a programmer's best friend

patError 1.2.0 released

nospam@example.com (schst) — 2008-07-19T17:32:58Z

After a year of inactivity in our blog, there are finally some news worth mentioning. Some minutes ago, I release version 1.2.0 of patError. Although this release contains no new features, it might be interesting for any of you using patError, as I adjusted the code to PHP 5. When using this new version, you will get not E_NOTICE or E_STRICT warnings any more as it has been the case with previous releases. There will also be no E_DEPRECATED errors, when you make the switch to PHP 5.3.0. As usual, you can get the release from our PEAR channel.

I decided to port patError to PHP 5 while writing the second edition of my PHP Design Patterns book, which covers patError as a depency of patTemplate.

Conference-ish Autumn

nospam@example.com (gERD) — 2007-07-14T13:09:11Z

Today Timo told me that his session proposal got approved! Yippie! We both applied for the AJAX in Action in Frankfurt November this year.

I submitted a session about some essential JavaScript tricks for modular sites that make extensive use of Web 2.0 technologies. I planed to focus on real live examples - stuff that we implemented at My Nero, in other words sneak into a big AJAX site's internals . Unfortunately it got rejected

However I'm looking forward to see Timo's session about a flexible and easy to use AutoSave Framework. Adapting his thoughts, you can add the AutoSave feature to any form on a web-site easily. As I know some internals about his implementation, I can tell you that he solved some big issues. Though he focused on reusability and came out with a bunch of really nice lines of code.

It's going to become a very interesting conference this autumn.

Testing FIT

nospam@example.com (gERD) — 2007-06-20T19:20:31Z

I just uploaded the package Testing_FIT to PEAR. Testing_FIT is the PHP and pearish version of Ward Cunningham's FIT http://fit.c2.com/. As such it provides an easy to use framework for acceptance software tests.

pear install Testing_FIT-beta

Simply install the PEAR package Testing_FIT browse the examples and write your own test classes. Of course, the PHP version of FIT provides the four basic fixtures: Action-, Column-, Row- and Primitve-Fixture. Also there is a Summary-Fixture that shows some statistics.

You'll see, writing tests with this PEAR package is a piece of cake. Besides, the basic idea of FIT - using HTML documents providing test data will convince you.

I18n and such

nospam@example.com (gERD) — 2007-06-18T06:45:37Z

In lack of a better idea, I founded a new PAT Package: patI18n. So far this package is just a draft and only exists in the SVN repository. As you might guess, patI18n is an abstraction layer for translating issues. Therefore it provides nearly the same interface as the famous GNU Gettext. Still, the actual translation is done by a chain of modules - this way everything is possible and the design stays open to new ideas.

Of course, I didn't start patI18n out of the blue. Last year, I branched patForms to use Gettext for translation instead of the proprietary internal solution. Since then, we have to maintain two branches of patForms. Yesterday I mended the implementation of patForms' gettext branch to use patI18n. This way patForms got rid of all I18n functions (like setLocle) and stuff. My first tests show that everything works fine - still this code is experimental. However you are invited to check out the new versions and give it a go.

Download the sources from our subversion server:
patI18n: svn co http://www.php-tools.net/svn/patI18n/trunk/ patI18n
patForms: svn co http://www.php-tools.net/svn/patForms/branches/gettext/ patForms

View the source code of patI18n at gERD's playground.

patTemplate 3.1.0 stable released

nospam@example.com (schst) — 2007-06-02T15:30:11Z

After two years of development we finally released patTemplate 3.1.0 as a stable version. The changes since the last beta release are minimal. You can read about all changes since the last stable release in the changelog. patTemplate can be downloaded from our PEAR channel server or easily installed via the PEAR installer:

$ pear channel-discover pear.php-tools.net

$ pear install pat/patTemplate

More information can be found the the patTemplate development site.

Stubbles Blog is live!

nospam@example.com (schst) — 2007-02-16T17:05:00Z

Yesterday, the Stubbles project got its own blog at www.stubbles.org.

Stubbles is a new framework for PHP 5.2 which focuses on clean OO design, the use of patterns and ports some features from the langauges commonly referred to "enterprise languages" to PHP. If you are looking for new ways to develop your PHP applications, you should definitely take a look at the stubReflection package, which brings Java Annotations to PHP. The next issue of the German PHP Magazin will feature an article, that shows how to use this package.

The blog will feature tutorials, thoughts on Stubbles and surely rants on PHP itself. So it will be definitely worth the read.

Stubbles currently is developed by Frank Kleine, Nico Steiner and Stephan Schmidt. The design of the Stubbles logo and the Stubblog design have been created by Sebastian Mordziol of Mistralys, who is also responsible for the PAT design and several PAT packages.

