Book cover: Expert PHP 5 Tools

Short version: If you are working with PHP you’ll want to read this book. Covering topics like continuous integration, documentation and unit testing thoroughly it gives an insight of great value to any PHP developer.

Slightly longer version: This book is aimed at developers already working with PHP on a daily basis, or developers which are picking up PHP. It’s main focus is the environment of the PHP developer. Areas like unit testing, continuous integration, application deployment, proper documentation and version control might already be very familiar if you have been working with PHP for a while, but this book covers each of these important areas in detail and with prime examples on do and dont’s. Even if you feel like you are doing quite well I’m sure this book will give you a few “aha!” moments. If you are coming from a hobby-background these areas might not be your strongest suit, and this book will help you get a firm grasp on what a professional PHP setup is all about. The chapter on continous integration is based around phpUnderControl, which is a nice piece of software for this purpouse. However, I would have liked to see other alternatives like for example Hudson. Luckily, moving over to a different CI app is fairly easy after having set up a phpUC installation with the phing/ant configuration.

The book is available both as paperback and eBook from Packt. I’ve been reading the eBook, which worked quite well for me. PS: Convering the PDF to ePub will destroy some of the formatting.

Check out the sample chapter Documentation with phpDocumentor

Book cover: Expert PHP 5 Tools

While I am currently reading PHP5 eCommerce Development I’ve also got lined up a copy of Expert PHP 5 Tools from Packt.

This book will enable you to take your PHP development skills to an enterprise level by teaching you the skills and tools necessary to write maintainable and efficient code. You will learn how to perform activities such as unit testing, enforcing coding standards, automating deployment, and interactive debugging using tools created for PHP developers – all the information in one place. Your code will be more maintainable, efficient, and self-documented.

Check out the sample chapter Documentation with phpDocumentor

Now, I’d like to write a few words on Discus. I cannot see why anyone looking to set up a new board would choose this software. It’s actually file based (!). Yes, you heard me. The posts, users and threads are stored in (plain) text files. I was quite surprised the first time I got around to checking out what I was supposed to migrate. If you head over to their site and check out a demo-site or two you’ll notice that the whole board seems a bit … unprofessional. It currently sells for 149 USD, which is quite amazing when you can get vBulletin for 180USD, or even phpBB for free. I went with vBulletin because they supported (at least partial) import from Discus, as well as the email based service in case I got stuck.

Now, the data migration. Upon purchasing vBulletin I got a migration utility called ImpEx which supports quite a number of boards to import from. Discus is listed as a tier 3 board, meaning it’s not actively supported anymore.. not a good sign, but still worth a shot.

Here is a quick recap of the required actions:

1. Download vBulletin and ImpEx from vBulletin.com
2. Create a new database for vBulletin
3. Install vBulletin as described here.
4. Install the ImpEx tool as described here.
5. Configure ImpEx as described here.
6. Run the ImpEx tool for Discus

Now, in step 6 there are some modules to import. Some of them runs in a matter of seconds, while others takes up to 10 minutes in my case. I’m not sure if the script actually refreshes, so one might want to up maximum execution time for PHP to be safe.

To my surprise everything went absolutely fine. Not a single hickup in the migration scripts. After the data was imported I followed the post-migrate instructions and did some data verification. Everything seemed to be present, but I was not able to see any threads in the forums. I could find them with searching, and when I opened a thread it clearly stated that it was belonging in the correct forum. After looking around for some time I discovered that the forums from Discus was now configured to act as categories. I solved this by going to Edit Forum -> Act as Forum and set it to Yes for each forum. When I got back to the forum listing everything was in order.

The only things left is to move the forums around some, get a proper language pack and some other minor adjustments. All in I’m quite satisfied with the whole process. Kudos to vBulletin.

Technorati Tags: Hardware, Memory, Unix/Linux

First, we need to create a file to hold the settings. It’s ordinary plaintext and follows the INI format.

