Core API

3.3. TYPO3 Core Engine (TCE)

3.3.1. Introduction

Database

The TYPO3 Core Engine is the class that handles all data writing to database tables configured in $TCA. In addition the class handles commands such as copy, move, delete. It will handle undo/history and versioning of records as well and everything will be logged to the sys_log. And it will make sure that write permissions are evaluated correctly for the user trying to write to the database. Generally, any processing specific option in the $TCA array is handled by TCE.

Using TCE for manipulation of the database content in the TCA configured tables guarantees that the data integrity of TYPO3 is respected. This cannot be safely guaranteed if you write to $TCA configured database tables directly. It will also manage the relations to files and other records.

TCE requires a backend login to work. This is due to the fact that permissions are observed (of course) and thus TCE needs a backend user to evaluate against. This means you cannot use TCEmain from the frontend scope. Thus writing to tables (such as a guestbook) will have to be done from the frontend without TCEmain.

The features of the $TCA (Table Configuration Array) array are discussed in the end of this document.

Files

TCE also has a part for handling files. The file operations are normally performed in the File > List module where you can manage a directory on the server by copying, moving, deleting and editing files and directories. The file operations are managed by two core classes, t3lib_basicFileFunc and t3lib_extFileFunc.