PHP Programming with PEAR reviewed

nospam@example.com (schst) — 2007-02-11T09:20:11Z

Cal Evans, editor of the Zend Developer Zone, wrote a review of "PHP Programming with PEAR", the book I wrote together with Carsten Lucke, Aaron Wormus and Stoyan Stefanov.
The review is very positive and what's especially nice about it, is, that he liked Chapter 4 (Web services) the most and this is one of the chapters that I wrote. If you are interested in buying a copy of the book, you can find more information at the book website, which has been set up by Aaron. And of course you can directly order it at Amazon.com.

patTemplate Documentation in Bahasa Indonesia

nospam@example.com (gERD) — 2007-02-01T19:41:10Z

We are vary proud to hear that there are patTemplate enthusiasts around the world. Actually, we just learned thet there is a patTemplate Documentation in Bahasa Indonesia available. Thanks a lot for translation!

patTemplate Documentation in Bahasa Indonesia

nospam@example.com (gERD) — 2007-02-01T19:41:10Z

Nightly builds for XJConf available

nospam@example.com (schst) — 2006-12-12T21:29:21Z

XJConfForPHP, the XML-to-object-mapper, Frank Kleine and me are working on is now available as a daily snapshot from snaps.php-tools.net.
While the project started as a 1:1 port of the Java version, we are constantly adding new features as well as unit tests. If you need a flexible solution to parse XML documents and create PHP data structures, you might give XJConfForPHP a try.

FIT for PHP

nospam@example.com (gERD) — 2006-10-17T19:34:52Z

As I'm going to talk aboit FIT at the PHP Conference, I like to invite you to check out the preview of PHPFIT package. Simply download and install the PEAR package or tar archive.

FIT stands for Framework for Integrated Test (See: FIT Wiki) realices acceptance tests with heavy use of HTML documents. Those documents do not just contain the usual blah-blah but hard facts. The factsare actually stored in (HTML) tables. This is where FIT - respectively PHPFIT - comes in. The FIT knows which testing class must be executed for a particular table and which function to call to calculate the results of a specific cell and the framework makes it very easy for you to implement concrete test-classes.

Also FIT simply handles HTML documents. As such they can be viewed a common browsers and even created with Word-a-like editors. Hence FIT goes far beyond what traditional unit testing offers (FIT is not meant to replace unit-tests) and may enrich your next project.

Hopefully PHPFIT will be available as official PEAR package. Unfortunately I lost my password. So I was not capable to push the proposal any further But this will change.

PHP programming with PEAR published

nospam@example.com (schst) — 2006-10-12T15:49:11Z

As Aaron blogged earlier today "PHP Programming with PEAR" has finally been published. It is a colaboration between Carsten Lucke, Stoyan Stefanov, Aaron Wormus and me. It takes a quite practical approach that showcases a lot of code to get the job done very quickly using various PEAR packages. Packages covered in the book range from Date and MDB2 to XML_Serializer and Services_Webservices. I contributed to chapters that introduce the reader to the XML and Webservice packages, as I contributed a lot of code to these categories.

The book is available for order from Amazon.com or if you are living in Europe you might as well order it from Amazon.de or Amazon.co.uk. Aaron also set up a wiki for the book, where you can find more information or even contribute.

PHP Design Patterns published

nospam@example.com (schst) — 2006-10-09T16:48:31Z

After nearly a year of work, my first very own book has finally been published and arrived last weekend.
PHP Design Patterns is published by O'Reilly and introduces the reader to the world of patterns by providing practical examples. The patterns used in the book include simple patterns like the Singleton, Subject/Observer or Composite, but also more complex patterns like the Intercepting Filter or Event-Dispatcher patterns. If you never used PHP5 for object-oriented development, you might also finde the short introduction to PHP5's new features, including interceptors, SPL and exceptions, worth reading. All patterns covered in the book can be applied to web applications, and to stay on the practical side of development, PEAR, Propel and patTemplate are used in some examples.

So if you are capable of understanding German and interested in learning more about patterns and software design in general, feel free to buy it at Amazon.de. More information and code examples can be found at the book website or at O'Reilly's online catalog. If you're still not convinced to buy the book, it might help, that the book has been published as a hardcover so it will last longer than most other books

XJConf for PHP

nospam@example.com (schst) — 2006-09-05T19:56:04Z

Today, Frank and I released the first version of XJConf For PHP. This is a port of the original XJConf I developed for Java. XJConf allows you to map complex XML documents to data structures by defining the mapping rules in a simple XML-based language. You may define the type for each tag (objects, arrays, primitives) as well as how its attributes, child elements and enclosed character data should be treated. When creating objects, you may also define the setter methods to nest the objects. There are plenty of examples available in the documentation of the original java version. Most of the examples have been ported to PHP as well by Frank, who did most of the work in this project.

If you want to give XJConf For PHP a try, you can get it via our PEAR channel or from SVN at http://svn.xjconf.net/XJConfForPHP/.

The fantastic XJConf logo has been developed and designed by Georg Rothweiler.

Analyzing aide (advanced intrusion detection environment) output with PHP

nospam@example.com (luckec) — 2006-08-27T20:47:30Z

Since we started hosting our sites on our own server we had some nasty cracker-attacks (most often certainly script-kiddies) causing lots of traffic by hosting crappy italian movies or by installing rootkits. To at least have a chance recognizing whether the system had been compromised we started to use aide some time ago. Aide keeps track of changes in the filesystem and provides us with a human-readable report once a day.

However, sometimes changes in the filesystem happen because of (security-)updates and not because a cracker exchanged your ps binary against his own personal version. Of course aide has no chance to identify such valid and unvalid changes. 3rdPEARty's Util_AideAnalyzer is a solution to that problem - read on if you're interested.

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