PEAR Blog: Request for ideas: New developer FAQ
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The PEAR Blog has posted a request for ideas to help work up a new developer FAQ they can hand out to potential PEAR developers as a "jumpstart" guide to working with the package repository.   New developers need quite a time to familiarize themselves with the rules and conventions in PEAR. With the new role of mentors in PEAR2, they will have a contact person they can ask in that cases. But in many cases the same questions will get asked which will get boring for the mentoring developer, so we need a Mini-FAQ with a list of things the newbie should know.   They're looking for comments posted to the entry to help define this guide. So far, a suggested outline has been proposed by David Coallier for both general information and developer-specific details.
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Michael Kimsal has come up with the start of a series to introduce PHP developers to the world of Grails (the Java framework).   The comparisons I plan to make will be mostly to PHP, cause that's what I'm most familiar with, though there may be some other comparisons from time to time.  This is a work in progress, but I'd be very interested in feedback from anyone out there interested in this aea - Grails, Groovy, PHP, why another language/platform/framework, etc.   The first two installments have been posted - part one and part two - with an introduction to what Grails is and a brief dip into some "Hello world" sort of code to give you an idea of the structure.
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Luke Welling takes a humorous look at something he misses in PHP - register globals being set to on.    I am aware that there are some things so shocking that you are not supposed to say them in polite company [...] so confronting that they are best kept to yourself regardless of how strongly you believe them. I have a similarly shocking sentiment that I feel I have to share.   I really like register_globals in PHP.    He reminicies about the days gone by of being able to assume that register_globals is turned on, the days of simpler, lighter code that's even easier for the newbies to get into. Anyone for a tshirt?
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Greg Beaver points out the numerous releases that were made in the PEAR community today - including an update to the PEAR website itself.   OK, today's release party wins.  I've just uploaded the 8th package for release, and it's a very significant day of releases.   The three updates made today are:  An update to the PEAR website that allows for patch tracking in the bug tracker The latest version of PHP_ParserGenerator - version 0.1.5 and the release of the first, full-featured parser for PHP - PHP_Parser along with a "companion", PHP_Parser_DocblockParser
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A few days back there was a post on the "The Codist" blog about why the author would never quite understand the appeal of PHP to the masses and some of his thoughts behind it. Well, there was such an outcry and response to his comments that he's written up another post on what he learned from comments made.   Clearly I touched a nerve. However I did learn a lot of things that you don't read in a quickly tutorial on PHP. The whole point of writing something is to get feedback, positive or negative, and hopefully learn from it.   He admits that his experience with PHP and its developers has been limited, so his perspective might have been thrown off a bit. He still holds to one thing from the previous article, though - that PHP just isn't for him.
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You cannot help but like someone like Greg who is honest and humble:  "I am one of the core developers of the PEAR package who has joined the game relatively late... The base PEAR class is one monstrous mistake, and PEAR_Error is pretty close. Everyone knows this. I designed an error class that is much, much more flexible and it is part of PEAR 1.3.1 (PEAR_ErrorStack) - check it out. "  Sadly it's just not true that everyone knows that PEAR class is big mistake (Jeff Moore has more on why PEAR.php is awful).  Given that PEAR is both an important framework and a worthless class, the confusion in names will  definitely  cause the value of the PEAR class to be overestimated. Just read any article on PEAR and you can see what nice words they have to say about the base classes :-(     I once said once that too many PEAR developers were journeymen. This might have offended  some people, but I was trying hard to be diplomatic. I must say that today the PEAR group is definitely more mature, and they have learnt a lot about library design. What would really make my eyes light up  would be an PEAR2 initiative that kept the existing classes, but dropped the bad seeds such as PEAR.php (e.g. the PEAR and PEAR_Error classes).   And in case you were wondering, I do think there's great value in the PEAR DB API. API's are important for interoperatability. For example, ADOdb has a PEAR DB compatibility mode. I would certainly be flattered if PEAR DB had an ADOdb compat mode too :-)
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P&aacute;draic Brady, looking ahead to the work he will be doing over the next few months, is proposing on his blog about a new Zend Framework component - Zend_Service_Currency.    I did a quick check on what PHP classes are available for the purpose. There's really not a whole lot out there. There's a PEAR class along the lines I need, but it's released under the PHP License and, not to be too argumentative, I prefer non-PEAR solutions where the end-user may have no access to update PEAR.   So since the project is planned to use the Zend Framework, I shot off a mail to the Framework's fw-general mailing list to see if it would be a worthwhile contribution.    He sees that someone else had already opened a proposal for the same idea and decided to join with that group to work up the module. He also links to his original proposal and gives a brief overview of the goals of the package.
