I’ve heard some inexperienced PHP programmers say that Zend Framework is confusing to them. Until today, I have agreed: Zend Framework has a lot of classes and some of them are quite complex (such as Zend_Form). But does that actually make it more difficult for inexperienced programmers than other frameworks?
PHP tip: How to make a file downloadable through your script
This seems to be a relatively common question on #zftalk nowadays, so here’s a quick wrapup! The traditional plain-PHP way $file = file_get_contents(’some.zip’); header(’Content-Type: application/zip’); header(’Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="some.zip"’); header(’Content-Length: ‘ . strlen($file)); echo $file;$file = file_get_contents(‘some.zip’); header(‘Content-Type: application/zip’); header(‘Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="some.zip"’); header(‘Content-Length: ‘ . strlen($file)); echo $file; The Zend Framework controller way //this is inside an action in one of …
Static/Dynamic typing sweet spot
Commenter TurboC linked an interesting talk about the future of programming languages. This got me thinking about something I had thought about before: It seems that PHP has moved a bit towards static typing, and languages like C# seem to be implementing some dynamic features. Are we going towards a “mixed” language with static and dynamic typing? What’s the “sweet …
Zend Framework components as separate zips from the main distro? Sure!
Did you ever want to use just a single component from Zend Framework, but couldn’t figure out which files you needed? Well, here’s a solution: Zend Framework packageizer script! Just pick the class you want, and you’ll get it and all its dependencies in a nice zip file for you to consume. Wanna know how this works? Hit the link …
Making a PDF generator class using Zend_Pdf
There are some expensive libraries that you can use to generate PDF files… but why bother with them, when there are good free alternatives like Zend_Pdf? In three steps, you can generate a fancy report: Create a PDF template Insert data to template with Zend_Pdf Profit $$$ Since this is a quite repetitive task, let’s also create a PDF generator …
Let’s Rickroll MTV Europe Music Awards 2008!
Okay so this is totally off the usual topics I guess, but this is too awesome to let it fail! Rick Astley has somehow managed to get into MTV Europe’s Music Awards 2008 gala in the category Best Act Ever. I suspect /b/ had something to do with this, but… I urge everyone to vote for Rick and tell everyone …
Windows Remote Desktop + Live FolderShare = Ultimate combo?
I’m a frequent user of Windows’ remote desktop feature. It’s a stellar remote control solution: It’s incredibly fast, almost like sitting on the remote PC, and has features like bringing over the clipboard and even sounds from the controlled computer. Much better than VNC, really. VNC is painfully slow compared to it, even over multi-megabit internet connections. There is one …
Sharing authentication over multiple sites / Single sign-on
At The Group, we’re developing some web applications that needed to use the same user database. The applications were originally being developed with separate login for each, but I decided it would be better to share the login code across them. I investigated some ways to achieve sharing a single login page over all these applications: A shared login library …
You should know at least three languages
I think a good programmer should know at least three languages: English C or C++ A scripting language with dynamic typing Why?
Generic collections in PHP
Today while reading PHP::Impact’s refactoring guideline post I was reminded about collections. As you probably know, arrays are very flexible in PHP and probably a good choice for many data storing tasks. Strictly typed languages usually use “generic” collection classes instead of arrays. They are kind of like PHP arrays which the programmer can tell which type of items to …