PHP development review http://php.devreview.com PHP software development news, reviews and articles Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:12:18 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 PHP News #7 http://php.devreview.com/php-news-7/ http://php.devreview.com/php-news-7/#comments Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:10:53 +0000 dev review admin http://php.devreview.com/?p=804
  • PHP News #4 News to July 30th, 2010. Slow week for new releases....
  • PHP News #5 PHP news to August 6th, 2010. New PHP drivers for...
  • PHP News #6 PHP news to August 13th, 2010. New Yii1.1 and PHP5...
    • ]]>     PHP news for the fortnight ending August 27th, 2010.

    • Jolt is a new PHP5.3+ framework aimed at fast and efficient web application development.
    • CodeMash a multi development language technical conference on current practices, methodologies and technology trends. January 12-14, 2011, Sandusky, Ohio.
    • Embarcadero RAD Studio XE with support for PHP
    • Registration opens for ZendCon 2010. Early bird by 19 September.
    • Zend Framework 1.10.8 Released with bug fixes
    • CakePHP 1.2.8 released of bugfixes and optimisations
    • Phantm 1.05 released. Statically analyses PHP code to detect and report type mismatches

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    3. PHP News #6 PHP news to August 13th, 2010. New Yii1.1 and PHP5...

    ]]>     http://php.devreview.com/php-news-7/feed/ 0     PHP Events and Content Updates http://php.devreview.com/php-events-content-updates/ http://php.devreview.com/php-events-content-updates/#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 05:22:43 +0000 dev review admin http://php.devreview.com/?p=798
  • Does every php developer have their own framework? I have tried a few php frameworks over the years,...
    • ]]>     PHP devReview is adding a section for PHP events. This can be conferences, unconferences or any significant gathering of PHP developers. It need not be a purely PHP event. Know of a relevant event, let us know, and we can add it to the list.

    Our list of PHP frameworks, code editors and book is well out of date, and this will also be fixed soon.

    Updating the site for WordPress 3 has made this new functionality easier, and site updates such now be much quicker and easier.

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    1. Does every php developer have their own framework? I have tried a few php frameworks over the years,...

    ]]>     http://php.devreview.com/php-events-content-updates/feed/ 0     PHP News #6 http://php.devreview.com/php-news-6/ http://php.devreview.com/php-news-6/#comments Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:16:25 +0000 dev review admin http://php.devreview.com/?p=796
  • PHP News #5 PHP news to August 6th, 2010. New PHP drivers for...
  • PHP News #4 News to July 30th, 2010. Slow week for new releases....
  • PHP News #3 PHP developer news for week ending July 23rd, 2010. PHP...
    • ]]>     PHP news to August 13th, 2010.

    • New Yii1.1 and PHP5 book. Sign of a framework reaching mass.
    • PHP Code Browser 0.9 (beta) released. Visual analysis of your PHP code.
    • Zend Framework 2 (2.0.0dev1). First development milestone released.
    • Padraic Brady reviews some of the PHP based HTML sanitisers.

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        ]]> http://php.devreview.com/php-news-6/feed/ 0 PHP News #5 http://php.devreview.com/php-news-5/ http://php.devreview.com/php-news-5/#comments Fri, 06 Aug 2010 03:40:20 +0000 dev review admin http://php.devreview.com/?p=729
      • PHP News #3 PHP developer news for week ending July 23rd, 2010. PHP...
      • PHP News #4 News to July 30th, 2010. Slow week for new releases....
      • PHP News #1 Recent PHP news to July 9, 2010. Early release of...
        • ]]>         PHP news to August 6th, 2010.

        • New PHP drivers for for SQL Server released, under an Apache 2.0 license.
        • Zend framework 1.10.7 released. Bug fixes including an update for Zend_Service_Twitter, as Twitter moves to OAuth.
        • PHPNW conference on October 9 & 10, 2010 in Manchester, UK.
        • New PHP Excel extension from Ilia Alshanetsky.
        • Call for proposals at OSDC (Open Source Developers Conference) 2010 to be held in Melbourne, Australia from November 24th to 26th, 2010.

