PHP Classes blog

207. Better Documentation for PHP internals - Lately in PHP podcast episode 35

Posted on: 2013-05-09

With the inclusion of Zend Optimizer+ extension in PHP 5.5, the need for better documentation of PHP internals became more evident, so PHP contributors can write extensions that take the most of the core PHP features.

That is one of the topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in the episode 35 of the Lately In PHP podcast.

They also talked about having more optimized PHP opcodes, some interesting PHP feature proposals that got rejected, as well the article about the top version control systems used by PHP developers.

Listen to this podcast, or watch the hangout video, or read the transcript to learn more about this and other interesting PHP discussions.

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206. Using Grep to Find Security Vulnerabilities in PHP code

Posted on: 2013-05-07

Finding all security vulnerabilities in a piece of code may be hard as it requires in depth analysis of what the code does. However, simple security vulnerabilities follow certain code style patterns that are easier to find with simple search tools.

Read this article to learn how you can find certain types of security vulnerabilities very quickly using the grep program.

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205. Top Version Control Systems used by PHP Developers

Posted on: 2013-04-29

Version Control Systems are important tools that every developer should be using. However, for many developers version control systems do not make part of their development tool set.

Read this article to learn what are version control systems, why they are so important to be used by all developers, and what are the most popular systems used by PHP developers.

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2. Offline Access to Google and other OAuth based API

Posted on: 2013-04-23
Blog: PHP OAuth API package blog
Package: PHP OAuth API

Some applications require access to APIs on behalf of the user even when the user is not present, i.e. offline access.

OAuth is a protocol that allows applications to obtain a token to access an API when the user is not present but when the tokens expire they need to be renewed.

Some APIs like Google and Box.net support automatic renewal of expired tokens.

Read this article to learn how to use this OAuth client class to perform offline access to an API storing tokens in a database and how to have expired tokens automatically renewed.

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204. A Better PHP Feature Voting Process - Lately in PHP podcast episode 34

Posted on: 2013-04-10

The current PHP feature voting process causes problems to those that do not know why features are approved or rejected by each voter. A better solution was proposed to require justification for each feature vote.

This was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Cesar Rodas on the episode 34 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also discussed about the latest PHP releases, updating PHP with minimized downtime, as well how brilliant are some developers for creating pure PHP components that overcome PHP limitations without upgrading to a newer PHP version.

Listen to the podcast, or watch the hangout video or read the transcript to learn more about these interesting PHP discussions.

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203. 26 Ways to Show that PHP Can Be Better Than PHP

Posted on: 2013-03-21

The fact that PHP has limitations does not mean that it is not possible to overcome some those limitations with alternative solutions that use only pure PHP code and do not require a newer PHP version.

Read this article to learn about many creative solutions that several PHP developers implemented to overcome some of the PHP limitations.

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202. PHP Innovation Award Winner of 2012 - Lately in PHP podcast episode 33

Posted on: 2013-03-07

The PHP Programming Innovation Award Winner of 2012 was announced. An interview with the winner, Karl Holz from Canada, was one of the main topics of the episode 33 of the Lately in PHP podcast conducted by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert.

They also discussed the usual batch of PHP topics of interest like Zend Optimizer+ source code that was released, the PHP 5.5 feature freeze and roadmap, as well an article that compares PHP to an Hobbit, as well other languages to Lord Of The Rings story characters.

Listen to the podcast, or watch the podcast video, or read the transcript to learn about these and other interesting PHP topics.

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201. 6 Reasons Why PHP is a Hobbit

Posted on: 2013-02-18

Sometime ago a user of the Quora site asked a question if there was a language war, which languages you support and why.

Another user gave a very creative response comparing programming languages with characters of the Lord of the Rings story of JRR Tolkien.

Read this article to understand why PHP or its fans should be compared with Hobbits.

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200. Zend Optimizer+ Cache in PHP 5.5 and MySQL 5.6 Performance Improvements - Lately in PHP podcast episode 32

Posted on: 2013-02-07

MySQL 5.6 GA version is finally available for download. One of its main features is the new NoSQL interface to access tables much faster than using SQL via a connection compatible of memcached.

MySQL 5.6 speed improvements and how it affects PHP applications was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert on the episode 32 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also commented on the eventual adoption of the Zend Optimizer+ as the PHP code caching extension that may be shipping with PHP 5.5 as alternative to APC, the implications of this to the PHP community.

Other topics discussed in the podcast include the switch of OpenSuSE and Fedora Linux distributions from Oracle MySQL to MariaDB MySQL fork, the use of test driven development in the Zurmo PHP Open Source CRM, using advanced HTML5 based animations to get the attention of site users, and the launch of the JavaScript Innovation Award that just happened in the JSClasses site.

Listen to the podcast audio, or watch the podcast video, or read the podcast transcript to learn more about the details of these and other interesting topics.

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199. Test Driven Development brings Stability to Zurmo Open Source CRM

Posted on: 2013-01-17

Employing a Test Driven Development (TDD) methodology when building a complex application may be tedious and take twice as much time, but the upshot is scalable stability as the tortoise beats the hare.

As lead developers of Zurmo, an Open Source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application, we are driven by the need to build rock solid, reliable software, something that is hard to come by in our field.

In order to accomplish our goal, we decided to bite the bullet and sweat it out with Test Driven Development - TDD.

Zurmo is written in PHP and utilizes jQuery, the Yii Framework, and RedBeanPHP. With 1700+ unit tests running across eight server configurations, Zurmo is built with a passion for software engineering best practices.

Read the article to find out why it is beneficial to be in the habit of testing, testing, and more testing.

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