WDDX History

1.02 - Mon Dec 1 21:42:29 CST 2003

Taken over by Andy Lester

[FIXES]
WDDX needed a good update and modernization to let it run under perl 5.8.0 and higher.

• Fixed up some dependencies in Makefile.PL
• Cleaned up warnings on things like ambiguous calls to keys().
• Added more tests.
• Removed automatic version number generation

Version 1.01 (7/29/00)

Bug fix.

• Fixed a bug that wouldn't allow undef values in WDDX::Recordsets; should properly be encoded as a WDDX::Null now. However, this is a kludge. WDDX::Recordset should probably be rewritten to allow a field to have differing data types (WDDX::Null is the only exception currently)... but this will break compatibility.
• Perl 5.60 changed how the map function works. Now scalars in numeric form are converted to string form (seems like a bug to me). This broke a few of the make tests, so these have been removed to allow WDDX.pm to build with 5.60.

Version 1.00 (1/17/00)

Added new methods to WDDX::Array and WDDX::Struct.

• Added get(), set(), splice(), length(), push(), pop(), shift(), & unshift() to WDDX::Array.
• Added get(), set(), delete(), keys(), and values() to WDDX::Struct.
• Decided to up the version to 1.00. I probably should have done this earlier: 0.13 was effectively 1.00 beta 1, and 0.17 probably should have been 1.00. In any case everything seems stable now with nothing left on the to do list.

Version 0.18 (1/4/00)

Bug fix.

• Fixed bugs in array2wddx() and hash2wddx(). (reported by Jon Sala)
• Started citing bug-reporters in this file (Nate Weiss, Thomas Hall, and David MacKenzie collectively get credit for reporting much of the bugs previously fixed).

Version 0.17 (11/6/99)

Mainly bug fixes.

• Added support as_javascript() support to binary data objects.
• Added $VERSION to all modules to keep CPAN happy.
• Added PREREQ_PM to Makefile.PL.
• Added code to quiet warnings when using -w flag.
• Fixed bug that prevented WDDX.pm from deserializing empty recordsets and this required some minor tweaking to Recordset object (shouldn't affect backwards compatibility).
• Fixed bug introduced last version that caused deserialization problems when there is additional whitespace between elements.

Version 0.16 (11/1/99)

Minor stuff I noticed as I was buidling, but see 0.15 too since it was never released.

• Fixed more POD formatting probs; I think it's presentable now.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes stripped white space when parsing strings.
• Created a couple test files as part of the install.
• Allowed binary encoding to wrap to default MIME::Base64 width.
• Created an automated build script (yeah, I know you can't see this but it makes my life easier :)

Version 0.15 (10/26/99)

Internal release; not distributed.

• Added as_javascript() methods so you can get the JavaScript code to generate any WDDX data object (except binary objects)
• Added scalar2wddx(), array2wddx(), and hash2wddx() utility methods that make it much easier to go from Perl data structures to WDDX data objects
• Added $WDDX::INDENT variable (and corresponding code) to allow serialize() to generate human-readable packets
• Fixed errors that appear in taint mode and discovered that XML::Parser untaints data as it parses it (!!); patched WDDX::Parser to retaint the data
• Edited documentation: fixed typos and formatting problems, documented new methods, etc.
• Fixed bug that disallowed the creation of empty WDDX struct objects
• Fixed bug that disallowed the creation of recordsets with one field
• Added get_element(), set_element() methods to WDDX::Recordset and deprecated get_field(), set_field() methods
• Packaged with Makefile.PL (finally); posting to CPAN!

Version 0.14 (10/21/99)

Bug fixes, API changes, and POD:

• Added some checks for undefined values to fix warnings when running under -w
• Rewrote documentation. It's in POD now (finally)!
• Prefixed internal data object serialize & deserialize subs to with an underscore make them more private
• Changed all the to_something subs to as_something subs since it makes more sense with the WDDX data object as an intermediary
• Fixed recordset bugs by adding more error checking for funny data
• Made object type checks non-dependent on object having WDDX in its name (so the module is more easily subclassed now)
• Renamed to_xml() to as_packet()

Version 0.13 (10/1/99)

Total rewrite: improved parsing and added full support of WDDX 1.00 DTD:

• Everything. WDDX.pm is the only file that resembles its old form. I wasn't happy with the parsing code. All the logic was in a couple long, complicated subs, so it's now been broken out. Each data type now has its own corresponding parser object. It's much easier to maintain now, so hopefully it won't take me so long for the next version. :)
• Added code to do proper encoding of control characters, and special characters like '<', '&', etc. for strings.
• Added support for the 1.00 DTD. New binary and null data types and restrictions on things like allowed characters in recordset field, names, case insensitive struct keys, etc.
• Rewrote WDDX::Recordset object and added a slew of methods to for working with it.
• Changed most variable object methods. Constructors are much less obfuscated. Got rid of value(). Added to_packet(), and a variety of methods to go to Perl: to_scalar(), to_arrayref(), to_hashref(), to_gmtime(), and to_localtime(). This new structure will support to_javascript() when it's added to the next version.
• WDDX.pm methods to create variables changed for the complex types. array(), hash(), and recordset() now take array/hash references. recordset() takes totally different parameters which hopefully will be much easier to work with when using DBI.
• Updated the README with all the new info. POD next time, I promise. :)
• Moved this history info off the website and into this file.

Version 0.12 (7/19/99)

The module is now fully usable (albeit rough). It can go both from Perl to WDDX as well as from WDDX to Perl. Lots of changes:

• Added serialization support so it's now possible to go from Perl to WDDX.
• Fixed a problem due to a misunderstanding of the DTD. I originally believed that multiple variables could be contained within the root level of a WDDX packet, even outside a struct. As a result, I was requiring a <var> tag around everything including top level data. That was incorrect. Deserialization works as documented now.
• Stripped out all of the tie interface code. It didn't add a lot of value, especially given the previous change, and it added a lot of complexity to the code.
• Fixed a bug that wouldn't parse dateTime packet data properly if the GMT timezone adjustment caused the date to wrap.
• Fixed a bug where certain data types (e.g. booleans) weren't parsed correctly within arrays.
• Added some basic Usage documentation to the README.
• Changed version numbering: version numbers will always have two digits after the decimal.

Version 0.3a (6/13/99)

First public version. Completed parsing of all WDDX structures. Can now go fully from WDDX to Perl.

Current features:

• Object oriented.
• Only requires XML::Parser (plus Carp, but it's now standard and XML::Parser requires it too)
• Full validation of WDDX DTD syntax during parsing.
• Supports multiple methods for returning parsed data structures:
  • may be returned via a hash
  • may be exported as true variables to any namespace
• Supports multiple methods for representing parsed data structures:
  • structures can be accessed as WDDX variable objects
  • structures can be accessed as straight perl values
  • structures can be accessed via tie so that data type checking is maintained while you work with the data; this gives you the benefit of working with the data in as perlish a manner as possible while still making it simple to reserialize the data back into a WDDX packet later; ties for values nested within complex types are generated dynamically only for those variables accessed

Version 0.2a (6/1/99)

Split parser and variable types into separate packages. Able to parse basic (scalar) WDDX data types.

Version 0.1a (5/24/99)

Set up CVS tree and began writing module.