idk if this is best practice, but there was a time when I dreamed of splitting some XOOPS functionalities into mini libraries that could be reused with more permissive licenses. One of such cases was this library – Criteria.

If I remember right, this helper was originally spun off sometime around the XOOPS 2.4 era. It was already standalone in v1.0, and the idea was to preserve the XOOPS-style query-building logic in a form that could be used outside the CMS.

Now, with v2.0, it’s been updated to run smoothly on modern PHP (8.3). This isn’t a full rewrite - just a cleanup and upgrade, using some newer language features and best practices. The public API is still the same, so if you’ve used the original, it should feel familiar.

A lot has changed in the XOOPS world since then (and honestly, still not sure why the current version isn’t called 3.0 or 4.0 - it’s clearly evolved a lot), but maybe this little library could be still useful.

Criteria v2.0 on GitHub

MIT licensed, Composer-ready, and designed to work even in non-XOOPS projects that want something XOOPS-like.

P.S.: long time not posting here; I hope everyone here is still fine ;)

Thanks for the post and the link. It will be definitely interesting to check it out!

While it might not be feasible to include it in the upcoming version of XOOPS 2.5.12, it's worth to investigate it for future versions.

Right now we're finalizing XOOPS 2.5.12, and at the same time work started on XOOPS 2.7.0, which will be mainly a cleanup of old code.

After that, we were talking with Nicolas, the current Core Team Leader, about moving to XOOPS 4.0

It was nice to hear from you, and hopefully we'll be able to do some stuff together!