[rt-users] Interfacing with RT via PHP

[Chris Knipe]

Lo there,

1) It's a PHP based application.  I'm not going to rewrite over 3 million
lines of code on a web application to allow me to insert data into a
database via mod_perl.  That just morally isn't right, and doesn't make any
sense to me what so ever.  Needless to say, it will be over a year's worth
of work that I need to re-do....
2) Databases are universal, and they are accessible through various
programming languages and APIs, which also motivates point 1 a bit more I
think.
3) I'd like to steer away from mod_perl on a production level (this is a
personal opinion, and I have my right to express them).  While on non
critical systems, I'm more than willing to use it.  From past experiences
I've had with RT and mod_perl, I don't like the idea of having those high
system loads when a RT web sites becomes very busy.  On our development
system, while receiving +- 30 emails per minute, our system's 15 minute load
average went up over 5.4.  I've also noticed this with load scenario with
other mod_perl based applications I wanted to run, all of them resulted in
the same, which tells me its a mod_perl issue, and not RT, so flames and
wars here will kindly go to /dev/null.  The fact of the matter, is that I
don't like mod_perl, and there is no way that I am putting this on a
production system.
4) mod_perl is also Unix specific, which may become a problem.  With a
universal way of accessing the data, I can even integrate ASP (Win32) based
sites, as well as C++ / Delphi programs to interface with RT.  This will
also become a big problem at a later date, seeing that our company's
internal management systems will be in Delphi / C++, and not web based.  So
either way, this is going to become a problem for me over the next few
months, seeing that PHP and Perl is not the only languages I need to give
access to RT's data.
5) I can't simply email the ticket, because the ticket will be send back to
the sender of the ticket itself.
5.1) If this is sent to the user who submitted the form, I can't reference
the ticket number on the site
5.2) If it's sent back to the web server's user, there may be long delays
until I am able to pop the mail from a mailbox to retrieve the ticket
number, which can cause timeouts on the site (mail may be delayed in SMTP
queues for example).  Neither of which, is a decent way of implementing
this.
6) Perl apps via CGI, I don't want to use either... If I change the layout
or something of my site, I merely change one global function.  A CGI in this
case, would need to be recoded completely, which limits me in regards to the
functionality of the web applications I want to use...

Shall I go on ?  Let me just go eat some dinner first... :-)

If there's a simple DB API available somewhere, or, if someone can simply
provide some MySQL database logs of where RT data is inserted and retrieved
from the database, the query is in there.  All you need to insert a ticket
and get a ticket number to my understanding, is two simple database
queries..... Or.. Am I mistaken?


Kind Regards,

Chris Knipe
MegaLAN Corporate Networking Services
Tel: +27 21 854 7064
Cell: +27 72 434 7582

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Disney" <matthew.disney at fedex.com>
To: <rt-users at lists.fsck.com>
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 7:27 PM
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Interfacing with RT via PHP


> What are your motivations for using PHP rather than HTML::Mason?
>
> A while back, since I wasn't comfortable with the state of RT's
> unauthorized user interfaces, I created a PHP interface to simply email
> a ticket in and then I linked to a NoAuth list of tickets in that
> queue. I ditched it before we moved RT to production, though, in favor
> of HTML::Mason stuff that is much better because it sits on top of the
> RT API.
>
> I'll gladly provide the stuff I've done with HTML::Mason, but I'm
> afraid there's not much I can help you with as far as PHP interfaces.
>
> Matt
>
> Chris Knipe writes:
> >Hi all,
> >
> >Are there anything available that's written already to interface with
RT's
> >tickets via PHP?
> >
> >I'd like to have a type of system where I can inject a html form as a
ticket
> >into various RT queues.  For example, I may have a support form on a html
> >page, where the user provides his / her email address, and  a detailed
> >description of the problem.
> >
> >I'd like to then take the form data, inject it into RT, and provide the
user
> >with the ticket number over the web.
> >
> >Is this at all possible?  Anything written for it already?
> >
> >Kind Regards,
> >
> >Chris Knipe
> >MegaLAN Corporate Networking Services
> >Tel: +27 21 854 7064
> >Cell: +27 72 434 7582
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >rt-users mailing list
> >rt-users at lists.fsck.com
> >http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users
> >
> >Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm
> >
>
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