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        ]]>         http://php.devreview.com/php-news-5/feed/ 0         PHP News #4 http://php.devreview.com/php-news-4/ http://php.devreview.com/php-news-4/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:05:01 +0000 dev review admin http://php.devreview.com/?p=726
      • PHP News #2 PHP developer news for week ending July 16th, 2010. PHP...
      • PHP News #3 PHP developer news for week ending July 23rd, 2010. PHP...
      • PHP News #1 Recent PHP news to July 9, 2010. Early release of...
        • ]]>         News to July 30th, 2010. Slow week for new releases.

        1. ZendCon 2010. November 1 – 4, Santa Clara, CA. Early bird registration until August 28th.
        2. Zend Unlimited Subscription program for business that need unlimited number of subscriptions to Zend’s software and technical support services
        3. crVCL PHP Framework, rapid application development framework inspired by JEDI VCL and Java Spring
        4. RDSFramework, lightweight open source MVC framework

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        ]]>         http://php.devreview.com/php-news-4/feed/ 0         Evolving PHP Frameworks http://php.devreview.com/evolving-php-frameworks/ http://php.devreview.com/evolving-php-frameworks/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:00:31 +0000 Ernie Leseberg http://php.devreview.com/?p=721
      • The Big List of PHP Frameworks For the start of a new year, it was time...
      • PHP News #3 PHP developer news for week ending July 23rd, 2010. PHP...
      • So why so many PHP frameworks? Since producing the big list of PHP frameworks I have...
        • ]]>         There are no shortage of PHP frameworks, some grow large vibrant communities and a number wither and die over time. A number of the larger frameworks by user base have announced plans for the next steps in their evolution. Specifically we examine the next major versions of Zend Framework, Symfony, CodeIgniter and CakePHP.

        Zend Framework


        Zend Framework has recently outlined is vision for version 2, to not only build upon its strengths, but also improve some of the difficulties that it “…is cumbersome and difficult to learn, distribute, and extend, and one that is becoming less and less performant.” The requirements state that “[t]he primary thrust of ZF 2.0 is to make a more consistent, well-documented product, improving developer productivity and runtime performance”. The exact feature set is still under active discussion and there is active soliciting of comment and feedback from the wider community.

        The minimum PHP requirement will be PHP 5.3, which allows the use of new language features such as namespaces. Backwards compatibility with ZF1 will not be maintained. Matthew Weier O’Phinney has stated that ZF2 is more about “…rewrites and refactoring to fix architectural concerns” than new feature sets.

        A Git repository for the framework has been created, but it unlikely to see a substantial stable ZF2 release until early 2011.

        Symfony

        Symfony 2.0 has already made a preview release, but a production ready version of Symfony2 is not expected until late 2010. Symfony2 has its own site Symfony reloaded. There is detail on performance improvements and features, and it states “Symfony2 is fast, flexible, and easy to learn. It allows developers to build better and more easily maintainable websites with PHP.”

        Symfony2 is making use of an number of external components such as PHPUnit 3.5, Propel 1.5 and Doctine 2. Symfony2 has a public git repository.

        Backwards compatibility with symfony1 will be broken, and the minimum PHP requirement for Symfony2 will be PHP 5.3.2.

        CodeIgniter

        Ellis Labs officially announced that “…CodeIgniter 2.0 is baking…” back in March. Exact details of what this will entail are not available, as CodeIgniter development is a lot more closed than some of the other frameworks. From their changelog, PHP4 support is depreciated but may still work until CI 2.1. Scaffolding and plugins have been removed, and some internal reorganisation.

        There is a public Mercurial repository at BitBucket.

        No CI 2 release date has been announced.

        CakePHP

        CakePHP had plans for Cake2 (PHP 5.2+) and Cake3 (PHP 5.3+) well back into 2009, but progress has been slow.

