A few months ago, I wrote about learning JavaScript. I'm already pretty comfortable with the language, and although I did break the chain, I'm happy to report that I'm still at it. Never stop learning, right? In case it's helpful to others, I thought I'd mention a few more resources. I may even keep this list updated. If I don't, you can always browse my full list of JavaScript links. Eloquent JavaScript This is the interactive tutorial I mentioned in my original post. JavaScript: The Good Parts This is the book I mentioned in my original post. Everyone recommends it. JavaScript for PHP…
PHP
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Most Topular Stories
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JavaScript Study Guide
Chris Shiflett26 Apr 2012 | 9:28 am -
Why I Began Testing
@TheKeyboard13 May 2012 | 11:00 pmIn the run-up to php|tek 2012 next week I wanted to do a blog entry every day this week. Since I am supremely lazy I made sure to ask my followers on Twitter what they would like me to blog about. There were some interesting suggestions but I will start out with one that I think explains a lot about me. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the last few years helping to spread the word that having automated test suites and testable applications is a good thing. I know it’s not easy and I’ve had conversations with many other developers who still think that writing tests is a… -
PHP 5.4.3 and PHP 5.3.13 Released!
PHP.net news & announcements8 May 2012 | 12:44 pmThe PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.4.3 and PHP 5.3.13. All users are encouraged to upgrade to PHP 5.4.3 or PHP 5.3.13 The releases complete a fix for a vulnerability in CGI-based setups (CVE-2012-2311). Note: mod_php and php-fpm are not vulnerable to this attack. PHP 5.4.3 fixes a buffer overflow vulnerability in the apache_request_headers() (CVE-2012-2329). The PHP 5.3 series is not vulnerable to this issue. For source downloads of PHP 5.4.3 and PHP 5.3.13 please visit our downloads page, Windows binaries can be found on… -
BAMify Ads
CI News9 May 2012 | 5:54 pmWhat can you tell us about the team that built the BAMify Ads site? We are two senior developers from a successful development studio in the UK. We spend our days making systems for large multi-nationals. We also own dogs. What can you tell us about the site in general? What are the goals of the site and the main audience? The first thing we want to point out is that it’s free. Totally free. No scams, no way of trying to pilfer money from people, no credit cards (ever). The aim of the site is to offer free online advertising to anyone who wants it (meeting… -
Calling All Contributors: Community Summit 2012
WordPress News15 May 2012 | 5:36 pmEach year, the WordPress core development team meets in person for a week to work together and discuss the vision for WordPress in the coming year. As annual events go, it’s easily my favorite. Don’t get me wrong, I love attending WordCamps and local WordPress meetups (which are awesome and you should try to attend if you are able), but at the core team meetup, the focus on working together and getting things done is unique, as is the experience of every person in the room being so highly qualified. This year, instead of just planning a core team meetup, I’m aiming a little…
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CI News
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BAMify Ads
9 May 2012 | 5:54 pmWhat can you tell us about the team that built the BAMify Ads site? We are two senior developers from a successful development studio in the UK. We spend our days making systems for large multi-nationals. We also own dogs. What can you tell us about the site in general? What are the goals of the site and the main audience? The first thing we want to point out is that it’s free. Totally free. No scams, no way of trying to pilfer money from people, no credit cards (ever). The aim of the site is to offer free online advertising to anyone who wants it (meeting… -
Simplifying Tools Used for Feedback
4 Apr 2012 | 9:33 amEllisLab and the CodeIgniter Reactor team have been thrilled with participation in discussions, pull requests, code review, and idea submissions on GitHub. It has resulted in a steady decline in traffic to the UserVoice forum that we opened prior to moving our codebase to GitHub, as the majority of those conversations have organically moved there as well. So effective today, EllisLab and the CodeIgniter Reactor team are closing the UserVoice forum. You can still comment on existing ideas if you wish, but voting and new ideas are closed, pending a deletion of the UserVoice forum… -
A Quick Look at Sparks
13 Mar 2012 | 11:38 amOn the back of a CIConf in London last month, I would like to delve a little into a common theme amongst CodeIgniter developers. Speeding up development through simple automation. To do that we’re going to take a look at the CodeIgniter Sparks project and how it can drastically speed up your development. To demonstrate, I will walk through building a little portfolio that leeches off the GitHub API. But first, what is sparks? Sparks is a package management system for CodeIgniter. It hosts ready-to-go user contributed code that you can pull into your projects. If you have acquired a game… -
Pancake App
25 Jan 2012 | 10:56 amThree days ago I received my copy of Inc magazine. I was scanning through it and low and behold there is a 1/4 page blurb about Pancake App! Phil is a leader within the CodeIgniter community and a member of the Reactor Team so I was very excited to see this. After doing some research I found that we have never done a showcase on Pancake App so this entry is to make that right. Congratulations to Phil, Lee, Bruno and Adam! You guys deserve the recognition that Inc. Magazine is bringing you. Tell us a little about Phil and Lee. Lee Tengum is a PHP developer with a keen eye for design. I am a… -
ZoomShift
20 Jan 2012 | 2:47 pmWhat can you tell us about the team that built ZoomShift? Zoomshift is a rather young 4-person team composed of 2 developers, a designer, and a sales and content person. Our team is very tight knit and incredibly passionate about entrepreneurship and technology. We are strong believers in lean methodology and are constantly searching for new technologies to set our product apart. We all agree that we can’t see ourselves doing anything else. We love what we do and have a strong passion for entrepreneurship. What can you tell us about the site in general? What are the goals of the site…
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WordPress News
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Calling All Contributors: Community Summit 2012
15 May 2012 | 5:36 pmEach year, the WordPress core development team meets in person for a week to work together and discuss the vision for WordPress in the coming year. As annual events go, it’s easily my favorite. Don’t get me wrong, I love attending WordCamps and local WordPress meetups (which are awesome and you should try to attend if you are able), but at the core team meetup, the focus on working together and getting things done is unique, as is the experience of every person in the room being so highly qualified. This year, instead of just planning a core team meetup, I’m aiming a little… -
