Request for comments: Streamline Phar API

This proposal aims to streamline the Phar API to make it more usable and intuitive.

Add two simple methods to write/retrieve content.

$file = new SplFileInfo("file");
$file->setContent('foo');
echo $file->getContent(); // returns 'foo'

• getMTime()
• getATime()
• getCTime()

Rename the methods to make them more independent from their origin, the UNIX naming scheme and therefore better to understand for a people with non-UNIX backgrounds. Leave the original method names but throw deprecated warnings for PHP 6.

• getMTime() => getModificationTime()
• getATime() => getAccessTime()
• getCTime() => getCreateTime()

• setCompressedBZIP2()
• setCompressedGZ()
• setUncompressed()

Unify this methods to a single method compress(). The compress method will take one argument indicating the compression algorithm. The compression algorithm is represented as a Phar class constant. The setUncompressed() method should be renamed to uncompress().

$file->compress(Phar::BZIP2); // Compress with bzip2
$file->compress(Phar::GZIP);  // Compress with gzip
$file->uncompress();

• isCompressedBZIP2()
• isCompressedGZ()
• isCompressed()

Unify this methods to one PharFileInfo::isCompressed(). The new isCompressed() would take an optional argument with the compression algorithm. The compression algorithm is represented as a Phar class constant.

$file->isCompressed(); // Is the file compressed at all?
$file->isCompressed(Phar::GZIP); // Is the file gzip compressed?
$file->isCompressed(Phar::BZIP2); // Is the file bzip compressed?