        Cake2 has a roadmap with tasks such as E_STRICT compliance, moving from PHP4, remove deprecated classes and features, use of exceptions, interfaces etc. There is a Cake2 github repository.

        In 2009, some of the Cake development team forked the Cake3 code into a new framework called Lithium which has a stated aim of “[a] php 5.3 only framework built for speed, simplicity, and maintainability”. Lithium is still under development, though the rapid release have slowed.

        Conclusion

        The new features of PHP5.3 are starting to take hold in the PHP development community now, and many frameworks as looking to take advantage of them. The plans and progress of Symfony2 and ZF2 look especially exciting for PHP development into the future.

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        ]]>         http://php.devreview.com/evolving-php-frameworks/feed/ 0         PHP Output Formatting http://php.devreview.com/php-output-formatting/ http://php.devreview.com/php-output-formatting/#comments Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:33:52 +0000 Ernie Leseberg http://php.devreview.com/?p=689 When it comes to creating output that will be returned to a user browser, there are a number of functions & language constructs available to achieve this. This article will examine the use of echo, print & printf.

        Echo

        echo allows for simple outputting of 1 or more strings. The following 4 simple examples which produce the same output.

        <?php
  echo 'Some Output';
?>

        <?php
echo "Some Output";
?>

        <?php
$output = "Some Output";
echo $output;
?>

        <?php
echo ('Some Output');
?>

        Echo is a language construct, not a function, even though it can be used in a function form with brackets as shown above for a single string. Echo cannot be called using variable functions. The following example will NOT work.

        ($val == 5) ? echo 'true' : echo 'false';

        Quoting

        The type of quotation marks used in the output of a string, influence the generated output. Strings in double quotations will be evaluated by PHP and so any variables will have their contents substituted for the variable name. Whereas single quotes as treated as literals. The following 2 echo statements will produce different outputs, with the variable substituted in the double quote example, but not in the single quote.

        $count = 'Two';
echo "$count more please";

        $count = 'Two';
echo '$count more please';

        The evaluation within double quotes also allows control or escape sequences, such as \n for a linefeed & \t for a tab. The full list of escape characters is in the PHP manual.

        The display of double quotes within a double quoted string, will require use of the escape character, \, the backslash.

        <?php
  echo "The man said \"it is true\" to the reporter.";
?>

        The same is true for use of the single quote within a single quoted string.

        <?php
  echo 'The order doesn\'t matter.';
?>

        Concatenation

        Echo handles multiple string concatenation (with the period operator), or multiple strings passed as parameters, either as literal strings or variables. So the following produce the same output.

        $dayPart = 'morning';
echo 'A good ' . $dayPart . '.';
        $dayPart = 'morning';
echo 'A good ' , $dayPart , '.';

        Short Cut

        There is a short cut syntax for echo, with an equals immediately after the short opening tag.

        <?= $variable ?>

        Use of this syntax requires that the short open tag <? is allowed in the PHP configuration. For maximum compatibility across systems, it is probably best to not use this format.

        Print

        Print works much the same as echo. Again it is a language construct not a function, but unlike echo, print does have a return value (true or false).

        <?php
  print 'Some print output';
?>

        The same quoting rules as outlined above apply for print on strings.

        <?php
  $count = 'Two';
  print "$count more please";
?>

        Multiple string concatenation (with the period operator) works with print, but multiple strings passed as parameters does not.

        Printf

        printf outputs a string, according to a supplied format. It allows for some very fine grained output control, and is suited to more complex output creation. The same results can be achieved by use of print or echo, but printf can allow the creation of more succinct and/or maintainable code. printf has the following signature:

        printf (string format [, mixed args...])

        where format is a string that has the basic outline with conversion specifications instead of variables, followed by parameters that will be substituted into the format string. The return value is the length of the outputted string. A simple example:

        <?php
  $count = 3;
  $cost = 25.2;
  $format = "The %d items cost $%.2f.";
  printf($format, $count, $cost);
?>

        The advantages of printf become more obvious as the number and complexity of substitutions increase.