Here is a quick sample of some key / value pairs:

[general]
locale = no_NO
company.name = MyCompany

datasource.host = localhost
datasource.database = mydb
datasource.username = user
datasource.password = 1234

The class for accessing the file:

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class MyConfigClass{
  protected $config;
 
    public function __construct()
    {
      $this->config = parse_ini_file('../conf/myapp.ini');
 
    }
 
    public function getConfig($key = null)
    {
      if($key !== null)
      {
        if(isset($this->config[$key]))
        {
          return $this->config[$key];
        }
        else
        {
          throw new Exception("Unknown key '$key' in configuration");
        }
      }
      else
      {
        return $this->config;
      }
    }
 
    public function setConfig($config)
    {
 
      $this->config = $config;
    }
}
 
?>

Usage:

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$configManager = new MyConfigClass();
 
$value = $configManager->getConfig['datasource.host'];

Now, when working on larger application one usually have a application like class, and that’s a nice place to put this code. When using Prado I usually place the config code in the TApplication class.

Technorati Tags: PHP

I’ve been struggling with lava support for Firefox after upgrading from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04. All I had to do was to remove the package called icedtea-gcjwebplugin. Now, I don’t know my way around Java anymore, but at least it did the trick. Worth a shot if you have problems.

Update:

John has some more information on this issue if the above didn’t do the trick:

I also needed to link to the new plugin….

cd /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/plugins$
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

Thanks John!

Technorati Tags: Java, Firefox, Ubuntu

You can check it out at http://regex.larsolavtorvik.com/. Stop by his blog as well.

Technorati Tags: PHP, Perl, JavaScript, Python

Be sure to head on over to the FPDF site and FPDI site for more information on these two libs.

Related posts:
Generated PDFs over HTTPS with Internet Explorer

Technorati Tags: PHP, PDF, Frameworks

Update: Video removed, please check the links above.

Technorati Tags: PHP, Testing, Frameworks

This post is pretty much a revamp of a previous post called “Working with X-Fire soap services and inheritance in PHP“. That title was a bit misleading, and not really that good when it came to providing a sample.

Let’s say we have a SOAP method called createCustomer(Customer c), and we have a base class called Customer, which has to subclasses, Person and Organization. Person has firstname, lastname, while Organization as orgname and orgid. Now, the createCustomer call accepts a object of the class Customer, and any derived classes.

When retrieving a Person / Organization over SOAP, PHP automatically creates instances of the correct classes, but when calling createCustomer, passing a Person / Organization it breaks. Out object is sent as a Customer, but with Person or Organization fields added. The SOAP server expects to find a xsi:type for the object we are sending to tell what kind of Customer it is. It seems like PHP does not set this itself (maybe it should?).

I spent quite some time looking for info on how to specify the xsi:type for the objects, and I finally came across SoapVar.

I created a base class which the SOAP classes extended. A method called pack is responsible for setting xsi:type.

(I’m very aware that my pasted code looks like a mess in this blog. I will fix that ASAP).

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class BaseClass{
  private  $namespace = "http://model.api.domain.com"; // from your WSDL
  protected function pack($obj){
    $class_name = get_class($obj);
    $namespace = "http://model.api.domain.com";
    $pack = new SoapVar($obj, XSD_STRING, "$class_name", $namespace);
    return $pack;
  }
}
 
class createCustomer extends BaseClass{
  public function setCustomer($customer){
    $this->customer = $this->pack($customer);
  }
}
 
$customer = new Person();
$customer->setName("John Doe");
 
$request = new createCustomer();
$request->setAccountID(123);
$request->setCustomer($customer);
 
$client->createCustomer($request);

That fixed the problems for me atleast.

PS: If your SOAP classes are prefixed you’ll need to strip the prefix in class_name when creating the SoapVar.

Related posts:

• Working with X-Fire soap services and inheritance in PHP
• Array problems with SOAP and PHP – Updated

Technorati Tags: PHP, SOAP