Symphony.

If you've been paying attention on GitHub you will have noticed developers adding a new XML file to their repos over the last few months. Since the Symposium in Cologne in October I have been alluding to a Christmas present (my first presentation was 83 days til Christmas...). So here it is.

http://symphonyextensions.com

It was actually released a week early (see the blog post) but I know not everyone reads the blog and is on Twitter.

CMS Critic explains it best:

They’ve developed our own XML schema for documenting extension metadata (changelogs, versions, dependencies, authors etc.), which is similar to the packages.json that the node.js world is inheriting, so that this website, and one day Symphony, can consume and intelligently parse it.

The site allows developers to add their repositories in one click (after signing in with GitHub), and allows site builders to quickly discover new extensions by recency of update or by popularity. Check it out.

For developers you just need to publish your extension details to theXML file in your GitHub rep, and the site does the rest. For users, it's really easy to find extensions and their updates.

Happy Christmas!

I should add: the site is being actively developed. Please report bugs, ideas, suggestions and questions here.

It's very easy!

Sweet. I saw the blog post about the new metadata file but hadn’t delved into the new site yet. You and the rest of the Symphony developers have once again outdone yourselves, Nick.

As Lewis said, it is very easy. The documentation is clear and concise. I think we have a winner.

The lint validator doesn’t seem to like the extension element in the XML file. I get this error:

Line 2 Element 'extension': No matching global declaration available for the validation root.

Will you be generating RSS or Atom feeds in addition to the Twitter account?

This site is a good thing. Thumbs up!

Small bug at User profile image.

overflow: hidden; needs taking off the h4.

Maybe a little bit off-topic, but I still don't get the logic behind the "Symphony Community" account on GitHub. Can someone explain to me what kind of extensions are owned by "Symphony CMS", "Symphony Community" and which one are owned by their individual developers?

I need to write a blog post about all this, I never get round to it.

Just to outline though: Symphonists is there to take on extensions that the community deem 'important' and 'useful' for the future, that the original developer has decided, for any reason, to stop actively developing.

We will try to actively get in touch with the developer to ask if they would like us to take over development, and they can decide what to do.

Symphonists will not become a dumping ground for extensions, they must be actively used by the community and have a future of use too.

I have some time off this xmas, so I will dedicate some of it to writing this all up. This is a community effort, so I will have to discuss the finer details with those hardened developers that make up the WG, it's basically a work in progress.

1_ How is the dependency element supposed to be shown?

For Image Upload extension I added

<dependency version="1.12">https://github.com/symphonycms/jit_image_manipulation</dependency>

Where should it appear on extension page?

2_ How often is the content of an extension refreshed regarding to Github modifications?

As per the spec the dependency element must contain the ID of the extension and may also contain a specific version, if needed. In your case:

<dependency version="1.12">jit_image_manipulation</dependency>

Don't know if that info is supposed to show up on the site at all, would be handy though.

"Symphony CMS" is what we often call "core team" — the official repository and core developers (Allen, Craig, Brendan et al). On this site the official extensions are added under the handle team, but on GitHub (and therefore symphonyextensions.com) the handle is symphonycms. "Symphony Community" is "community" on this website, but symphonists on GitHub and symphonyextensions.com. As John says, the Symphonists organisation is there as a collective of volunteers who are guardians of widely-used extensions that the original developer can no longer maintain themselves. For example when Alistair (one of the original Symphony core developers) moved on, his extensions were divided up between symphonycms as "official" extensions, and symphonists as useful extensions that we didn't want to disappear. A couple of other members of our community have moved on to new jobs or careers and we have given their extensions a home.

It most definitely isn't a dumping ground, and I know we have declined some extensions in the past on the grounds that they are not worth the overhead of maintaining and don't have a big enough user base.

1_ How is the dependency element supposed to be shown?

Right now it is not, but will add it to my list.

2_ How often is the content of an extension refreshed regarding to Github modifications?

A cron runs every two minutes which refreshes the oldest extension. There are currently 115 extensions, so it will take 230 minutes to cycle through them all.

Will you be generating RSS or Atom feeds in addition to the Twitter account?

You can grab an RSS feed from Twitter directly if you'd rather consume this way:

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=symextensions

If Twitter ever disable RSS feeds then I will proxy the Twitter API and reformat as RSS. But Twitter will be the sole broadcast channel for now.

Allright, thanks for the explanation.

A bug with the submodule code snippet.

What's the bug?

Ohh, sorry. It should horizontal autoscroll (notice the text is trimmed). On copy+paste it works.

And another thing from this comment. Shouldn't that snippet contain the extensions/ folder as well in the path?

The preview images are quite small. Could you turn them into links to the source image?

horizontal autoscroll (notice the text is trimmed). On copy+paste it works.... Shouldn't that snippet contain the extensions/ folder as well in the path?

Both are bugs, and both fixed.

The preview images are quite small. Could you turn them into links to the source image?

Great suggestion. Done! (example)

example

You, extension thief! ;-)

Thanks for fixing the small images bug, I always look for screenshots when browsing new extensions. Now, it would be nice to be allowed to upload more than one screenshot for a single extension. :-)

Unique index has a 2012 date last modified. Driver says 2011.

Unique index has a 2012 date last modified. Driver says 2011.

The XML (primary source) says 2012.