Latest PHP articles...

TBG - The BugGenie performance analyze

-- Published 03.11.2011 --

This article will be removed once TBG 3.2 released. This is a shortlist of tips to improve the performance of issue tracking system and project management tool http://www.thebuggenie.com/ (hereinafter "TBG"). This analyse has been done by my colleague developer Vlado and myself using profiling tools and debugging the code. The reason why we did this is, that we truly appreciate effort invested into the tracker that has good potential. On the other hand we jumped into some issues while setting up TBG 3.1.4 so we took a deeper look into it and.. Read more »

Barcode scanners in PHP applications

-- Published 27.02.2012 --

PHP can be easily utilized for reading bar codes printed on paper documents. Connecting manual barcode reader to the computer via USB significantly extends usability of PHP (or any other web programming language) into tasks involving document and product management, like finding a book records in the database or listing all bills for a particular customer. Following sections briefly describe process of connecting and using manual bar code reader with PHP. The usage of bar code scanners described in this article are in the same way applicable to any web programming language, such as ASP, Python or Perl. This article.. Read more »

Writing database portable PHP applications

-- Published 12.12.2011 --

Writing database cross-compatible SQL queries for portable web applications is difficult. In fact, each modern relational database system (RDBMS) introduces its own "specialties" and proprietary SQL syntax that aims to provide the best perfomance and functionalities for its own database engine. Unfortunatelly this also means loss of the portability of the application, once one starts implementing such a particular syntax. In this article I will point out basic differences for defining a simple SQL table named "im_inventory" - differences in definitions of indexes, primary keys, autoincremental columns and column quotation. Table definition -.. Read more »

Show Skype Status

-- Published 04.11.2011 --

This is a small utility to display current status of a skype user. You can download zip files here: http://download.synet.sk/skype_status.zip » Skype status - demo Enter a valid skype login name and press "Check status!": If the skype user is online, displayed icon will show "I am online". If user is offline or the skype user does not exist then the "I am offline" icon will be displayed. Skype Status class: /* * This class reads current account status for supplied skype account. * *.. Read more »

TortoiseHg - How to export changed files

-- Published 02.11.2011 --

TortoiseHg is excellent windows client for Mercurial Hg distributed source control management tool (SCM). It is a standalone installer that installs both Mercurial client and Mercurial Server in one shot. It has excellent performance on mainstream filesystems (Windows NTFS and linux EXT3), extensibility, and heap of features and settings. The only thing I truly missed was the ability to export changed files between two arbitrary commits. Not patches, but whole files. This feature was only supported by SVN and I found it irreplacible while working on many projects. Luckily, it is pretty easy to add this feature to a TortoiseHg client via.. Read more »

Zend Certified Engineer (ZCE) - yes or no?

-- Published 30.10.2011 --

For a professional PHP developer, it is not quite easy to prove his programming capabilities. Programming requires not only a/ technical knowledge, but mainly b/ programmatical visualization - which is hardly measurable quality phenomenon definable as an ability to find the most resources saving solution from long run. Putting both abilities a/ & b/ together one can determine what shapes a "good programmer". Technical abilities (a/) are quantifiable and thus testable. However, vizualization (b/) can be assessed only indirectly after a time since solution implemented. Holder of the Zend certificate is at least 50% guarantee, that one has good technical skills. On the.. Read more »

MSSQL, SQLSRV, PHP and UTF-8

-- Published 15.08.2011 --

Recently I was trying to setup Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for PHP application with UTF-8 support. Looking like a trivial task I hoped to solve the issue within 1-2 hours. In fact, I spent 2 nights figuring out the solution... So here is everything about setting up MS SQL server 2005 and 2008 for PHP with UTF-8 support. Chaos around PHP drivers for MS SQL Part of the problems is caused by the availability of various drivers for the same server under different names distributed via different channels. Currently, following drivers are available for MS.. Read more »

Benchmarking PHP performance 5.0 to 5.3

-- Published 25.07.2011 --

Recently I stumbled over article by Johannes Schlüter announcing amazing +20-30% performance increase in new PHP release. I started to wonder about performance gains between major PHP versions. Here are my benchmark results for versions 5.0.0 up to latest 5.3.5. (at the time of writing): Fig. 1 - Increase in performance between PHP 5.0.0 against PHP 5.3.5 is about 300 - 350 % Benchmarking scenario: WAMP server with apache 1.3 (original intention to include also PHP 4 benchmarks) and installed PHP versions 5.X.X hardware configuration is irrelevant since all PHP versions run on.. Read more »

A must-know for professional PHP developer

-- Published 26.04.2011 --

Basic abilities Web developer vs. Web designer This article applies to web developers, not web designers. Web designer would focus on visual presentation of business logic implemented by a web developer. Here is my list of abilities that professional PHP developer should posses... T-shirt I suggested to my wife and she made it for me:-) PEAR CODING STANDARDS Must have good command of coding standards. PHP IDE WITH DEBUG MODE Must know how to set up debugging environment. Industrial applications with hundreds of complex objects cannot be effectively developed and.. Read more »

Compile options for PHP 5.3.4

-- Published 04.01.2011 --

Usage: configure [options] [host] Options: [defaults in brackets after descriptions] Configuration: --cache-file=FILE cache test results in FILE --help print this message --no-create do not create output files --quiet, --silent do not print `checking...' messages --version print the version of autoconf that created configure Directory and file names: --prefix=PREFIX install architecture-independent files in PREFIX [/usr/local] --exec-prefix=EPREFIX install architecture-dependent files in EPREFIX [same as prefix] --bindir=DIR user executables in DIR [EPREFIX/bin] --sbindir=DIR system admin executables in DIR [EPREFIX/sbin] --libexecdir=DIR program executables in DIR [EPREFIX/libexec] --datadir=DIR read-only architecture-independent data in DIR [PREFIX/share] --sysconfdir=DIR read-only single-machine data in DIR [PREFIX/etc] --sharedstatedir=DIR modifiable.. Read more »