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PHPFreaks.com: 10 Signs of Crappy PHP Software

PHPDeveloper.org — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:51:32 +0000

On PHPFreaks.com they have a new "top ten" list of signs to look out for to tell if you're dealing with crappy software or not.

Like it or not, as a professional developer, sooner or later you are going to do some customising (if you are lucky, "extending") of existing software. If you are not familiar with the software, it is good advice to look into it before accepting the job. I had to learn that the hard way. But how do you recognize crappy applications without getting knee deep into the code?

Their list of signs include:

The software tries to reinvent the object model, or "fix" language features.
Scattered HTML and SQL
Multiple levels of inheritance
In the code base, there is a directory called "core"

PEAR Blog: PHP 5.3 Windows and PEAR (go-pear.phar)

PHPDeveloper.org — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:20:23 +0000

The PEAR blog has a quick note for users of PHP 5.3 and Windows:

Some users have reported that the windows builds of PHP 5.3 are not able to open the shipped go-pear.phar file.

If this is your situation, you can use their workaround (run the distributed phar version) or grab the non-pharred version.

Lorna Mitchell’s Blog: Status Codes for Web Services

PHPDeveloper.org — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:44:37 +0000

Lorna Mitchell has posted the last article in her look at web services - a focus on status codes.

Unlike the other posts in this series, this one is quite specific to one type of service - REST - since it deals with status codes, specifically HTTP ones. The ideas are transferrable however and other types of service can return statuses in a similar way.

She mentions things to keep in mind in returning the codes, some of the more interesting codes as well as some typical situations where things like an error code 500 would be thrown.

Status codes are like a headline to the calling entity about what happened, and are a valuable tool in the web service toolkit.

Oracle Technology Network: High Performance and Availability with Oracle RAC and PHP

PHPDeveloper.org — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:12:07 +0000

John Lim has written up an article for the Oracle Technology Network about creating high performance systems with Oracle's Real Application Clusters (RAC) and PHP.

Running a software application that is able to work reliably through hardware and software failures is incredibly hard. [...] In this article, I will cover the network, architecture and design of our RAC application. Then I will discuss the real-world experiences and problems we experienced.

He details their RAC setup - load balancers, application servers and their RAC servers - before working through the different technologies and how they're all installed and configured to work together most efficiently.

DevShed: Using the spl_autoload() Functions to Build Loader Apps in PHP

PHPDeveloper.org — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:26:58 +0000

In the next to last article of their loader series, DevShed looks at replacing some of the file loading functionality in their examples with functions from the SPL.

As I mentioned before, the Standard PHP library comes bundled with some helpful functions, such as "spl_autoload()," "spl_register_extension()" and "spl_autoload_register()" that allow you to either use a default implementation of the "__autoload()" function, or create a custom one for it.

Their example defines the extensions to use for autoloading and the name of the file/class to pull in. The rest is done automagically.

DPC 2009 Day 1

Paul Reinheimer — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:18:00 +0000

After my colleague Cal reviewed DPC's tutorial day, it's now my turn to look back at the first real conference day of 2009's Dutch PHP Conference.

The day started with a nice movie made by Almer and Norman after which Cal officially opened the Dutch PHP Conference and introduced Andrei Zmievski to do the opening keynote. Andrei gave an outline of developments in PHP including the changes we are going to see in future versions. Closures, namespaces, better garbage collection and a few more things are coming to PHP5.3, but I think this isn't new to most people. I haven't really read a lot on PHP6 yet other than Unicode, so the addition of traits, C# style getters and setters and scalar/return value type hinting were new to me. I think this was a nice talk to be the opening keynote, because other than just being infomrative the talk also had the right amount of humor with some examples of frustrated people reporting "bugs" and a setting for y2k compliance. I wasn't active in PHP 10 years ago, but it made me laugh when I heard that the y2k_compliance setting basically did nothing other than stop people asking about it.

Continue reading "DPC 2009 Day 1"

Site News: Popular Posts for the Week of 07.03.2009

PHPDeveloper.org — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:02:45 +0000

Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:

Ready for PHP & MySQL Week at SitePoint?

Andrew Tetlaw — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:35:02 +0000

To celebrate the release of the new edition of well-loved SitePoint book Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL, 4th Edition — by Kevin Yank, we’re publishing a chapter a day next week, beginning Tuesday the 7th of July.

Today, we’ve published the beginning of the series: the Introduction and directly from the book, Chapter 1: Installation. Over the weekend you can read chapter 1 and make sure your newly installed software is working properly, in readiness for next week’s chapters. At the end of the week you’ll have 4 complete chapters from the book and one bonus article, comprising another book excerpt.

Here’s what you’ll be receiving:

Chapter 2: Introducing MySQL

An introduction to databases in general, and the MySQL relational database management system in particular. If you’ve never worked with a relational database before, you’ll find this enlightening, whetting your appetite for what’s to come! In the process, you’ll build up a simple database to be used in later chapters.

Chapter 3: Introducing PHP

Here’s where the fun really starts. In this chapter, Kevin will introduce you to the PHP scripting language, which you can use to build dynamic web pages that present up-to-the-moment information to your visitors.

Chapter 4: Publishing MySQL Data on the Web

In this chapter you’ll bring together PHP and MySQL to create some of your first database driven web pages. You’ll explore the basic techniques of using PHP to retrieve information from a database and display it on the Web in real time. Kevin will also show you how to use PHP to create web-based forms for adding new entries to, and modifying existing information in, a MySQL database on the fly.

Bonus: How to Handle File Uploads with PHP
In this bonus excerpt from Chapter 12, you’ll learn how to accept file uploads from your web site visitors securely and store them.

Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL, 4th Edition is one of the most popular PHP books for beginners, and SitePoint’s first ever book. This shiny new 4th edition has been completely updated using only best-practice PHP. It’s essential reading for all budding PHP & MySQL developers. For more information, see the book page.

If you prefer to read the Adobe Acrobat PDF version of these first four chapters, you can download the first four chapters FREE.

Community News: PHP North West 2009 Website Launch

PHPDeveloper.org — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:03:30 +0000

The PHP North West group has officially launched the website for this year's event - PHP North West 2009:

We're proud to announce the second edition of the PHP North West Conference, to be held on Saturday 10th October, 2009. Following from last year's successful debut, this event returns to bring a great mix of speakers and community from the north of England and beyond. With a local feel, there will be a packed day of talks from a range of speakers, socials Friday and Saturday night, and informal sessions running on Sunday for those making a weekend of it. We hope to see you there!

The site currently has links to their registration, Call for Papers and resources to use when linking to conference.

Had Enough of “Left” and “Right” ?

pmjones — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:26:50 +0000

Watch a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican redline the Bill of Rights together: