBC(all types) [odbc],SQLite [sqlite3], Non-native SQL Server(mssql), IBM DB2(db2), Firebird(fbsql) |
| Tier 3 | Everything else |
This means that if you propose a new feature, i.e. one that will require it's own page in the documentation, it should be available on most, if not all of the Tier 1 drivers at release to production. We understand that you may not be able to code that yourself, so you've got to be prepared to get help and agreement (probably from one of the maintainers).
Basic Rules
| Scenario | Expected Actions |
|---|---|
| You want to make a change that has no effect on the default functionality | - create an issue,explain the problem or feature. - If the change affects existing installations, explain how you would support that |
| You want to change a feature | - If the feature change creates a scenario where the documentation would say “for all drivers except xxxx, do this. Otherwise do this”, expect the request to be declined. - If you cannot provide feature for Tier 1 drivers, open an issue and ask for help |
| You want to add new feature | Open an issue and explain the feature. You will be expected to provide some end user documentation that the maintainers can use as the basis for the docuwiki. Maintainers may decline to accept submissions where the only way of understanding the feature is dissecting the code. You should be able to provide at least one Tier 1 driver. The more drivers you can provide code for the more likely the maintainers are to accept the submission |
Scenarios
You found a bug
If you find a bug in a single driver, open an issue explaining the problem, if possible showing both what is happening and what should happen. If the maintainers agree it's a problem, and you have a fix for it, create a github pull request, referencing an issue.
You believe the current behavior in a driver is incorrect
These are often the most contentious discussions because we're likely to ask you to show how the behavior is wrong in general, and not just in your particular use case. In addition, if there is a problem, we need to be able to ensure that users who have relied on the apparently faulty behavior (possibly for years) aren't going to have problems if they upgrade to a version of ADOdb that has corrected behavior. That might mean, in the short term, an optional, parameterized change. Remember, ADOdb isn't an obscure little side project, there are normally 100-200 downloads per week, continually over a period of nearly 20 years.
You want to enhance the functionality of a specific function
Say, for example, you wanted to add the ability of the mysqli connector to use