WordPress 3.4 Beta 4
2 May 2012 | 9:52 pmLess bugs, more polish, the same beta disclaimers. Download, test, report bugs. Thanks much. /ryan #thewholebrevitything -
WordPress 3.3.2 (and WordPress 3.4 Beta 3)
20 Apr 2012 | 10:10 amWordPress 3.3.2 is available now and is a security update for all previous versions. Three external libraries included in WordPress received security updates: Plupload (version 1.5.4), which WordPress uses for uploading media. SWFUpload, which WordPress previously used for uploading media, and may still be in use by plugins. SWFObject, which WordPress previously used to embed Flash content, and may still be in use by plugins and themes. Thanks to Neal Poole and Nathan Partlan for responsibly disclosing the bugs in Plupload and SWFUpload, and Szymon Gruszecki for a separate bug in SWFUpload. -
WordPress 3.4 Beta 2
11 Apr 2012 | 10:52 pmHowdy, folks! Another week, another beta. Since we released Beta 1 last week, we’ve committed more than 60 bug fixes and feature adjustments based on testing and feedback. If you’ve been testing Beta 1, please update to Beta 2 to make sure things are still working for you. If you are a theme or plugin author and have not yet started testing your code against the 3.4 beta, now’s the perfect time to start. And as always, if you find any bugs, let us know! Full details on testing and bug reporting can be found in last week’s Beta 1 post. Download WordPress 3.4 Beta 2 -
WordPress 3.4 Beta 1
4 Apr 2012 | 9:07 pmWordPress 3.4 is ready for beta testers! As always, this is software still in development and we don’t recommend that you run it on a production site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. If you break it (find a bug), please report it, and if you’re a developer, try to help us fix it. If all goes well, we hope to release WordPress 3.4 in May. The more help we get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner we will be able to release the final version. If you want to be a beta tester, you should check out the Codex article on how to report bugs. Here’s some of…
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Joomla Announcements
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Joomla Community Magazine | May 2012
2 May 2012 | 8:21 amThe May issue of the Joomla Community Magazine is here! Our stories this month: EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION Joomla! Around the World…, by Dianne Henning FEATURE STORIES 5 Steps Towards Successful Time Management, by Gabe Wahhab Joomla Events Website Launch, by Mike Carson Pros and Cons of Partnering with a Web Design Agency, by Luke Summerfield PROJECT NEWS Leadership Highlights for April 2012, by Alice Grevet SITEBUILDERS Drupal to Joomla! Migration - Truthout.org, by Jon Neubauer Best Ukrainian sites made on Joomla CMS, Part 3, by Denys Nosov DESIGNERS Design Trends - Parallax Designs,… -
J and Beyond, an International Joomla! Conference
6 Apr 2012 | 11:02 amJ and Beyond, an International Joomla! Conference, is back for the third year. For 3 days in May (18th -20th) Joomla! developers and site builders from over 30 countries will gather in Bad Nauheim, near Frankfurt, right in the heart of Europe. The programme for J and Beyond is created by the participants through a public "Call for Papers" and this year for the first time we will be integrating the Joomla! Project Roadmap sessions. J and Beyond is your opportunity to: Learn from others Present your ideas Plan for the future Meet the people behind the avatar AND most importantly - to have fun! -
Joomla Has Been Downloaded Over 30 Million Times
5 Apr 2012 | 7:46 amJoomla today announces that its core files have been downloaded more than 30 million times from Joomla.org. Joomla now averages around 1 million downloads every month. The Joomla community attributes the continued growth in the number of individuals, companies and organizations using the CMS to an aggressive development road map that included the release of Joomla 1.7 in July 2011. The CMS also began adhering to a six-month release cycle meaning more product enhancements being introduced more often. New features in the latest version included multi-database support, one-click version… -
Joomla Community Magazine | April 2012
3 Apr 2012 | 9:26 pmThe April issue of the Joomla Community Magazine is here! Our stories this month: Editor's Introduction The Reel Deal, by Alice Grevet Feature Stories Worksy Makes Joomla User-Friendly for Non-Techies, by Ronni K. G. Christiansen When in Rome, do as the Romans do, in Japan!, by Norito H.Yoshida 10 Joomla! Prejudices, by Angie Radtke Best Ukrainian sites made on Joomla CMS. Part 2, by Denys Nosov Project News Leadership Highlights from March 2012, by Alice Grevet Events JoomlaDay in Iran, Algier, and The Netherlands, by Jacques Rentzke 2012 CMS Expo Learning and Business Conference, by Dianne… -
Joomla 2.5.4 Released
1 Apr 2012 | 7:00 pmThe Joomla Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Joomla 2.5.4. This is a security release. The Production Leadership Team's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community. Learn more about Joomla! development at the Developer Site. The update process is very simple, and complete instructions are available here. Note that there are now easier and better ways of updating than FTPing the files. Download New Installations: Click here to download Joomla 2.5.4 (Full package) » Update Package: Click here to download Joomla 2.5.4 (Update…
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drupal.org
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Drupal 7.14 and Drupal 6.26 released
2 May 2012 | 5:41 pmDrupal 7.14 is now available, which contains bug fixes as well as fixes for security vulnerabilities from Drupal 7.13. Drupal 6.26, which fixes known bugs (no security issues) is also available for download. Download Drupal 7.14 Download Drupal 6.26 Upgrading your existing Drupal 7 and 6 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 7.x release series, consult the Drupal 7.0 release announcement, more information on the 6.x releases can be found in the Drupal 6.0 release announcement. Drupal 5 is no longer maintained,… -
DrupalCon Munich Accepting Session Submissions
29 Apr 2012 | 11:43 pmThe call for papers is still open for DrupalCon Munich -- but only until May 11! Trainings too! The DrupalCon content team is looking for sessions that cover pushing the boundaries of Drupal and its increasing use as a cross platform system. Help shape what is presented at DrupalCon with this year's theme, "Open Up! Connecting systems and people." Any proposals for sessions should fit within one of the following tracks: Coding and Development Community Design and Theming Business and Strategy Site building DevOps To learn more about each topic, view the Session Track page. Here you can… -
Google announces Summer of Code results for 2012 - Drupal gets 13 projects!!
