Open Source
Extbase, the TYPO3 core and a few packages.
I have been contributing to the TYPO3 core since 2012. From 2019 to 2022 I was the component merger responsible for Extbase, the MVC framework most TYPO3 extensions are built on.
TYPO3 core
More than 350 merged patches between 2012 and 2025, plus several hundred reviews. Most of it concerns Extbase: the move to typed class schemas and annotation classes, the removal of legacy code, the hardening of almost every core class and the switch to PSR-7. A smaller part concerns the File Abstraction Layer.
ClassSchemareplacesClassInfo; annotation classes such as@Extbase\Inject,@Extbase\ORM\Lazyand@Extbase\Validatesupersede the old comment annotations.- Removal of support for non-namespaced classes and of the old annotations; cleanup of deprecated Extbase code.
- Hardening of UriBuilder, configuration managers, type converters and repositories; native pagination; deprecation of switchable controller actions; type converters registered as services.
- Extbase handles PSR-7 responses only;
ForwardResponse; removal of Fluid widgets, property injection and vendor names in plugin registration. - Native PHP enums in Extbase; non-magic repository methods; generic repositories for PHPStan; type declarations across the FAL interfaces.
“Alexander is heading Extbase development, and you've seen significant work in the past year already in this area. More changes are underway, making Extbase faster and easier to understand for developers.” Benni Mack, TYPO3 project lead, in “The New Faces Behind TYPO3 Core Development”, March 2019
All patches on review.typo3.org
Packages
| Package | What it does | Since |
|---|---|---|
| fluid-styled-responsive-images | Responsive images for Fluid Styled Content, TYPO3 7.6 to 10.4 | 2015 |
| phpstan-typo3-extbase | Stubs and services so PHPStan understands Extbase | 2021 |
| phpstorm.meta.php-typo3 | Better autocompletion for TYPO3 projects in PhpStorm | 2021 |
| docker-mysqldump | Small container for mysqldump, directly or via cron | 2017 |
| templavoila | TYPO3 7.6-compatible fork of TemplaVoilà, maintained 2015 to 2017 | 2015 |
| typo3-middleware-whoops | whoops error pages as a TYPO3 middleware | 2018 |
| frontend-user-login-token | Login tokens for frontend users, TYPO3 14 | 2026 |
Contributions to other projects
When I hit bugs in client projects, the fixes go upstream. More than 60 pull requests, among others to:
- The TYPO3 documentation, above all the Extbase and Fluid book; TYPO3 Fluid and the TYPO3 testing framework (PHP 7.4 compatibility)
- PHPStan-TYPO3, Rector, TYPO3 Fractor, Symfony Security ACL
- TYPO3 extensions such as Mask, Powermail, Cart, site-importer, host_variants, translate_locallang and tt_products, mostly compatibility with new TYPO3 and Symfony releases
Community
From 2015 to 2017 I maintained TemplaVoilà together with Wouter Wolters and kept it running on TYPO3 6.2 and 7.6 so that large installations had an upgrade path. At TYPO3camps I have spoken about Extbase, most recently with “Extbase Quo Vadis” on the direction of the framework during my time in the core team. In 2019 I took part in T3INIT19, the initiative week of TYPO3 GmbH.
Writing
Articles and notes on TYPO3, Extbase, architecture and tooling appear on blog.alexanderschnitzler.de, including the archive of my posts since 2011.