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Travis Swicegood has made a new release of the successor to the PEAR RunTest package for PEAR2 - the new PHPT.    Since this is usable and PEAR2 is still being worked out, I've decided to release this as a standalone package for the time being with the intent of bundling it with Pyrus or including it directly in PEAR2 when PEAR2 is realized.   This provides the majority of the functionality provided by PEAR's pear run-tests command via its own phpt command and it can even provide pear style output.    Examples of its use are included as well as the method to download this latest version (via a PEAR channel, of course) or through the package's web page. Issues found with the software can be posted to the project's Google code page.
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As Chris Hartjes points out there's a new release of the popular PHP framework CakePHP (as well as a new web site design).   While speaking with nate last night via IM, he told me about the latest set of changes for CakePHP 1.2. There is simply just too much to mention, so I suggest heading on over to the brand-spanking-new CakePHP home page and checking out the changelog.   You can grab the latest download directly from the homepage or look into the manual to find out more about the framework and how it can be used.
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PHPEverywhere has a new posting today concerning a few criteria of a "great developer".
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The PEAR group, with some of the new leadership in place, has decided to start something that probably should have been in place long ago - the PEAR blog.   Joshua Eichorn notes:   We will be using it to make announcements and to ask the community for feedback. I think this is a big step towards making PEAR a more transparent project.   So far, the most interesting post is the latest one mentioning PEAR's new installer - Pyrus - a (currently pre-devel) installer that will handle the PHP5+ PEAR packages to come.
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Evolt.org has a new tutorial posted today concerning something that I still get a lot of questions about - creating a PHP Login System with Admin Features.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:Dave Dash's Blog: nginx and symfonyZend Developer Zone: The ZendCon Sessions Episode 6: Project Management Methods to Maintain IT StandSitePoint PHP Blog: Tokenization using regular expression sub patternsIT Jobs Watch: Results for PHP Developers in LondonJob Posting: Digital River Seeks PHP Developer (Eden Prairie, MN)Dan Scott's Blog: Oooh...looks like I've got (even more) work cut out for meLeon Chevalier's Blog: Improve website load time by 500% with 3 lines of codePHPWomen.org: elePHPantsPhil Thompson's Blog: 7 PHP functions that saved my lifeStuart Herbert's Blog: Using suphp To Secure A Shared Server
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Pierre-Alain Joye has a little reminder posted to his blog today about two posts from planet-debian and Apache that refer to clones/references in PHP4 and PHP5 and some of the misconceptions presented there.   Reading planet-debian and Apache (from Sven and David), I catched two posts about clones and references in php4 and php5. I do not think it is worth to explain again everything here as Sara wrote a very good post already, check it out here.   He mentions his annoyance with articles/posts like these and the impact that it has on PHP as well as the person posting.   I wonder when the OS community in general will be mature enough to stop bitching at each other. And that's valid for PHP developers, gnome-kde and other well established wars.
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PÃ¡draic Brady has a quick update today pertaining to the PHPSecInfo project - a new manual (currently in development).   I'll keep adding to it over the days, weeks and months ahead. The current form is going to be mainly a draft. When it's done, I'll go through it and do some serious editing. Next priority is getting in the material on actually using and implementing PHPSpec...   You can find the manual at http://dev.phpspec.org/manual/ with quite a bit of content already filled out. Topics currently covered include installation guides, your "first steps", testing the code and some examples of it in use.
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Jared White has released the latest Developer Preview of his application framework for PHP 5 - Willowgarden DP2.   I'm so pleased to announce that Developer Preview 2 is ready. This is where the project is really starting to solidify and settle into a cohesive whole that can be used for hands-on development. I've been working on several Web site and applications using the DP2 codebase, and it has made my life as a PHP developer so much more fun than the bad old days of cobbling together scripts nearly from scratch.   A new wiki for the project has also been launched with content already being added - a User Guide and areas for tutorials and howtos. Jared also puts a call out to PHP 5 developers out there looking for something to get involved with to take a good look at the Willowgarden project and send him an email ("remove everything after jared before the @ sign").
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Latest PEAR Releases:PHP_CodeSniffer 0.1.1Net_UserAgent_Mobile 0.28.0Structures_DataGrid_Renderer_HTMLTable 0.1.1Structures_DataGrid_DataSource_XML 0.1.1Structures_DataGrid_Renderer_XML 0.1.1HTML_Table 1.7.3Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer 0.9.1PHP_CompatInfo 1.4.0XML_Query2XML 0.6.1Console_Color 0.0.4PEAR 1.5.0a1Crypt_XXTEA 0.8.0