25 Apr 2012 | 9:59 pmWe are thrilled to announce that Google will be sponsoring 13 Drupal projects for Summer of Code 2012. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Google, who are investing over $72,000 in the Drupal project. As always, we had many more projects that we would have liked to accept than we were able to. The mentoring team deliberated fiercely over the past two weeks, and arrived at the final acceptance list. Drupal will benefit from microdata support for contrib field types, help topic module for documentation team, sales reports integration for drupal commerce, materialization plugin support… -
Groups.Drupal.org Update: New maintainers and plans for Drupal 7
16 Apr 2012 | 1:35 pmBack in 2009, Groups.Drupal.Org (GDO) went through a major transition including upgrading from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, a redesign, and adding new maintainers. We are currently in the process of a similar transition. The site has already gone through a redesign, and as we make plans to transition to Drupal 7, we will also be moving to new maintainers for the next year. Making it easier to contribute to GDO Between the Drupal Association’s initiative to improve *.drupal.org, the community brainstorming on site improvements, and feature requests in the Groups.Drupal.Org issue queue, there is… -
/drupalgive initiative
9 Apr 2012 | 8:35 amHi friends. I'm hoping that you'll support another Drupal community initiative that I've recently dreamed up. All you have to do is add a /drupalgive page to your organization's web site. Two organizations have published already at http://www.acquia.com/drupalgive and http://www.chapterthree.com/drupalgive. These pages are based on a design by Nica Lorber of Chapter Three. Feel free to reuse this design or just publish a plain listing page. It is better to publish a plain page than none at all. Or use the Feature at http://drupal.org/project/drupalgive. A /drupalgive page highlights the great…
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Planet PHP
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Composer Dependency Woes - blog.phpdeveloper.org » PHP
15 May 2012 | 4:35 pmI spent the better part of this afternoon trying to figure out why a Composer installation wasn’t working and finally figured out the problem…it wasn’t mine. First, a little context – I’m currently working on a testing presentation for some folks at work and I wanted to show them how to work with the Behat testing tool to create some handy functional/integration tests for our framework-based apps. I threw together a little framework (yes yes, I know) and got the PHPUnit tests set up and running in no time. When it came to the Behat tests, though, no matter what I did, I was still… -
Some throttling for PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.4 - Ulf Wendel
15 May 2012 | 8:11 amUsers of MySQL Replication sometimes throttle client requests to give slaves time to catch up to the master. PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.4, the current development version, features some throttling through the quality-of-service filter and global transaction identifier (GTID). Both the plugins client-side GTID emulation and the MySQL 5.6 built-in GTID feature can ... -
Sami: Yet another PHP API documentation generator - Fabien Potencier
15 May 2012 | 6:58 amToday is my "let open source some of my private Github repositories" day, and more specifically, I'm releasing a bunch of code related to documentation. Earlier today, I've released the Sphinx extensions I'm using to generate the Symfony documentation. And now, I'm releasing my API documentation generator. Yes, I know that PHP already has a bunch of such generators, but I started to work on this project several years ago, when the only viable option was the old phpdocumentor. Nowadays, phpDocumentor version 2 is probably the best option out there as it has a good architecture, it works fine,… -
Interview with Derick Rethans - Cal Evans
15 May 2012 | 12:00 amBlog:http://derickrethans.nl/ Twitter: @derickr Show Notes: http://www.phplondon.org/ http://xdebug.com/ Sponsored by: Engine Yard -
Quick and Dirty REST Security (or Hashes For All!) - blog.phpdeveloper.org » PHP
14 May 2012 | 4:44 pmSo in working up a new RESTful service I’ve been tinkering with, I wanted to provide some kind of “authentication” system for it. I started to look into OAuth, but got a bit overwhelmed by everything that was involved with it. Looking for something a bit more lightweight (and simpler to implement a bit more quickly) I came across this older article with a suggestion of a private key/hash combination. I figured that could do the job nicely for a first shot, so I set to implementing it. On the Server Side I’m using the FuelPHP framework for this one, but that’s really only giving me a…
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PHP.net news & announcements
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PHP 5.4.3 and PHP 5.3.13 Released!
8 May 2012 | 12:44 pmThe PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.4.3 and PHP 5.3.13. All users are encouraged to upgrade to PHP 5.4.3 or PHP 5.3.13 The releases complete a fix for a vulnerability in CGI-based setups (CVE-2012-2311). Note: mod_php and php-fpm are not vulnerable to this attack. PHP 5.4.3 fixes a buffer overflow vulnerability in the apache_request_headers() (CVE-2012-2329). The PHP 5.3 series is not vulnerable to this issue. For source downloads of PHP 5.4.3 and PHP 5.3.13 please visit our downloads page, Windows binaries can be found on… -
PHP 5.3.12 and 5.4.2 and the CGI flaw (CVE-2012-1823)
6 May 2012 | 4:00 pmPHP 5.3.12/5.4.2 do not fix all variations of the CGI issues described in CVE-2012-1823. It has also come to our attention that some sites use an insecure cgiwrapper script to run PHP. These scripts will use instead of "$@" to pass parameters to php-cgi which causes a number of issues. Again, people using mod_php or php-fpm are not affected. One way to address these CGI issues is to reject the request if the query string contains a '-' and no '='. It can be done using Apache's mod_rewrite like this: RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^[^=]*$ RewriteCond… -
PHP 5.3.12 and PHP 5.4.2 Released!
