Good habits I learnt from Django

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Django has various good features I’ve previously mentioned. While they can’t be taken out and applied to other languages like PHP right away, it also has some nice ways of doing things that can be taken and used elsewhere. Let’s look at some good habits I took from Django and started using in PHP, that could benefit you too.

Autogenerating forms from Doctrine models

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In a previous post I mentioned how Django’s model forms are awesome. I really like the idea of being able to generate forms automatically from models – I mean the models already should contain most of the data you’d need: the fields, field types and how they will be stored. Since I was already quite familiar with Doctrine’s internals, I …

Is PHP a good first language?

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Sometimes I’ve seen people say PHP is a bad first language, because it teaches bad programming habits. But is this actually true at all? Often those who say that don’t really like PHP themselves either, many times because of equally untrue reasons. I think PHP is a perfectly good first programming language – I would even go as far as …

PHP with Microsoft IIS and Microsoft SQL server

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You often hear that using PHP under Microsoft servers is a bad idea, because it doesn’t work very well. But is that even true? You guessed it… no. It is actually possible to get a PHP based database application working under IIS and MS SQL Server perfectly fine, it just may take some configuration. You can even get Apache mod_rewrite …

Setting up Windows as a PHP development server

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Install a WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) environment in 4 easy steps, one of which is optional and one of which isn’t really a step at all! ;) These days I’ve been working on Linux servers for a long time, so when I had to install all the things necessary for PHP development on Windows, I realized it isn’t necessarily …

Tracking the user’s browsing history with PHP

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There are various reasons for tracking what an user does: Keeping track of the refering page for forms, so they can be sent back to where they came from Tracking usage behavior for statistics etc. Let’s look at how we could implement a simple user tracker in PHP with Zend Framework. I’m going to write a bit of the theory …

Doctrine vs. Propel

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An updated version of this post is available: Doctrine vs. Propel 2009 update The two most well known ORM frameworks for PHP right now are probably Propel and Doctrine. A lot of people are probably wondering which one should they choose for their project, just like I was. I’ve used Propel for a while, and now I decided to give …

Fluent PHP and pooQuery revisited

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pooQuery, my revolutionary fluent PHP library, has been an interesting project so far. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Read the original post about pooQuery and the look at pooQuery internals. It has caused some funny reactions from people, and perhaps it’s time to officially announce that pooQuery is a joke. A fully functional joke, which I’ve just updated – …

pooQuery – The Fluent PHP Revolution!

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We all know that fluent programming style rocks, and jQuery is a great example of that! Wel also know that SQL is greatly simplified with fluent style interfaces! And so are Regular Expressions! Now it’s time for PHP to step in the world of fluency with pooQuery!