A Proposal To Magically Remove 'params'

[ry dahl]

> I would like this a lot.

Thanks :)

> One side effect might be, however, that the
> 'params' hash currently in use in the views will no longer be
> available.  We could, of course, just leave the params hash in as
> well, but let's assume we remove it completely.  Does this mean that
> controllers would have to wrap arguments in instance variables if
> it's necessary to pass them along to the view?  e.g.:
>
> def index(page = 1, show_extra = true)
>         @show_extra = show_extra
>         # ...
> end
>
> Perhaps these arguments should become "locals" in the view as well?

I would recommend keeping the params hash around for backwards
compatibility but with a depreciation warning.

I don't think query params should automatically become locals of the
view. it's not so often that you pass query params directly to the
view

> Would this make Merb a *nix-only framework?

I don't know if ParseTree compiles on windows, but if it doesn't,
there isn't any reason why it shouldn't be able to. It only uses pure
ruby stuff.

> Just to throw it out there for discussion, is it possible to prepare
> the framework in such a way that we could turn a ParseTree controller
> implementation into a plugin?

Probably (maybe with the help of some new hooks in the dispatcher).
However, I would really like to have this considered for the core
controller since it's a fairly fundamental API issue and doesn't
effect performance/memory footprint (I think!).

I guess the real tough question is: do people mind having ParseTree as
a dependency?

ry