        <?php
foreach ($orderList as $order) {
  printf("Customer %s ordered %d items, with a total cost of $%.2f including $%.2f tax.",
	$order['first_name'].' '.$order['surname'],
	$order['count'],
	$order['cost'] * ($order['tax_rate'] + 1),
	$order['cost'] * $order['tax_rate']
  )
}
?>

        The format for each conversion specification is: %[-|+][padding character][-][width][.precision]type. Only the leading % and the type specification is mandatory, with the output types as:

        b Argument is treated as an integer, and presented as a binary number.
        c Argument is treated as an integer, and presented as the character with that ASCII value.
        d Argument is treated as an integer, and presented as a (signed) decimal number.
        e Argument is treated as scientific notation (e.g. 1.2e+2). The precision specifier stands for the number of digits after the decimal point since PHP 5.2.1. In earlier versions, it was taken as number of significant digits (one less)
        E Like %e but uses uppercase letter (e.g. 1.2E+2).
        u Argument is treated as an integer, and presented as an unsigned decimal number.
        f Argument is treated as a float, and presented as a floating-point number (locale aware).
        F Argument is treated as a float, and presented as a floating-point number (non-locale aware).
        g Shorter of %e and %f.
        G Shorter of %E and %f.
        o Argument is treated as an integer, and presented as an octal number.
        s Argument is treated as and presented as a string.
        x Argument is treated as an integer and presented as a hexadecimal number (with lowercase letters).
        X Argument is treated as an integer and presented as a hexadecimal number (with uppercase letters).

        Above modified from PHP manual list of specifiers

        The optional elements are:

        1. sign specifier (- or +)
        2. padding specifier to the right size string. The default is space.
        3. alignment specifier. - will make it left justified, with a default of right justified.
        4. width specifier. Minimum number of characters.
        5. precision specifier. Period (.) followed by a number that specifies how many digits to be displayed for floating point numbers, or a maximum character limit when applied to a string.

        To display an actual % sign, use %% in the format string.

        Argument Ordering and reuse

        Placeholder substitution need not be done in parameter order, and supplied parameters can be substituted more than once, as shown below:

        <?php
  printf('%2$s played against %1$s and the winner was %1$s', 'Spain', 'Netherlands');
?>
        <?php
  printf('%1$s as a string, %1$.2f as a floating point, %1$d as a decimal number, %1$o as octal, and %1$x in hexadecimal.', 123.653);
?>

        No related posts.

        ]]>         http://php.devreview.com/php-output-formatting/feed/ 0         PHP News #3 http://php.devreview.com/php-news-3/ http://php.devreview.com/php-news-3/#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 02:00:15 +0000 dev review admin http://php.devreview.com/?p=683
      • The last PHP4 release PHP 4.4.9 has been released. This is to be the...
      • PHP 5.2.3 Released A new PHP version has been released: 5.2.3. The development...
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        • ]]>         PHP developer news for week ending July 23rd, 2010.

        • PHP 5.2.14 released. Bug & security release and the end of active support for the 5.2 line.
        • PHP 5.3.3 released. Over 100 fixes with a number of security enhancements.
        • CakePHP 1.3.3 rainbow icing edition released.
        • Phalanx PHP Framework. Event driven PHP5.3+ framework.

        Conferences

        • CodeIgniter Con 2010. August 14 & 15, Bristol UK.
        • Symfony day. October 8th, 2010 in Cologne, Germany.
        • indieconf. Conference for independent web professionals. November 13, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.

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        ]]>         http://php.devreview.com/php-news-3/feed/ 0         PHP News #2 http://php.devreview.com/php-news-2/ http://php.devreview.com/php-news-2/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 06:51:40 +0000 dev review admin http://php.devreview.com/?p=656 PHP developer news for week ending July 16th, 2010.