3 May 2012 | 11:00 amThere is a vulnerability in certain CGI-based setups (Apache+mod_php and nginx+php-fpm are not affected) that has gone unnoticed for at least 8 years. Section 7 of the CGI spec states: Some systems support a method for supplying a [sic] array of strings to the CGI script. This is only used in the case of an `indexed' query. This is identified by a "GET" or "HEAD" HTTP request with a URL search string not containing any unencoded "=" characters. So, requests that do not have a "=" in the query string are treated differently from those who do in some… -
DevConf 2012
27 Apr 2012 | 12:20 amDevConf 2012 in Moscow, Russia on Jun 9 - Jun 10 DevConf is the ultimate meeting place for russian-speaking web-developers, combining several language-specific conferences under one roof. This year DevConf will include the following sections: DevConf::PHP(); DevConf::Perl(); DevConf::RoR(); DevConf::Python(); DevConf::Javascript(); Each section will feature several talks from the active contributors/authors of the language. Among the invited speakers are Derick Rethans (XDebug creator), David Soria Parra (active PHP contributor), Andrey Aksyonov (author of Sphinx), Alexander Makarov (one of… -
PHP 5.3.11 And PHP 5.4.1 Released!
26 Apr 2012 | 5:50 amThe PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.11 and PHP 5.4.1. These releases focuses on improving the stability of the current PHP branches with over 60 bug fixes, some of which are security related. Security Enhancements for both PHP 5.3.11 and PHP 5.4.1: Fixed bug #54374 (Insufficient validating of upload name leading to corrupted $_FILES indices). (CVE-2012-1172). Add open_basedir checks to readline_write_history and readline_read_history. Security Enhancement affecting PHP 5.3.11 only: Fixed bug #61043 (Regression in magic_quotes_gpc fix for CVE-2012-0831).
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Latest PHP Classes blog posts
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Using DaDaBIK to create a PHP CRUD Database Front-End without coding
9 May 2012 | 12:50 pmUsing DaDaBIK to create a PHP CRUD Database Front-End without coding By eugenio tacchini DaDaBIK is an Open Source PHP project which allows you to create Web front-end and simple database applications without coding. The new stable version 4.4 of DaDaBIK was released recently. Read this article to learn more about DaDaBIK and how you can use it to productively create your PHP applications. -
Will it ever Matter if PHP Sucks? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 23
7 May 2012 | 1:54 pmWill it ever Matter if PHP Sucks? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 23 By Manuel Lemos Once in a while we see fans of other languages writing long articles on why PHP sucks and you should not use it. But will that ever matter? That is one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in the episode 23 of the Lately in PHP podcast, for the first time also recorded in video using Google Hangouts On Air. They also covered other polemic ideas for future PHP versions like the pure PHP script proposal, making function names case-sensitive and the option to skip optional function… -
Making the Web Faster with HTTP 2 Protocol
3 May 2012 | 3:24 pmMaking the Web Faster with HTTP 2 Protocol By Manuel Lemos The HTTP protocol version 2.0 is in the process of being defined. There was a call for proposals and several researchers submitted specifications and ideas that can make the Web faster and better in several other aspects. Read this article to learn about the details of these proposals and what Web developers can expect to prepare to take advantage of the planned improvements of the HTTP 2.0 protocol. -
Participate in the Lately in PHP podcast in Video with Google Hangouts
23 Apr 2012 | 1:28 pmParticipate in the Lately in PHP podcast in Video with Google Hangouts By Manuel Lemos The upcoming episodes of the Lately in PHP podcast will be recorded in video using the Google Hangouts service. This is a brief note on how you can participate in the recording sessions if you are interested to have a voice and interact with other podcast participants giving your opinion on the different subjects that we will discuss. -
Will PHP development Migration to Git improve non-Core Developer Contribution Interest? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 22
5 Apr 2012 | 2:32 pmWill PHP development Migration to Git improve non-Core Developer Contribution Interest? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 22 By Manuel Lemos The PHP development migrated to a Git repository. With the integration with GitHub it became easier for non-core developers to submit pull requests with bug fixes and new feature improvements to PHP. Will this new possibility make it PHP core developers accept more contributions from non-core developers? That is one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in the episode 22 of the Lately in PHP podcast. They also talk about the…
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blog.phpdeveloper.org
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Composer Dependency Woes
15 May 2012 | 4:35 pmI spent the better part of this afternoon trying to figure out why a Composer installation wasn’t working and finally figured out the problem…it wasn’t mine. First, a little context – I’m currently working on a testing presentation for some folks at work and I wanted to show them how to work with the Behat testing tool to create some handy functional/integration tests for our framework-based apps. I threw together a little framework (yes yes, I know) and got the PHPUnit tests set up and running in no time. When it came to the Behat tests, though, no matter what I… -
Quick and Dirty REST Security (or Hashes For All!)
