I'm very pleased to announce that Meditation 0.5.1 is out, the PHP5 REST API Framework. There was a 0.5 release, but I found some bad bugs that needed fixing.

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The new features are:

1. Fixed Naming inconsistencies. Files containing classes are now uppercased
2. Updated in-class documentation for Lily and Lotus
3. Added build files to SVN distribution
4. Implemented the new 3rd party application authentication feature (Gate)
5. added request processors
6. added example processors
7. added an example resource (ExternalAuthExample.php) and its template
8. checked to make sure configuration directives haven't already been defined in config.php.dist
9. removed requestable.php, and replaced it with RequestHandler.php
10. Fixed a bug in lotus where the session id was always passed, even to external sites

In this list, the "3rd party application authentication feature" is just glazed right over. In a nutshell though this lets other people create applications like flickrToys to your flickr, that is, your REST API. Gate, this authentication mechanism, lets the programmer easily authenticate 3rd parties who want to use the REST API provided. This authentication is provided on both an application, and on a user level. What this means is that you can not only allow 3rd party applications to communicate with your API, you can also let users of your application allow a 3rd party application to communicate with your API, on the users behalf.

Another big feature is the addition of RequestProcessors. These are executed before the RequestHandler, and are useful for request parameter mangling (altering pathinfo and query strings), authentication (Gate uses RequestProcessor), etc. They really are quite flexible.

Finally, I've been writing documentation like a madman. I still need to write more documentation on Object Oriented meditation, so watch out for that.