BlueFlame 1.0 Released

The BlueFlame Team is very happy to announce we’ve released the first version of BlueFlame: the community edition of CodeIgniter! The 1.0 release brings a bunch of bugfixes and optimizations to the CI framework. We’ve also organized the framework a bit better to help you get started making great apps. BF1.0 is completely backwards compatible with CI and is a drop-in replacement for your /system/ folder.

Download BlueFlame 1.0
blueflame_1.0.tar.gz (543KB)
blueflame_1.0.zip (763KB)

What’s New?
We started with CI 1.5.3 (revision 566) and took off with the goal of fixing all the bugs we could find and making the framework faster. Our plan was to create a solid, stable, and fast base to build the next version of BF on. We dug through the bug tracker and the forums to find bugs for weeks. 44 tickets and 143 revisions later, we have what you’ve been waiting for. Here are some of the changes we’ve made:

Features:
  * Added GET support to URIs
  * Added missing functionality to the cookie helper
  * Added $this->db->count_records()
  * Added $this->session->get_once() to the Session class
  * New Validation rules digit and valid_email_rfc
  * Added individual query times in the Profiler

Improvements:
  * Added better .htaccess example for removing index.php in the URI
  * Numerous regex optimizations and improvements
  * Improvements to many Validation rules
  * Added more functionality to redirect() URL Helper

Bugfixes:
  * Fixed a fatal error in the PostgreSQL driver for insert_id()
  * Changed how Active Record is enabled/disabled in configuration
  * Fixed a bug in the loader in regards to the database
  * Fixed bugs in the Inflector Helper dealing with plural and singular words that end with “s”
  * Fixed a bug where the loader class tries to redeclare extended libraries
  * Fixed a bug in the email class having to deal with newline characters
  * Resolved a logic issue in database transactions’ trans_status()
  * Fixed an issue where Active Record wasn’t escaping numeric fields
  * Fixed a bug in the Postgres driver that caused a fatal error
  * Fixed a bug in the email class that prevented Yahoo! Mail from receiving HTML emails
  * Fixed/Improved xss_clean() to work properly with latest PHP version
  * Fixed bug in resizing images in the Image Manipulation library
  * Active Record now handles NULL correctly
  * Fixed bug in the Security Helper where strip_image_tags() wasn’t properly stripping img tags
  * Fixed newline characters in emails
  * Fixed bugs in the magic_quotes_gpc handling process. stripslashes() has been centralized to Input, and is no longer applied if magic_quotes_gpc is off
  * Fixed a few typos in the User Guide

How To Upgrade
It’s easy. If you’ve been using CodeIgniter 1.5.x, then just:
1. Move the /system/application directory to /application (so that system and application are in the same directory)
—-> This is only necessary if your application directory exists inside the system directory. Absolute paths are still supported.
—-> If you use CI’s logging, the system/logs directory has been moved to application/logs and will have to be relocated
2. Replace the CI system directory with your BlueFlame system directory
3. Replace index.php with the copy of index.php from BlueFlame, and edit as necessary (This step is required!)
4. The main configuration file application/config/config.php file has been updated. You do not have to replace this file, but it is suggested that you familiarize yourself with the new configuration options. For future capability, we recommend that you replace the CI config.php with the new BlueFlame config.php file, and reconfigure it as necessary.

I Found A Bug!
No worries! Go to http://blueflame.ciforge.com and submit a new ticket! Please explain the bug in detail and give examples. Our development team is hyper-active and will address it quickly. Also feel free to discuss it with us in #blueflame Freenode IRC.

What’s Next?
Our next big release is BlueFlame 1.1, for which we have very big plans. This release will be adding many new features and improvements to the framework. You can learn more by checking out our roadmap.

Credits
The BlueFlame Team
Jim Auldridge (JAAulde)
Oscar Bajner (OscarB)
Jeremy Bush (zombor)
Geert De Deckere (Geert)
Woody Gilk (Shadowhand)
Greg MacLellan (groogs)
Todd Wilson (Tido)
Ted Wood (coolfactor)
Fred Wu (Canglan)

Special Thanks
Derek Allard
Don Pinkster (Phoop)
sophistry

Very Special Thanks
Rick Ellis

Congratulations all! Hard work gets payed back

That was a lot of fun, gang, looking forward to 1.1! 

This looks really great.

Have you guys thought about integrating some kinda AJAX lib ? Maybe even connected to the validation lib somehow ? This would be very handy.

I am really curious what is happening to this fork in the near future. 

Greetings Jan.

I second the motion for the AJAX library, especially if it were connected with validation. that would be smooth.

I’m going to switch over to Blueflame this afternoon, thanks for all your hard work guys.

-Rhino

wow, I upgraded to BF in under 10 minutes - its absurdly easy to install. My beta app was pretty fast before, but now it screams. I wish I did some benchmark testing before upgrading…oh well. nice work!

Blueflame looks great!  Does the Blueflame team plan to incorporate the latest CI changes as they are released or will BF only maintain backwards compatibility as of CI 1.5.3?