14 May 2012 | 4:44 pmSo in working up a new RESTful service I’ve been tinkering with, I wanted to provide some kind of “authentication” system for it. I started to look into OAuth, but got a bit overwhelmed by everything that was involved with it. Looking for something a bit more lightweight (and simpler to implement a bit more quickly) I came across this older article with a suggestion of a private key/hash combination. I figured that could do the job nicely for a first shot, so I set to implementing it. On the Server Side I’m using the FuelPHP framework for this one, but that’s… -
Book Review: “Code Simplicity”
17 Apr 2012 | 8:40 amLast night I finished my latest read from O’Reiily, Code Simplicity – The Science of Software Development. I spotted the book the other day when O’Reilly was running a special on a few books and the ebook was cheap so I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try. After all, the “science” part in the title made it sound like there might be some hidden truths that could be applied anywhere in development. Unfortunately, most of the book just ended up being more of a rambling journey though things that most software developers that have any years of experience… -
Dynamic Toolbar Menus with ExtJS + PHP
16 Apr 2012 | 11:26 amIn Ext JS 4 there’s some handy things that come bundled with it (there’s lots of stuff actually – it’s a pretty large library). Recently, though, I needed to pull in navigation information from a remote source (JSON output from a PHP script). Thankfully, Ext still made this pretty easy with its Toolbar and Menu components with their listeners. Here’s my example code: Ext.create('Ext.toolbar.Toolbar', { floating: false, id: 'menuToolbar', cls: 'appMenu', height: 30, items: [], // dynamically built below listeners: { beforerender: function() { var navStore =… -
Behat + FuelPHP = RESTful Testing Happiness
29 Mar 2012 | 5:11 amIf you’ve been following my recent posts, you know I’ve been working more lately with Behat for resting some REST services. In this post I showed you how to get things set up for some testing. In this post, I’ll show you how to use a custom class that I’ve put together to make a reusable system for testing REST. For those that want to cut to the chase, I’ve posted some example code to github showing the code for the two different sides of the equation – the Behat testing and the PHP framework side (I went with FuelPHP because I was already familiar with it…
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Chris Shiflett
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JavaScript Study Guide
26 Apr 2012 | 9:28 amA few months ago, I wrote about learning JavaScript. I'm already pretty comfortable with the language, and although I did break the chain, I'm happy to report that I'm still at it. Never stop learning, right? In case it's helpful to others, I thought I'd mention a few more resources. I may even keep this list updated. If I don't, you can always browse my full list of JavaScript links. Eloquent JavaScript This is the interactive tutorial I mentioned in my original post. JavaScript: The Good Parts This is the book I mentioned in my original post. Everyone recommends it. JavaScript for PHP… -
Brooklyn Beta 2012
27 Mar 2012 | 2:29 pmBrooklyn Beta is becoming more than a conference. It's still a conference, too, and although I never did recap last year's conference like I wanted to, I did collect a bunch of posts, photos, and videos on Gimme Bar. Also, Nate Bolt and Captain & the Fox collaborated on a really cool video that captures the spirit of it. I love it. Check it out: If you were there last year, you might like to know that Joel Rose launched New Classrooms, Tony Fadell launched Nest, and Todd Park was named the new CTO of the United States. Pretty cool stuff. We've settled on the dates for this year's… -
Svbtle Versus Obtvse
23 Mar 2012 | 2:36 pmI just read a post by Daniel Howells about these two stories on Hacker News: Codename: Svbtle by Dustin Curtis Codename: Obtvse Before I make my small point, let me give you the quick synopsis. Briefly, Dustin Curtis made his own blogging platform, opened it up to a few friends, and blogged about it. Someone else submitted it to Hacker News, and that's where the story takes a turn. The Hacker News community quickly attacked Dustin's persona (he describes himself as a superhero) and the exclusivity of his blogging platform. I don't have a strong opinion about these criticisms, but I do believe… -
Ideas of March
15 Mar 2012 | 9:06 amI love blogs. A year ago today, I tried to start a sort of blogging revival. To my great surprise and delight, it kinda worked. For a while, I could find really interesting stuff to read every day by just browsing through my planet or #ideasofmarch on Twitter. It was great. As time passed, commitment waned. When I noticed it was almost that time of year again, I decided this was a tradition worth keeping, so here I am. I'm using this opportunity to renew my commitment to blog more, and hopefully this year's Ideas of March can provide an opportunity to let everyone know blogs are still alive… -
Hacking Rails (and GitHub)
5 Mar 2012 | 10:26 amHacker News exploded yesterday with news of GitHub being hacked. Wanting to know what all the fuss was about, I began with GitHub's side of the story: A GitHub user exploited a security vulnerability in the public key update form in order to add his public key to the rails organization. He was then able to push a new file to the project as a demonstration of this vulnerability. As soon as we detected the attack we expunged the unauthorized key and suspended the user. My confidence in the clarity of GitHub's side of the story dissipated when I read one of the comments: You didn't really…
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Paul M. Jones
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Policeman Takes $22K From Innocent Driver
15 May 2012 | 4:48 pmReby was driving down Interstate 40, heading west through Putnam County, when he was stopped for speeding. A Monterey police officer wanted to know if he was carrying any large amounts of cash. "I said, ‘Around $20,000,’" he recalled. "Then, … Continue reading → -
TSA Gropes Henry Kissinger
14 May 2012 | 10:51 pmKissinger, who was in a wheelchair, was told by a TSA agent that he needed to be searched. “He stood with his suit jacket off, and he was wearing suspenders,” freelance reporter Matthew Cole told the Post. “They gave him … Continue reading → -
‘Justice for Trayvon’: 15 Whites Beaten By Gangs of Black Thugs… So Far
2 May 2012 | 9:03 pmThe assaults on a pair of Virginian-Pilot reporters in Norfolk, Va., two weeks ago at the hands of 30 black youths, reported for the first time Tuesday, are the latest in a series of attacks driven by a warped sense of racial vigilantism … Continue reading → -
5 Reasons Why Conservatives Should Root For a Romney Defeat
1 May 2012 | 2:43 pmFour: If Romney wins this election, odds are he’ll automatically be the Republican nominee in 2016. Regardless of whether he wins then, this will effectively kill all prospects for putting a more serious Republican reformer (such as Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul … Continue reading → -
FIG, FUD & FOMO
1 May 2012 | 10:45 amIn which MWOP, Jeremy Lindblom, and I all discuss the Framework Interoperability Group (née the PHP Standards group). Is it a secret cabal? Are we trying to take over the community? Is a standard style guide going to get shoved … Continue reading →
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@TheKeyboard
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Have A 'Strategy'
