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Question:

GetAsUnixTime removed?

Jul 25 '15 at 14:04

It seems that in the latest Chilkat release that the function GetAsUnixTime has been removed from the chilkat PHP 64-bit library?

Is this intended?


Answer

Removing this function is a little drastic I feel... it's so useful to have the ability to get a 32bit unix timestamp as it is ubiquitous. Or can you provide a reliable method to convert a PHP 64-bit integer to 32 bit with no loss of precision?

Thanks.


Answer

It wasn't intentionally removed. What operating system are you using? I can provide a new build for you to test..


Answer

I'm on centos/ubuntu 64-bit, php54 / php55.

I found it's been removed since 9.5.0.47. I've reverted for now to using 9.5.0.46 and I'm lucky I could still download that. Do you have an archive section for old versions?


Answer

Please give these new builds a test:

http://www.chilkatsoft.com/download/preRelease/chilkat-9.5.0-php-5.5-x86_64-linux.tar.gz

http://www.chilkatsoft.com/download/preRelease/chilkat-9.5.0-php-5.4-x86_64-linux.tar.gz


Answer

I can't actually test this out because of my server limitations but I've found another function that's been removed:

CkZip->OpenFromWeb

I don't quite understand... I'm losing confidence with continued updates since we're building an application with Chilkat forming the base for many functions and we don't know what will be removed from 1 version to the next now... :/


Answer

Release notes are at http://www.cknotes.com/category/release-notes/

The release notes specific to the removal of OpenFromWeb are at http://www.cknotes.com/chilkat-v9-5-0-release-notes/

Typically, any functionality removed can be duplicated in another way (typically by writing a couple additional lines of code). When changes in the API are planned, the method or property will be marked as deprecated in the reference documentation for quite some time before the change happens. The Release Notes will indicate how an app can be modified to effect the same functionality but through a different means.

This is what the Release Notes said about OpenFromWeb:

Zip: The OpenFromWeb method was removed. There are two reasons: (1) The HTTP related functionality creates dependencies on all that is related to HTTP/SSL/encryption/etc. which greatly expands the size of any EXE using zip functionality, and this is undesired on mobile platforms. (2) The HTTP functionality is oversimplistic, because it lacks many features (such as proxies, and other HTTP complexities) that might be required. It is better if a program separately uses the Chilkat HTTP functionality to download a .zip (into memory or into a file) and then open it with Chilkat Zip.


Answer

Okay, gotcha.

Would it make more sense to tweak how you release version numbers?

For example, minor release would be committed to not breaking backward compatibility - that is, not removing functions, just bug fixed.

Then if you release 9.5.1.0 we would know there is potential for breakage. Does that make sense? Rather than everything go through a series of apparently minor updates which are in-fact not minor for many applications.

Does that sound like something you would be interested in? Thanks


Answer

Hi,

Do you plan to release the GetAsUnixTime() function back into the official releases for 64-bit builds?

Thanks