Any chance you will be including CodeIgniter_1.5.3_modLoader code, or similiar.

We made a slight booboo with BF_VERSION and scaffolding. The releases have been updated with the correction.

Have you guys thought about integrating some kinda AJAX lib ? Maybe even connected to the validation lib somehow ? This would be very handy.

We’ve been discussing it in IRC! We’ll let you know what we come up with.

Blueflame looks great!  Does the Blueflame team plan to incorporate the latest CI changes as they are released or will BF only maintain backwards compatibility as of CI 1.5.3?

I guess it depends on whether we think it’s a good change or not! 

Any chance you will be including CodeIgniter_1.5.3_modLoader code, or similiar.

Yes! If we didn’t JAAulde would never forgive us!

Also if any of you use db_session, you will want to address this minor bug in it.

mantra - 31 May 2007 04:18 PM

Any chance you will be including CodeIgniter_1.5.3_modLoader code, or similar.

I definitely second this request as I’m currently stitching BlueFlame together with JAAlude’s modloader addition while I test the CI system on progressively more complex projects.

But good work guys on Blueflame, ive been following through the branch and trunk revisions and it’s definitely been progressing well. Once I start using BlueFlame on some our company’s larger projects, then I’m sure I’ll be in a position to throw some feedback and code into the collective repository

OK. I’m going to ask it!

As a developer with a vested interest in Code Igniter (my client’s apps), we need to discuss the impact of this project on Code Igniter itself.

Firstly, I would appreciate some explanation of what discussions are happening between the Blue Flame team and the Code Igniter team, if any.

Secondly, you did respond on the compatibility of the two projects, but I think at some point a decision needs to be taken regarding compatibility - you either do or you don’t. At that point developers will need to take decisions.

Thirdly, seeing that the bug fixes and (some) enhancements come out this (official) project forum, I think it might be prudent for Ellislabs as product owners to indicate if some of the Blue Flame changes will be incorporated back into Code Igniter.

As an aside, I’m very thrilled about the project. As a firm believer in community-based software, I see this project as a good example of how effective community power is. I’ve downloaded the code and I’m studying (read considering) it.

I say congratulations to the team. Nice project.

However, as a developer, I’m not going to let excitement get in the way. We need cool heads here. For some of us, these discussions are bread-and-butter issues.

I, like many other developers, will have to take a decision as whether to use the fixes and enhancements of the Blue Flame project, and risk not being able to use CI again, or stick with CI and lose the innovation and energy that the Blue Flame brings that is commonly perceived to be lacking in Code Igniter (with the exception of everyone’s good friend, Derek Allard).

First prize for me is the release of the Code Igniter project onto the community, perhaps combining the work and merging the forks.

So I say the next few steps by either party will be defining my response. We all recall when Greg announced his enhancements that there was response from Ellislabs indicating some changes on the way. Now more than ever before we need to understand how to proceed.

Regards
Pradesh Chanderpaul

Crafter - 31 May 2007 04:55 PM

Firstly, I would appreciate some explanation of what discussions are happening between the Blue Flame team and the Code Igniter team, if any.

We would love to have that discussion, and we are hoping that EllisLabs will comment on this thread. EllisLabs knows who we are, and where to find us.

hmmm going to rienstall from scratch to test if its just me, but _get_uri_string in router.php (blueflame) is returning a diferent to result to _get_uri_string in router.php (codeignitor) causing an app im testing routing to fail.

seems to be

Thats throwing out it certain circumstances.

mantra - 31 May 2007 06:16 PM

hmmm going to rienstall from scratch to test if its just me, but _get_uri_string in router.php (blueflame) is returning a diferent to result to _get_uri_string in router.php (codeignitor) causing an app im testing routing to fail.

seems to be

// Nothing yet? Let's try REQUEST_URI
            if (isset($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']))
                return $this->_parse_request_uri();

Thats throwing out it certain circumstances.

This brings up a very strange thing in CI. The code you posted is part of the fix for that strangeness. By default, Router never tried to use REQUEST_URI. If all the other methods failed, Router would just return an empty string. I changed Router to try REQUEST_URI as the last resort, because it seemed entirely logical. I don’t think my fix was wrong, but I’m also not sure it was right. You can definitely change “uri_protocol” until you find Routing that works for you (most people seem to have good luck with PATH_INFO.)

I will dig deeper into the issue, though.

I was just looking over the BlueFlame road map for version 1.1 and was wondering if you have any details regarding plans to “Greatly improve the validation library”.  I had some issues recently with the CI Validation library and would be interesting in learning more about the planned enhancements.

Thanks.

Neovive - 31 May 2007 09:06 PM

I was just looking over the BlueFlame road map for version 1.1 and was wondering if you have any details regarding plans to “Greatly improve the validation library”.  I had some issues recently with the CI Validation library and would be interesting in learning more about the planned enhancements.

Thanks.

You should see a ticket come up addressing this in the next couple days.