Published in 2010, Unix manual pages for PHP functions is still a useful tip.

A decade of using Python, and you don’t ask yourself where the argument goes in a function you use daily. Experienced PHP developers look at the php.net website quite a lot. Print cheatsheets (but never look at them, since the php.net website exists).

“There’s a quicker way.” You look up a trick on the Internet. In this case it was long-time PEAR committer cweiske who pointed this out.


pear channel-discover doc.php.net
pear channel-update doc.php.net
pear install doc.php.net/pman


or, if your setup forces you to use sudo (for your copy-and-pasting pleasure):


sudo pear channel-discover doc.php.net
sudo pear channel-update doc.php.net
sudo pear install doc.php.net/pman


This downloads five megabytes of PHP documentation, and a small command-line utility that fires up your text viewer.

Result: any PHP function can be looked up locally, in your viewer: pman strpos

Thanks, Bjori!

Raphael Stolt closes GitHub issues from his PHPUnit tests. Which is cool. He inspired me.

I wrote some code. You can now do the same from FogBugz. (FogBugz is a commercial project management system that includes bug tracking.)

To install this, you can now just head over to the PHPUnit PEAR channel:

pear install phpunit/PHPUnit_TicketListener_Fogbugz

Steps to do it

Have a nice failing test that can re-open your ticket.

< ?
class ExampleClassTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
    /**
     * @ticket 2
     * @test
     */
    function example() {
        $this->assertTrue(FALSE);
    }

}

Please note the annotation documentation block above the test method: it denotes that the method is a test, and that the issue with ID 2 should be re-opened if this test should ever fail.

Then, set up a continuous integration-specific PHPUnit configuration file (oh, why? Well, this extra checking against the bugs system takes time, and we don’t want to burden our test suite with that):

<phpunit>
  <listeners>
    <listener class="PHPUnit_Extensions_TicketListener_Fogbugz"
              file="../olleolleolle-phpunit/PHPUnit/Extensions/TicketListener/Fogbugz.php">
      <arguments>
        <string>username@xstream.dk</string>
        <string>secretpassword</string>
        <string>http://fogbugz.example.org/api.php</string>
        <boolean>false</boolean>
        <boolean>true</boolean>
        <string>Fixed</string>
        <string>Started</string>
      </arguments>
    </listener>
  </listeners>
</phpunit>

Run the PHPUnit test (or, more realistically, your whole test suite) with the specific configuration, like so:

phpunit -ddisplay_errors=1 --configuration fogbugzlistener.xml ExampleClassTest

I fixed two. The list was a wee bit shorter when I reloaded its tab.

How many of these bugs remain?

sudo port install php5-openssl

Done.

Thanks, jmr_mp in the MacPorts IRC channel, for telling me about the existence of this short and neat patch-applying port, so that I could spare you, dear reader, from an introductory tutorial on how to edit Portfiles that don’t add the bells and whistles that you want. I had one written, but the above is saner. There’s always another hood underneath the hood. You don’t have to fix everything. Some things should just be fixed by the package system.

Here’s that Portfile:

$ port cat php5-openssl
# $Id: Portfile 69619 2010-07-11 03:00:23Z ryandesign@macports.org $

PortSystem              1.0
PortGroup               php5extension 1.0

php5extension.setup     openssl 5.3.2 bundled
revision                1
categories-append       devel security
platforms               darwin
maintainers             ryandesign

description             a PHP interface to OpenSSL signature-generation \
                        and -verification and data-encryption and \
                        -decryption functions

long_description        ${description}

checksums               md5     46f500816125202c48a458d0133254a4 \
                        sha1    79ea4ee3da3a7542d1e348ac963a5b38bcbb4b6b \
                        rmd160  60a8aac0d51511ecaf8dcad9d31bdf072c0c99cf

depends_lib-append      port:openssl

post-extract {
    move ${build.dir}/config0.m4 ${build.dir}/config.m4
}

configure.args-append   --with-openssl=${prefix}

platform macosx {
    configure.args-append --with-kerberos=/usr
}

use_parallel_build      yes

Today, I listed only name and id fields of a Model, and to restrict the findAll() to those things:

`$data = $this->Thing->findAll( aa("Thing.user_id", $user_id), a("id", "name"), null, null, null, -1 );`

Breaking down the call, we have:

aa() is a CakePHP convenience function to make an associative array. Odd parameters are keys, even params values. The parameters here creates a WHERE clause that matches the current user’s Things.

a() does the same for regular arrays. The params list the two fields we need returned.

A couple of null settings, and then the crucial -1, which turns off the Model associations completely.

Grab less data!

Update: here is how to use unbindModel. First take a look at the Thing model definition, courtesy of Mladen Mihajlovic:

 array(
      ‘className’ => ‘AnotherThing’
    ),
    ‘SomeOtherThing’ => array(
      ‘className’ => ‘SomeOtherThing’
    ),
    ‘YetAnotherThing’ => array(
      ‘className’ => ‘YetAnotherThing’
    )
  );
}
?>

Now, in our controller, before calling findAll, we remove two of the associated Models:


$this->Thing->unbindModel( array( "hasMany" => array( "AnotherThing", "SomeOtherThing" ) ) );


[tags]cakephp[/tags]

My PHP take on this looks klutzy. But the request gets encoded smartly. cURL takes a lot parameters to get running. I write the appropriate headers myself, there.

Simple XML-RPC in PHP

In Ruby’s standard library, there is a library to do these things. Exciting.

Even simpler XML-RPC in Ruby

[tags]technorati,xmlrpc,ruby,php,curl[/tags]

And, as a Copenhagener, I don’t know very much about that. There are these two that I know of:

• MySQL user group of Denmark
• Copenhagen Ruby Brigade
• SSLUG — Skane Sjaelland Linux User Group — the crowd is so disparate that little “shop-talk” can be done effectively (embedded systems programmers meet Python users meet Ruby folks and PHP developers)
• Skåne Sjælland Ruby User Group, gathering in Malmö or Lund

Is there a PHP club? A Perl club? What other communities for developers have meetings in the Copenhagen area? Are you a member? Are these communities active? Please tell about it here.

• Copenhagen Perl Mongers seems to have had little activity after the summer

A match made in heaven?

On the IRC channel today, I was alerted to the existence of the Bindings sister project. Now they have an example up, for all to see. Data Bindings v0.1 Example is a piece of very easy interaction between your PHP and the HTML the user manipulates.

Take a look at the “color box” example – yummy.