Road Map

Road Map

Created September 25, 2010
Updated March 5, 2011

This is the official Slim framework roadmap working draft. This is a living document that may very well change in the future.

What are Slim's goals?

1. Remain light-weight, simple, and easy to use for both amateur programmers and professional programmers
2. Always favor clean syntax and simple solutions instead of messy syntax and complex solutions
3. Respect the 80/20 rule: satisfy 80% of common use cases rather than muddle the code-base for 20% of edge use cases
4. Support PHP 5 and above

Git Workflow

Slim uses the same Git workflow as described at http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/. The master branch will always represent the latest production-ready point release. The develop branch will contain the latest features pending the next point release; the develop branch is not guaranteed to be stable, but it will more than likely work since new features are developed locally on separate Git branches and only merged into the develop branch when thought to be stable.

Features Under Consideration

These are not assigned to a specific version, but they will likely be included sometime in the future. These are not assigned to a specific upcoming version release because they are under active discussion to determine the best approach for implementation. Do not submit pull requests for these features until you have discussed implementation plans with Josh Lockhart (the project creator/maintainer).

• Resource-centric routing
• Content negotitation
• HTTP OPTIONS and TRACE method support
• Route memoization https://github.com/codeguy/Slim/issues/issue/74/
• Abstract mimetype handling

Version 1.3.x (Upcoming)

After the 1.3.0 release, I will take a break from adding new features and focus on addressing any performance bottlenecks in the framework thus far. I realize, in most cases, most bottlenecks exist with ORMs (app <--> db) or with IO (app <--> filesystem). However, I want to make sure the Slim framework is as fast as it can possibly be for what it does.

Version 1.3 (Upcoming)

• Sessions
  • CookieStore session handler (signed; encrypted if mcrypt available)
  • Flash messaging
• Application modes & mode configuration
• Improved Hook and Filter system
• Route-specific chained middleware
• Provide example of advanced Slim plugin
• Move custom views, plugins into a separate repo
• Restructure tests directory to match Slim lib directory (see PHPUnit docs)

Version 1.2 (Released March 5, 2011)

This release marks the most important changes to-date within the Slim PHP 5 micro framework. All class names are updated so that Slim can use the industry-standard class autoloader (see link below). The class names in this release are final and will not be changed again in the future.

• REST improvements
  • Improved Request class
  • Abstract URI parsing and handling from Request
• New class auto loader (see here)
• Work with or without web server URL rewriting

Version 1.1 (Released January 16, 2011)

• Full inline documentation review
• New default template for fresh application install
• Convert to 4-space indents instead of using TABs
• Support HTTP HEAD requests
• New, extensible application logging
• View interface updates
• Plugin hook architecture
• Application-wide route conditions
• Optional route segments with default values

Version 1.0 (Released November 2, 2010)

• Initial test coverage for primary classes
• Slim class loader
• Establish version numbering system
• Move Getting Started and Documentation to GitHub Wiki
• HTTP caching (ETag and LastModified)
• Cookie management
• Route redirects
• Route passing
• Route naming and urlFor helper
• Instantiate View in Slim::init()
• Improve Exception and Error handling
• Add "Contributing to Slim" Wiki page with expectations, style guidelines, etc.
• Write example custom View classes for Twig, Smarty, Mustache, etc.
• Add Slim app settings
• Add Slim app logging
• Improve test coverage for Request and Response
• Ensure inline documentation for Slim classes is complete