Question2Answer 1.9 development updates

Question

I'm going to use this question to post various updates on Q2A development as it occurs. A few important things to note about v1.9:

• The minimum PHP requirement will be version 5.4. Market share for <=5.3 has dropped below 20%, and those versions have not been officially supported by PHP for over 4 years. If you are still using PHP 5.3 I suggest looking to upgrade as soon as possible.
• The old includes from qa-include/ (directly, not including subfolders) will be deleted. Since v1.7 they were moved to the subfolders (app/, db/ etc) and stubs added for backwards compatibility. Any plugins still using those should update to use the newer includes, for example change
  require_once QA_INCLUDE_DIR . 'qa-app-posts.php';
  to
  require_once QA_INCLUDE_DIR . 'app/posts.php';
• Namespaces are being used in the core code. I wrote a little about this in the docs here but the main gist is that it's much easier to use certain classes - you just use them, no need to include PHP files first.

I will add answers with updates every so often.

Comments

@MathUser I am still working on Q2A when I can, unfortunately that is not very often.

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That's good to know, at least we will be waiting for the release when it's ready.

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Hello @Scott, do you still have plans to continue working on this?

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@MathUserI don't think he has time to continue development.
I contacted him a long time ago and he was very busy.

Answer 1

January 2019 update

Most of the recent updates have been reorganising/refactoring the code rather than new user-facing features. We've added a new "Controller" system similar to other frameworks like Laravel or CodeIgniter, where URLs like 'user/{str}' for the user profile are mapped to a function like \Q2A\Controllers\User\UserProfile::profile(). This adds a bit more flexibility to URLs and allows for new features like changing the user profile URL structure.

I've also added new database classes, DbConnection and DbResult which use PDO (built-in PHP database library). This has built-in "parameterised queries" which is a simpler system than current queries. There's also a "Service" system so using the database is quite easy and you can chain some commands:

$postList = qa_service('database')->query('SELECT * FROM ^posts WHERE id=?', array($id))->fetchAllAssoc();

Thanks to pupi1985 who helped with a few key parts of the above like adding support for WHERE...IN queries. And Spudley who has contributed a few other refactorings for emails and the recalc system.

Comments

When will this release be published?

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I am missing you. Please come back  

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Plz update next version quickly

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Hello, I love the Q2A software, I want it to improve constantly, I want it to come to a good place.

Glad to hear you're working on it for version 1.9

Thank you for offering this service for free.

Q2A both the management panel and the user panel need to be organized, it can be made more professional in order to be more professional.

You offer the Q2A software for free, I am aware that you cannot make any income from it, but after the system is built solid, you can make quality plugins and themes and sell them on your site and earn a profit.

I hope you will come to a good place and you will get a great reward for your efforts.

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It would be a real shame if Question2Answer were to be discontinued. I'm sure that many forums will still be popular in the future despite AI. AI can't think like a human, and the operators of Q&2 Answer forums should remember that. I still have an average of more than 150 active visitors on my Q&A pages. And that's without me advertising it. That's not a lot, but for me it's a success and a reason to keep running the forum.

Answer 2

May we know if there are still progress for 1.9?

Comments

Im still hoping @svivian will come back.

Atm, I think it would be better if @pupi1985 will takeover the development. He is very active here and on GitHub

Answer 3

Is work still being done on improving the system, or is it going to be left behind? I really hope that doesn't happen and that development keeps going.

Comments

See https://question2answer.org/qa/116346/looks-like-qa-is-not-supported-anymore

Answer 4

6 years ago now

I really hope there is a new update