Symphony.

I've noticed lately that there are becoming a lot of extensions which are more or less minor changes from existing functionality or other extensions.

Now I find it great that so many people are creating extensions and lifting Symphony as a whole to a higher level, but we also have to make sure that it's not becoming our Achilles' heel.

For example: there are now a couple of file upload fields:

1. The default Symphony upload field
2. The unique upload field
3. The private upload

Why not combine these into the default upload-field with optional settings to make the filename unique (a checkbox would do), or put it in a non-public-folder? Also, there is an interesting topic about some more functionality a file upload field could have.

The same goes for other extensions, like better forms, tweak ui and multiselect to selectboxes, which do the same thing more or less... If Symphony would only provide a built-in solution for select="multiple"-boxes, I don't think there would be a need of any of the three above, since that's the only reason why I use them!

Another similarity could be seen with the various approaches to multilingual sites; these should be combined into one package, instead of depent on three individual extensions. Why not stick our heads together and make one extension that covers all of this?

Or the different approaches to entering a date.

Now don't get me wrong, I think it's great our extension-collection grows with the day, but we need to keep an eye for quality. For newcomers, it's very hard to choose which fields to use to achieve a certain task. I think it's not a bad idea to merge some extensions into one, and deleting the overhead. Like the way Symphony works: simplicity is the best answer!

I would like to hear some thought out the community on this topic. Ideas, suggestions, anything. I am more than willing to team up with other developers out there to see if some of my extensions can be combined with theirs.

I have been maintaining a list of extensions that provide similar or duplicate functionality which should be of interest to you :-)

We've discussed before whether functionality should begin to be baked into the core, and the general consensus has been to keep the core light and let extensions do the hard work. This means a smaller core with less potential for bugs, and a leaner system that provides just the features you need and nothing more.

However you make a good point that in a couple of areas the core is missing functionality that we almost always need (unique values for a text field, and unique file names in upload fields being two). The Symphony 3 beta did just this — it provided extra functionality for the core fields. I think we should look at this for Symphony 2, with particular regards to text input and upload fields.

There's a danger that when you try to merge functionality together you end up with something complex that has features not everyone needs. The geolocation/mapping/address fields are a good example. On first look it feels like a lot of duplicated functionality, but on deeper inspection each one has very specific use cases. Similarly some of the multilingual extensions can work together, but they can also be used on their own, and each approaches the problem in a slightly different way. And that's fine, isn't it?

There will always be a developer who finds an extension and thinks "I don't like the way this works/looks" and wants to implement it a different way. So I don't think we'll ever not have duplicates. But I agree, there are certainly areas such as multilingual which deserve attention if you feel like they would be better implemented in a different way...

I'll see if I can chip in my part to combine and/or remove some of my extensions.

Two things come into my mind:

• Wouldn't it be easy to bundle all core fields as extensions? So fields and core become independent.
• Should we replace some of the core fields with fields currently provided by extensions? (I look at you Textbox Field …)

Wouldn't it be easy to bundle all core fields as extensions? So fields and core become independent.

Is it possible for Symphony 2.2.x? It would be very nice indeed ...

Should we replace some of the core fields with fields currently provided by extensions? (I look at you Textbox Field …)

+1 vote

Is it possible for Symphony 2.2.x?

No, but maybe 2.3.