WidgetManager.php version 1.25 2003-10-31

- expand class comment to include better explanation of what the widget manager
actually does, include example, clarify that this is internal to Chameleon.
- add comments to class variables
- constructor needs comments
- investigate if foreach is faster than for?  If not, replace foreach with for.
- change " to '
- remove pre-registration of widgets from constructor, only build widget
directory array.
- in LoadWidget, test to see if the widget is loaded and if not, test for widget
in each directory, load it, and register that it is loaded.  Use class_exists()
- LoadWidget needs function comment
- is PreloadWidgets required?
- missing function description for CreateWidgetUsingTag, remove @param szContent
- add brackets to else on line 153
- line 127 - remove if, not required
- replace ExtractClassName with preg match?  Make sure that type="..." has a
space at the beginning. (Julien)
- check eval to see if it is causing a time problem (in CreateWidgetUsingTag)
- remove lines 155-159 (handled in Widget.php)
- 

class comment done
class variable comments done
constructor comments added
removed need for loop entirely
changed " for ' where practical, still require a regexp for finding widget type
to remove last one
removed pre-registration of widgets
modified LoadWidget to use class_exists and include in much tighter loop
added function comment to LoadWidget
removed PreloadWidgets
added function comment to CreateWidgetUsingTag, removed szContext
bracketed 'else'
eval is not a performance hit (AFAI can tell)
removed visibility code

outstanding is the preg_match function for getting the type name out.

BTW, include does not seem much faster than include_once ... this module is
still performance bound by the number/size of files it has to include rather
than any other factor.  For a reasonably complete template with 50-60 widgets,
this takes about 115 ms.

> eval is not a performance hit (AFAI can tell)

Ok, but I had made test (5 line script) before I got your comment. Here's the
result.
Eval can takes something like 3 times the normal time to execute simple calls,
but since we only do 50-60 class declaration call we probably only loss 1 millisec.

On a loop of 50 element that declare a "ttt" class each time, it takes 2
millisec  instead of 1 to do it with an eval() call.

I also found that instead of:

$szEval = "\$oWidget =& new $szClass();";
eval($szEval);

you can do:

$oWidget =& new $szClass;

It will declare a class with the name in $szClass

I don't know if it worth the change in the WigetManager.php file, but I feel
that it's good to know for everyone. Maybe Paul can make the change to see which
impact it has on his test when he profile it.

given the limited number of times it is run, I expect little gain, but this is
all about small improvements adding up.  I will make this change.  I believe
that it may be more useful in MapLab, which also uses this technique.

need to finish the changes in here for 1.99

updated version to 1.99

Changed Target Milestone to 1.99 RC

this is as done as I want to make it.  The final performance enhancement is
negligible and hopefully unnecessary if we build a php module (WidgetManager
would be one of the things replaced).

forgot to mark fixed.