[wp-hackers] GSoC 2013: UUID Abstraction

[Eric Mann]

Just a head's up, the full URL for your proposal (
http://code.aniketpant.com/2013/04/gsoc-2013-uuid-abstraction/) 404s ... so
no one else can leave comments at the moment.


On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 9:38 AM, Aniket Pant <me at aniketpant.com> wrote:

> Hey,
>
> I posted this sometime back, but it was a weekend. Eric responded on my
> blog code.aniketpant.com
>
> Would be great if I can get more insights on my idea.
>
> Thank you.
> On Apr 27, 2013 2:54 AM, "Aniket Pant" <me at aniketpant.com> wrote:
>
> > Hey everyone,
> >
> > I'm Aniket (http://www.aniketpant.com), a third year undergraduate
> > pursuing Mechanical Engineering at BITS Pilani - Goa Campus. I started
> > web development with Codeigniter and after sometime picked up
> > WordPress for developing small applications, themes and plugins. I
> > have also spoken at two WordCamps in India, once on theme development
> > and the other time on using metaboxes effectively.
> >
> > I planned to apply for GSoC 2012, but WordPress wasn't selected as a
> > mentoring organization and I ended up getting busy during the summer
> > with an internship. This year, while going through the ideas list, I
> > was happy to see some of the old ideas back. In the last two weeks, I
> > have opened some tickets and wrote a patch. Just trying to get the
> > hang of the way WordPress development functions.
> >
> > I was planning to work towards Import/Export operations but my current
> > understanding of the JSON based output is not sound. Somehow, I missed
> > out on the UUID Abstraction Project while going through the list
> > earlier and saw it sometime back. Just wanted to share my understand
> > of the project and get some feedback on it.
> >
> > ## The basic idea
> >
> > This project is interesting because it is one of those projects which
> > can actually go into the release cycle if the work is done right and
> > the end result doesn't hamper any of the existing code. On reading
> > through the data available on UUIDs, a number of variants are
> > available. I feel that v5 which uses a SHA-1 hash is a suitable choice
> > even from the security point of view. A v5 UUID is generated by
> > providing a namespace and a name. Given the same name and the
> > namespace, the generated output will be the same.
> >
> > ## How UUIDs can be generated?
> >
> > I searched around the net and found this -
> > https://gist.github.com/dahnielson/508447. The mentioned file contains
> > functions for generating v3, v4, v5 UUIDs.
> >
> > ## What namespace can be used?
> >
> > The namespace can be any of the following -
> > - A unique string provided by the user during install/setup
> > - The website name (but this can be similar in case of two websites,
> > not sure if it will affect anything in any case)
> > - A fixed/common UUID for all installations (not sure if this is a
> > really good idea)
> > - A random UUID created via a v4 UUID generator
> >
> > This can be converted to a UUID as the namespace needs to be another
> UUID.
> >
> > ## Change in the user table
> >
> > A new column for UUID will be introduced where the username will be
> > used as the name for generating the UUID. Since the username is a
> > mandatory field, it will always be present.
> >
> > namespace + username = User UUID
> >
> > ## Change in the posts table
> >
> > This table already contains a GUID which is in the form of a URL. It
> > is unique, but for consistency it is logical to implement a UUID in
> > this scenario. Similarly over here, the name provided for generating
> > the UUID can be provided as the post title.
> >
> > Removal of GUID will not make sense because it is used all over the
> > software for generating the URL in many places. Instead the field can
> > be modified and updated to use UUID in it's place.
> >
> > ## How the changes will be carried out?
> >
> > A tool can be introduced to do this. It will run all user and post
> > entries through it and generate UUIDs for them.
> >
> > This is what I have been able to think so far. I would really love to
> > get some insights for my approach and what I might be planning
> > incorrectly.
> >
> > Cheers!
> >
> > Aniket
> >
> _______________________________________________
> wp-hackers mailing list
> wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
> http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-hackers
>