May 2008
Monthly Archive
Fri 30 May 2008
Christopher Kunz has relaunched his php-security.net domain with a brand new blog and a new article posted today - “X.509 PKI login with PHP and Apache”.
Since grid computing (that’s what I’m currently doing) also is very much about Single-sign on and delegation of rights, username/password authentication schemes don’t quite do it for us. Thus, a PKI (public key infrastructure) based on X.509 is employed.
He explains the acronym soup by defining the process as advanced means of “showing the web who you are”. He explains some of the basics about the certificates and who good candidates for this type of authentication are. Then the tech starts - how to get Apache configured to use them and how to use them in PHP to authenticate the external user (requiring OpenSSL compiled in to access the needed functions).
Fri 30 May 2008
A new post over on the Symfony blog today show how to combine the framework with the Propel templating system thanks to some new enhancements.
Starting with symfony 1.1, it is now possible to easily use Propel 1.3 in your project to take advantage of its speed improvements, nested set implementation, object instance pooling, among others. Most importantly, Propel 1.3 uses PDO instead of Creole as the DBAL, offering a significant performance boost.
There’s a few steps to getting everything all set up, but they’re pretty simple. First, you’ll need to grab the right plugin from the Symfony repository, then you change the yml file configuration for the PDO connection, change a few settings in your propel.ini and clear the cache and rebuild the models - you’re all set! (Complete commands and example configurations are included)
Fri 30 May 2008
Tony Bibbs has posted a mini-case study about how, at his work, they cut their use of the Zend_Log component of the Zend Framework in half:
As part of the framework we use at work, we borrow what we feel are the best components out there and logging is a key part of that. Logging should be simple to setup, easy to use and should minimize work on the developer. After all, you are going to do a lot of logging, right?
He shows how, with a few changes to how they log (creation of a custom logger), it reduces the number of calls to load a Zend_Registry object each time something needs to be recorded. His code is included in the post along with examples of it in action.
Fri 30 May 2008
The Nettuts site has posted a detailed guide to the “comments.php” file that comes with every release of WordPress:
WordPress seems to be everywhere these days, and it’s no wonder with it’s ease of use and ease of customization. In this tutorial, I’ll be dissecting the default WordPress theme’s comments.php structure and giving you various snippets of code to make your skinning easier.
The guide breaks down the major parts of the file - some of the general code, how it displays comments, the comment submission form and some “little tricks” it does to handle things like comment numbers, links and the alternating colors.
Fri 30 May 2008
The PHP::Impact blog has posted a list of thirty classes and components that can make your PHP development life so much easier:
Simplicity and extensibility are the main reasons why PHP became the favourite dynamic language of the Web. In the last decade, PHP has developed from a niche language for adding dynamic functionality to small websites to a powerful tool making strong inroads into large-scale Web systems.
Their list includes software like:
…and many more. Check out the full list for all sorts of useful tools.
Fri 30 May 2008
The PHP::Impact blog has posted a list of thirty classes and components that can make your PHP development life so much easier:
Simplicity and extensibility are the main reasons why PHP became the favourite dynamic language of the Web. In the last decade, PHP has developed from a niche language for adding dynamic functionality to small websites to a powerful tool making strong inroads into large-scale Web systems.
Their list includes software like:
…and many more. Check out the full list for all sorts of useful tools.
Fri 30 May 2008
Elizabeth Naramore has posted about a new addition to the site for the PHP Appalachia conference website - a wiki:
Hey, we now have a wiki for PHP Appalachia, so if you’re attending be sure to list your name on there. I could do it myself but what do I know; you may want to keep that your little secret. Plus, I’m lazy.
They’re looking for some good contributions for potential attendees (or people from the area) on places to eat or something fun to do while in the area. There’s still some spots open, so if you’re interested in hanging out with some fellow PHPers at a camp in Tennessee, head over and check out the site to get more information on the whens and wheres and how to reserve your spot.
Fri 30 May 2008
On the Ibuildings blog, Ian Barber has a reminder to PHP developers out there used to their servers “just working” because of the popularity of LAMP. He recommends digging a little deeper to the “behind the scenes” of how the server is configured.
PHP programmers generally know what a good systems architecture should look like, but it is often a reality of development that they will have little input on the system itself until the last minute. In fact, it’s far from uncommon for a developer to be faced with an off-the-shelf dedicated LAMP server, and left up to their own devices.
He recommends getting to know things like the package manager for your distribution (apt, yum, yast, etc), stripping down the modules your installation is using, check that all of the packages in use need to be enabled and ensure that the network connection is set up correctly and is what you need for the site.
Fri 30 May 2008
In a new post to his blog today, Eirik Hoem gives an example of using the parse_ini_file function to work with .ini files as configuration for your application.
When doing complex applications it’s often nice to have some sort of system for handling settings. PHP has a nice function called parse_ini_file which can be used to create a basic but still usable setting file feature. A simple class which loads the configuration file and offers some methods to retrieve the values for a given key is all that’s needed.
His example code gives a sample ini file with database connection information and a MyConfigClass that parses the file and can get or set values in it.
Fri 30 May 2008
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