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!

Thanks for the warm response!

Honestly, I didn’t think it would even be possible to integrate this into Xoops, especially since it’s missing support for Doctrine and LDAP-related methods.

If anything were to be included, I think the best candidates would be the Smarty v5 - related extensions I’m currently working on. They’re designed to make upgrading Smarty easier and could potentially replace most of the current Xoops Smarty v3 plugins. That said, they probably won’t be ready for at least another month.

The XOOPS 2.7.0 includes already support for Smarty 5, so sharing your experiences with us will be very much appreciated!

Support for Doctrine and LDAP-related methods, I know that we had Doctrine already included in XOOPS 2.6.0, so we'll try to downport it to XOOPS 2.7.0 or to XOOPS 4.0. I'm not sure if LDAP was also included in XOOPS 2.6.0, but it would be definitely nice to add it.

But it will be the decision of Nicolas as the Core Team Leader.