        • PHP For Android (PFA). Use your PHP skills on an Android device.
        • CouchDB the document-oriented, Non-Relational Database Management Server (NRDBMS) goes 1.0.
        • WebMatrix. Microsoft making it easier to install PHP apps on Windows.
        • A new book – Pro PHP Refactoring from Apress.

        • Swiftlet. Another lightweight MVC style framework for PHP 5.1+. Actually has some documentation.

        No related posts.

        ]]>         http://php.devreview.com/php-news-2/feed/ 0         Why use PHP? http://php.devreview.com/why-use-php/ http://php.devreview.com/why-use-php/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:22:20 +0000 Ernie Leseberg http://php.devreview.com/?p=676
      • Google gears for offline applications Google has made available the beta of Google Gears which...
      • Choose a minimum PHP version Ok, you are about to code a great new application...
        • ]]>         If you are looking to create dynamic functionality on a web site, there are no shortage of options for the server programming language. So why use PHP?

        Free to obtain and use

        The source for PHP as well as binaries for most operating systems are available free of charge for download either from PHP downloads page or OS specific sites or package managers. There are no ongoing license fees to run a PHP install. Common web servers which you will also require such as Apache are also freely available.

        Easy to set up

        The various package managers for Linux distributions make a PHP based web server install easy. There are also alternatives such as XAMPP & WAMP which can install required components and extras such as MySQL, on Windows and Linux.

        Easy to get coding

        Creating and editing PHP code does not require any fancy software. A simple text editor such as vi or Notepad is all you need. The are many free text editors that provide extra functionality such as colour coding, autocompletion and syntax checking. Full blown integrated development environments (IDE) are also available which can assist with other bells and whistles.

        Easy to achieve results

        PHP integrates seamlessly with HTML code, and the two can sit side by side in a single code file. A static html page can quickly be made dynamic through PHP conditional statements and looping. There is also a huge amount of existing PHP code (snippets, classes to full frameworks) that can be quickly integrated with new code to produce powerful results in a short time frame. This is also a potential downside of PHP. What is quick and easy today, can be a maintenance nightmare tomorrow.

        Third party Code

        PHP has many hundreds of inbuilt functions, and very wide range of connections for databases, web services etc. However there will be the need for functionality that is not built into PHP? Most likely other developers have had a similar need, and in the spirit of sharing or profit, these solutions are often made available. 2 official sources are PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository) [http://pear.php.net/] & PECL (PHP Extensions repository). Here you can find numerous classes & packages to provide extra functionality. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Numerous sites provide code code, and there are no shortage of PHP component frameworks, such as ezComponents & Zend Framework to name just 2, and class code sites such as & PHP Classes. Note: Always buyer beware on third party code.

        No forced development style

        PHP is very flexible in how developers can use it. Procedural programming or object orientated. Monolithic scripts with intermingled functionality or well defined and separated solutions. It is up to the developer based on their preference and experience to create their own solution, and none is forced upon them.

        Portable

        PHP is an interpreted language, and PHP code is highly portable. Correctly written code can be easily moved from one OS to another, and should preform the same function.

        Widely deployed

        Not only is PHP available for all the major operating systems, external PHP powered web servers are extremely common. PHP is standard in most web hosts offerings, from the cheapest to the high end.

        Excellent support base

        PHP Manual

        The PHP manual which is online and can be downloaded locally (almost 4Mb compressed) is available in English and many other languages, and goes far beyond a simple function reference.

        Fellow Developers

        Have a problem with your PHP code, there are no shortage of forums and groups which you can ask questions at. Many programmers also share their experiences of problems and solutions, so a google search will generally bring back plenty of ideas for solutions.

        Books

        There are plenty of books on PHP from getting started to issues faced by the largest of applications.

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        ]]>         http://php.devreview.com/why-use-php/feed/ 0