2023/06/24

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Saturday, June 24, 2023 (#175)
Friday Saturday Sunday

Notes

the problem flows like this: in this->getPage( $name ); we have

if ( is_array( $rec ) || is_string( $rec ) || is_callable( $rec ) ) {
    $page = $this->objectFactory->createObject( $rec, [ 'allowClassName' => true,'allowCallable' => true ]);
}

...which implies that it should be perfectly okay to call createObject() with a string, but then we have createObject( $spec, array $options = [] ) calling static::getObjectFromSpec( $spec, $options ); which calls static::validateSpec( $spec, $options ); which then goes:

if ( is_string( $spec ) && class_exists( $spec ) ) {
    if ( empty( $options['allowClassName'] ) ) {
        throw new InvalidArgumentException('Passing a raw class name is not allowed here. Use [ \'class\' => $classname ] instead.');
    }
    return [ 'class' => $spec ];
}
if ( !is_array( $spec ) ) {
    throw new InvalidArgumentException( 'Provided specification is not an array.' );
}

...so I think what I'm getting from that is that it's only okay to call $this->objectFactory->createObject( $rec, /*...*/ ) if $rec is not a class name.

So then we have the questions:

  • Q1: From where is the string-value of $rec being retrieved?
    • The list comes from $this->getPageList()
    • ...and how that list is generated is... Complicated.
    • ...but there's a wide variety of examples, when CORE_LIST is defined near the top of the class, of what the array entries are supposed to look like.
    • Q1a: So, somehow our SpecialPage class gets added to the list as just a string. Where does that happen? Presumably in SpecialPage's constructor...
      • Nope, not there; that just initializes the SpecialPage object's members. Presumably the class is registered by whatever reads the extension.json file.
      • Q1a1: How are extension pages loaded?
  • Q2: What is it supposed to be, if it's not a class name?

I don't know the answer to the above questions, but I did solve the problem: as implied on Manual:Special_pages, the filename must match the class name -- so it can't be just Special.php, it has to be SpecialClassInspector.php. (Maybe there's some configuration detail you can put in extension.json to override this, but I don't currently know what that is if it exists.)

2023-07-09 update: I got this same error again -- this time because of a namespace change. Fixing the extension.json file to have the correct namespace fixed the problem. I conclude (from these two data-points) that this error indicates that the class of the SpecialPage does not match the class referenced in extension.json.