Deprecated multiple behavior methods

[thomasvargiu]

In order to improve code quality and easily add type hints in a future release, I started to deprecate some methods with multiple behavior and different return types based on arguments.

• Zend\Http\Request::getHeader() is deprecated
• Zend\Http\Request::getHeaders() with arguments is deprecated
• Zend\Http\Request::getQuery() with arguments is deprecated
• Zend\Http\Request::getPost() with arguments is deprecated
• Zend\Http\Request::getFiles() with arguments is deprecated

The deprecation is for methods used as a "proxy".
Clients can access to them getting the collection first.

$request->getHeader('header-name'); // deprecated
$request->getHeaders('header-name'); // deprecated

$request->getHeaders()->get('header-name'); // currently suggested access

$request->getQuery('name'); // deprecated

$request->getQuery()->get('name'); // currently suggested access

$request->getPost('name'); // deprecated

$request->getPost()->get('name'); // currently suggested access

$request->getFiles('name'); // deprecated

$request->getFiles()->get('name'); // currently suggested access

This will allow to introduce type hints for these methods in the future , something like:

use Zend\Stdlib\ParametersInterface;
use Zend\Http\Headers;

class Request
{
    public function getHeaders(): Headers;
    public function getQuery(): ParametersInterface;
    public function getPost(): ParametersInterface;
    public function getFiles(): ParametersInterface;
}
``` 

[froschdesign]

@thomasvargiu
I'm sorry, but in my opinion this pull request is unacceptable.

I see the following problems:

• an explanation is missing why this functionality should be removed
• the error messages do not contain an alternative way to get the values
• the documentation is not updated

And where is the plan or the pull requests to update components like zend-mvc?

[thomasvargiu]

@froschdesign I was working on #157. In order to improve the code in a major release is useless to call

$request->getHeader('name');

when you can access the entire collection and get it with:

$request->getHeaders()->get('name');

IMHO, having a different behavior and a different return values based on arguments is not a good code.
Introducing this deprecation will help us to use strict types, reducing tests and making a better code.

Of course we can improve deprecation messages.

It is a deprecation, but we can remove that behavior only in major release.

[froschdesign]

@thomasvargiu
I know the usage, but that's not the topic. You open a PR without any explanation, but with changes which generates warning messages.
Please always add a full explanation in the title and / or description. That will help you and everyone else. Thanks!

---

The question also remains:

And where is the plan or the pull requests to update components like zend-mvc?

[thomasvargiu]

zend-http is still on version 2.x. zend-mvc currently requires zend-http:^2.x. We can work to improve zend-http and release a 3.x version (maybe with type hints?). As usual, other libraries should be compliant with the supported dependencies.

Changes are easy because the same behavior exists in zend-http:^2.x and will exist in a future major release.

I'm going to improve the PR description. DONE

[weierophinney]

zend-http is still on version 2.x. zend-mvc currently requires zend-http:^2.x. We can work to improve zend-http and release a 3.x version (maybe with type hints?).

zend-mvc v4 will be more likely to use PSR-7 (see thezend-mvc roadmap document — if we even decide to work towards a v4 at this point), which leaves the future of zend-http pretty much in maintenance mode. I do not see any reason at this point to do deprecations when we are unlikely to release a new major version ever.

As such, I'm going to close this.