14 May 2012 | 11:00 pmYesterday on Twitter I got into a nerdfight with a blogger who posted a blog entry about using the Strategy pattern to avoid switch-case. At first glance, I was convinced that he was using variable variables which I feel is a big code smell. So natually I started arguing. I was rude. He was rude, slapping me in the twitter face with a blog link that seemed to indicate he thought I had no idea about variables in PHP. To be fair I earned that by not paying attention. Once I realized what he was doing, I realized that the Strategy pattern was applicable in this case…but his chosen example… -
Why I Began Testing
13 May 2012 | 11:00 pmIn the run-up to php|tek 2012 next week I wanted to do a blog entry every day this week. Since I am supremely lazy I made sure to ask my followers on Twitter what they would like me to blog about. There were some interesting suggestions but I will start out with one that I think explains a lot about me. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the last few years helping to spread the word that having automated test suites and testable applications is a good thing. I know it’s not easy and I’ve had conversations with many other developers who still think that writing tests is a… -
Grumpy Programmers Like Pair Programming
8 May 2012 | 11:00 pmSome of you might have a vision of me, the self-described and oft-labeled Grumpy Programmer as the type who prefers to work in solitude. Uninterrupted, I crank out code while in The Zone. I prefer working in collaborative environments where the entire team gets to work on the entire application. None of this siloing bullshit that I see happen time and time again. “Borat is the only guy who understand our reporting system. We can’t possibly let anyone else work on it!” That sort of nonsense doesn’t belong on any team and also speaks of ridonkulous communication… -
Build PHP 5.4 on CentOS with Vagrant
14 Apr 2012 | 11:00 pmI like the idea of using Vagrant to create virtual machines for my development work. Doing things this way I think keeps the host machine cleaner and allows you the ability to distribute those VM’s to other people as well. My old boss Ben Ramsey did a very informative post on getting PHP 5.4 configured on CentOS so I decided to one-up him by taking his instructions and creating a Puppet manifest so you could do this using Vagrant or on any server that you can provision using Puppet. First, you will need a CentOS base box to play with. I used this box but I think any CentOS 6.0 (or… -
Metatesting: Testing Constructors
4 Apr 2012 | 11:00 pmIf you have a PHP application that makes heavy use of objects (which is probably 95% of you reading this) then you will have objects with constructor methods in them. It is also very likely that there is some stuff going on in those constructors. So how do you test things like this? Here is the constructor method that we are trying to test: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 <?php class Alpha protected $_foo protected $_bar protected $_baz public function __construct $container Grumpy_ContainergetInstance $alphaConfig $container->alphaConfig $this->_foo…
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Sean Coates: PHP, Web (+Beer)
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PHP as a templating language
14 May 2012 | 10:06 amThere’s been quite a bit of talk, recently, in PHP-land about templates and the ramifications of enforcing “pure” PHP scripts by preventing scripts from entering HTML mode. I’m not quite sure how I feel about this RFC, but it got me thinking about the whole idea of using PHP for templating in modern web apps. For many years, I was a supporter of using PHP as a templating language to render HTML. However, I really don’t buy into the idea of adding an additional abstraction layer on top of PHP, such as Smarty (and many others). In the past year or so, I’ve… -
Natural Load Testing
7 May 2012 | 9:57 amMy friend Paul Reinheimer has put together an excellent product/service that is probably of use to many of you. The product is called Natural Load Testing, and it harnesses some of the machinery that powers the also-excellent wonderproxy and its extremely useful VPN service. The gist is that once you've been granted an account (they're in private beta right now, but tell them I sent you, and if you're not a horrible person such as a spammer, scammer, or promoter of online timesuck virtual farming, you'll probably get in—just kidding about that farming clause… sort of), you can record… -
Ideas of March
15 Mar 2012 | 8:50 amA year ago, I posted about Ideas of March, which Chris got rolling. In it, I pledged to blog more. Today, I am not so proud to say that I have mostly failed to do so. If I had to come up with a reason, I'd have to say that, personally, 2011 turned out a whole lot different than I was expecting, back then—and not in a good way. Over the last year, however, I did post a few things that I think were interesting, and worth of a re-read (at risk of making this post into a clip show): PHP Community Conference …a post about why I was excited about going to the PHP Community Conference in… -
HTTP 1.0 and the Connection header
27 Dec 2011 | 9:03 amI have a long backlog of things to write about. One of those things is Varnish (more on that in a future post). So, over these Christmas holidays, while intentionally taking a break from real work, I decided to finally do some of the research required before I can really write about how Varnish is going to make your web apps much faster. To get some actual numbers, I broke out the Apache Benchmarking utility (ab), and decided to let it loose on my site (100 requests, 10 requests concurrently): ab -n 100 -c 10 http://seancoates.com/codes To my surprise, this didn't finish almost immediately. -
Aficionado's Curse / Pessimistic Optimism
18 Oct 2011 | 10:23 pmAs I've mentioned in previous posts, I like beer. I mean, I really like it. I've tasted many unique, special, rare, and extremely old beers. I even have Beer Judging credentials. I would go as far as to say that I'm a "beer aficionado." I find the idea of a cheap, poorly-made beer (especially when there are superior alternatives on hand) to be almost repulsive. I know aficionados in other fields: wine, vodka, scotch, cheese, movies, music, specific genres of music, woodworking, home electronics, office design, and even one guy I might consider a dog food aficionado. These people, like myself…
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SugarCRM Developer Blog
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New for Sugar 6.5 – Stronger password storage encryption
16 May 2012 | 5:23 amSugar uses MD5 encryption for storing password data in the backend database. This works fairly well, as MD5 is a well understood algorithm and is implemented in just about every programming language, as well as on the database side as well. There’s just one issue, MD5 isn’t the most secure algorithm out there. So starting with Sugar 6.5, we are using PHP crypt on top of this to store each password as a hashed string. This provides greater security for the passwords stored in the database. It also brings up some questions on administration, so here’s the most common ones and… -
HOWTO: Drop a ListView in anywhere with the ListViewFacade
15 May 2012 | 5:11 amI’ve come across requests every so often to embed a ListView into a view you are building. This is actually quite simple to do, thanks to the ListViewFacade class. This class provides a unified interface to getting a ListView, whether the module is using the current Smarty based ListViews or the older XTemplate based ones. Check out the below code snippet, which will drop the Accounts ListView on any view form. It supports pagination as well as re-ordering like a normal ListView does. -
New for Sugar 6.5: In with jQuery, and the beginning of the move away from YUI
14 May 2012 | 5:32 amSugar 6.5 begins another component change for the platform, which is to include jQuery 1.6.4 as a core component going forward. Over time, we will be using jQuery to replace the usage of YUI thoughout the product; the goal is to initially replace YUI 3, and then longer term to replace the use of YUI 2. Many of the developers across our partner and open source developer community are big fans of jQuery, as are we, and we hope the move to jQuery will make working with JS much easier in the product going forward. This will also enable us to make great strides in the UX and UI of the app as a… -
New for Sugar 6.5: SugarHttpClient
11 May 2012 | 5:08 amOne of the biggest complaints I’ve heard recently is around the changes made to the Module Scanner in the product, which is strictly enforced in our On-Demand environment, namely about the inability to use curl or file_get_contents() directly to do outbound web service calls. For example, check out this example of making an outbound call from PHP to the Sugar Web Services API using curl: Not only are there potential issues with curl usage on OD, but there’s a lot of code to make this happen. Pretty inefficient… Now in Sugar 6.5, we’ve helped out developers out by… -
Longer SugarCRM Sessions
10 May 2012 | 1:31 pmIn most server-setups, we find that the SugarCRM Session only lasts about half an hour. This is something I’ve gotten complaints about — users wanting longer sessions to ease the work day. I had spent time looking through the session-management code to find an answer and just wasn’t getting anywhere. I back-burned it until I stumbled on the solution today: SugarCRM sets session length according to a PHP configuration variable. As it often does, the SugarCRM Forums held the question and answer. In extending the 30 minutes session timeout forum user Duzoid posts the question and it is…
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Steve Francia's Epic Blog
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Getting Started with MongoDB and PHP
14 May 2012 | 4:45 pmNearly 3 years ago I discovered a new database that literally changed my life. I know, that’s a pretty bold claim, but it’s true. While leading the engineering team at OpenSky I faced a problem I was well familiar with. How to build a e-commerce product that: 1. Provided performance and scale 2. Handled many verticals and 3. Provided proper indexing on key attributes. In search for a better solution to this problem I encountered MongoDB. I soon experienced a realization that not only was MongoDB the solution to my e-commerce challenge, but fundamentally would change the way all… -
NoSQL databases and Managing Big Data
8 May 2012 | 10:55 amI had the unique opportunity to present at the annual technology forum Insight Venture Partners holds for their portfolio companies. Over 100 CTOs gathered in NYC to hear from great presenters from companies like 10gen, Tumblr, Shutterstock and Buddy Media. I’ve included a slightly longer version of the presentation given which includes a few slides that I cut out for brevity to fit in the allocated time while still allowing time for questions. Another presentation I gave is similar but takes a broader review on MongoDB, including example schemas, queries and how sharding and… -
MongoDB, Hadoop and Humongous Data
4 May 2012 | 6:06 pmLearn how to integrate MongoDB with Hadoop for large-scale distributed data processing. Using Hadoop’s MapReduce and Streaming you will learn how to do analytics and ETL on large datasets with the ability to load and save data against MongoDB. With support for Hadoop streaming support goes beyond the native Java enabling map reduce to be run in languages like Python and Ruby. MongoDB, Hadoop and Humongous Data View more presentations from Steve Francia -
Don’t look now, I’m on DZone
18 Apr 2012 | 3:36 pmI’m happy to announce that going forward you’ll be able to read my articles on DZone as well as spf13.com. DZone has invited me to join their MVB program. They describe their program as: DZone’s Most Valuable Blogger program brings together a group of highly talented bloggers, authors, and technologists actively writing about topics of interest to the developer community. These people are recognized in the industry for their contributions and deep technical knowledge on subjects ranging from software design and architecture to programming on a range of platforms including… -
New personal site powered by GitHub Pages
9 Apr 2012 | 9:18 amAt 10gen we had new headshots taken recently. I think mine came out great. I took this opporitunity to play with GitHub pages and update http://stevefrancia.com. You should goto http://stevefrancia.com and checkout my new personal page. If you like it, fork it. The entire page is here https://github.com/spf13/spf13.github.com, it being a derivative of https://github.com/weightshift/The-Personal-Page.
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code-diesel
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Downloading Gmail attachments using PHP
7 May 2012 | 4:01 amAutomatically extracting attachments from Gmail can be important for reasons where you need to process the attached files periodically with a CRON job. Also it can be useful for automatically archiving important attachments. Below is a simple proof-of-concept plain PHP code, devoid of any object-oriented features that extracts attachments from your Gmail account. It uses PHPs imap extension to access the inbox. Before you proceed make sure that imap is enabled in your Gmail settings page. All attachments downloaded in the following code are saved in the current folder, which you can easily… -
Auto Saving your web form data
2 May 2012 | 7:45 amThere is nothing more frustrating than filling a complex web form and just as you are ready to submit it, you accidentally hit refresh, close your window tab or the browser just crashes on you. Only if you could add some kind of auto-save feature to the form to mitigate this problem. Applications like Gmail, WordPress both support the auto-save feature, albeit in a technically different way. Persisting your form data With the HTML5 local storage feature, your web applications can now save the form data in the local storage until the time it is submitted or reset. This will help avoid users… -
Protocol Relative URLs
19 Apr 2012 | 1:16 amOne little gem I recently encountered is protocol-relative URLs. This solves the headaches of the age-old problem of creating URLs which work whether you’re in SSL mode or normal http. For example take the following image : <img src"http://some-domain.com/images/logo.png"> If the browser is viewing the current page in through HTTPS, then IE will throw the famous “This Page Contains Both Secure and Non-Secure Items” error message. To prevent that from happening we can use protocol-relative urls. So the above will be coded as given below. <img… -
PHP 5.4.0 in a nutshell
6 Apr 2012 | 2:18 amAlthough purists have always sneered upon PHP for being a “patched” language; the evolution of PHP over the years, with new features added in every version, has only increased its popularity. The latest 5.4 release has followed the trend with some major feature additions. The following post describes some important changes in PHP 5.4. Arrays Arrays are one of the important elements of any programming language. Although PHP’s support of arrays is good, I had always found the ‘array’ constructor to be an eye sore. PHP 5.4 finally gets the short array syntax, available in… -
Printing selective DOM elements on a page
20 Mar 2012 | 1:23 amPrinting web pages from JavaScript, although not a common scenario, can be easily accomplished with some simple code. On the other hand, selectively printing some elements from a web page – like a div or a paragraph, can be challenging. Fortunately there are libraries available that can make the task easier. One such useful jQuery plugin is jQuery PrintElement, which allows you to selectively print a DOM element. Usage is extremely easy; just select any element from a webpage and fire the ‘printElement’ method. For example if you have a div like the following: <div…
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Gonzalo Ayuso | Web Architect
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Building a simple SQL wrapper with PHP
14 May 2012 | 6:58 amIf we don’t use an ORM within our projects we need to write SQL statements by hand. I don’t mind to write SQL. It’s simple and descriptive but sometimes we like to use helpers to avoid write the same code again and again. Today we are going to create a simple library to help use to write simple SQL queries. Let’s start: The idea is to instead of write: SELECT * from users where uid=7; write: $sql->select('users', array('uid' => 7)); As we all must know, the best documentation are Unit Test, so here you are the tests of the library: class SqlTest extends… -
Asynchronous queries to PostgreSql database from the browser with node.js and socket.io
7 May 2012 | 7:41 amNormally we perform our database connection at server side with PHP and PDO for example. In this post I will show a simple technique to send queries to our database (PostgreSql in this example) asynchronously using node.js and socket.io. The idea is pretty straightforward. We will send the SQL string and the values with a WebSocket and we will execute a callback in the client when the server (node.js script) fetches the recordset. Our server: var pg = require('pg'); var conString = "tcp://user:password@localhost:5432/db"; var client = new pg.Client(conString); client.connect(); var… -
Inject dependencies via PhpDoc
9 Apr 2012 | 8:16 amLast month I attended to Codemotion conference. I was listening to a talk about Java and I saw the “@inject” decorator. I must admit I switched off my mind from the conference and I started to take notes in my notebook. The idea is to implement something similar in PHP. It’s a pity we don’t have real decorators in PHP. I really miss them. We need to use PhpDoc. It’s not the same than real decorators in other programming languages. That’s my prototype. Let’s go. Imagine this simple class: class User { private $db; public function getInfo($uid) { $sql =… -
How to use eval() without using eval() in PHP
12 Mar 2012 | 8:21 amYes I know. Eval() is evil. If our answer is to use eval() function, we are probably asking the wrong question. When we see an eval() function all our coding smell’s red lights start flashing inside our mind. Definitely it’s a bad practice. But last week I was thinking about it. How can I eval raw PHP code without using the eval function, and I will show you my outcomes. Imagine this simple script <?php error_reporting(-1); class Foo { private $name; public function __construct($name) { $this->name = $name; } public function hello() { return $this->name; } }… -
Deploying tips for Web Applications
27 Feb 2012 | 7:14 amI’ve seen the same error in too many projects. When we start a project normally we start with a paper, a white board or something similar. After the first drafts we start coding. In the early stage of the project we want to build a working prototype. It’s natural. It’s important to have a working prototype as fast as we can. The things are different in a browser. All works within a white board, but with a working alpha release we will feel “real” sensations. Now the project is growing up. Maybe we need several weeks to going live yet. Maybe we haven’t even decide the hosting, but…
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artur.ejsmont.org - PHP-Blog
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The sacrifice object pattern - a way of turning anti patterns into a pattern
23 Apr 2012 | 8:02 amWhile working with legacy applications and inherently dirty code you have to find creative ways to make things better. Rewriting / major re-factoring are usually not an option as team does not get enough time to do even basic housekeeping, what do you do then? I have seen sphagetti code way too many times in my life not to call it an anti pattern. One of the main reasons for sphagetti code is allowing any object in the codebase to talk to any other object. In addition it comes hand in hand with usage of global/static scope and leaking information between application layers. I recently… -
Publishing queue messages from PHP using different backends
4 Apr 2012 | 5:09 amI have looked at the state of different messaging backends recently and i ran a little benchmark to see what is the rough comparison of message publishing throughput. Results that i got are quite surprising. UPDATE 2012.04 What i wanted to achieve was some sort of reassurance before choosing a messaging bus for my PHP project. PHP is usually a bit special as it's runtime environment is different than java / .net. I wanted to use rabbitmq because of it's routing flexibility and implementation of AMQP. After the simple benchmark i am not convinced any more if that is the best way to go for me… -
Symfony2 meets Drupal8 + Varnish and ESI
28 Mar 2012 | 6:38 amI don't know if everyone will agree and notice the significance of this event but for me this is a MAJOR milestone in PHP community evolution. Drupal 8 will integrate with Symfony2. THIS IS GREAT NEWS! I always liked Drupal. It is amazing! Community is huge and provides thousands of modules to solve almost any web-related needs you may have. To make it really embarrassing for the enterprise-level CMS solutions, Drupal often beats them in terms of features and quality. I have seen enterprise-level CMSes and they were just a legacy JUNK! There is no question about it, Drupal is awesome! -
A few words on bugs and software quality
6 Feb 2012 | 3:24 amFrom time to time I see bugs in the code and I start thinking "really? is it possible that no one noticed that bug before? am i the first person to see this code?". I thought it might be worth writing a little post on what helps me to deal with bugs and software quality in general and what are the common pitfalls in developer's thought process. Although it is not a very extensive post i hope it may inspire some developers to try new approaches :-) In general it is extremely rare for me to commit bugs that would make it into production (maybe less than one a year? hard to say as it is really… -
How to build mongodb pecl extension in 32bit for PHP 5.2 on MacOSX Snow Leaopard
3 Feb 2012 | 2:51 amUnfortunately i have to support PHP 5.2 and i also need to run my Mac in 32 bit mode as my VPN client does not support 64 bit :( This causes quite a lot of hassle as PHP 5.2 is less and less supported by frameworks, extensions etc. It is also waste of time as i have to manually build stuff instead of using regular packages, ports etc. Here is a quick step by step guide on how to get mongodb and PHP5.2 mongo pecl extension going on your MacOSX in 32bit mode! NOTE: 32 bit mongodb binaries have 2GB address space limit so you wont be able to process too much on your laptop. You will still be able…
