Box.net: How to Debug PHP with Vim and XDebug on Linux
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Curt Zirzow has pointed out a cool article on the Box.net website about debugging your PHP applications with a combination of Vim and XDebug (on linux).   Here's how it works. You're coding away in vim. You hit F5; Vim waits for a connection from the PHP server. You refresh the PHP page you're working on. It attempts to contact Vim - connection successful. You are launched into a debugging session right inside Vim. You can step into, over, and out of statements, eval statements, get all variables in context, get and set properties, remove and set breakpoints, all on the fly. Finally, some real programming tools.   Included are the steps to set up the vim environment , set up the client debugger (DGBp) and link it all to the XDebug functionality on your remote machine.
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Following up on yesterday's release of PHP 5.2.0 RC4 from Ilia, Edin Kadribasic has posted the corresponding Windows builds.   This build is featuring the new installer contributed by John Mertic so testing it before the final release would be appreciated.   He's linked to various packages:  php-5.2.0RC4-Win32.zip php-5.2.0RC4-win32-installer.msi pecl-5.2.0RC4-Win32.zip php-debug-pack-5.2.0RC4-Win32.zip
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Latest PHPClasses.org Releases:phpmmPHP Array to JavascriptDay IteratorFile Reader and Writer AbstractionDirectory and file infoSimple PagerSimple ListScript timerMessage HandlerText 3DWindowFXLake effectWPGetYahoo Messenger PM send via PHP
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The results from the latest poll conducted by the International PHP Magazine have been released. This time, they asked developers what they thought was the best way to do QA for their PHP applications.   Among the options were things like "Do API documentation", "Use code analyzers that check CS violations, XSS or SQL injection attacks" and the number one choice - "Do unit tests using PHPUnit or phpt". Three other options followed behind (using debugging tools, code analyzers and having a commit mailing list) with the API documentation falling down in last place.   They already started up this week's poll too. This time, they ask developers to vote on which of the options make for good PHP code. There's four options - structured, consistent, portable and secure. Get your vote in today!
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Latest PEAR Releases:Console_CommandLine 0.2.0PHP_Debug 1.0.0Text_Highlighter 0.7.1Log 1.9.14XML_Query2XML 1.6.0RC1pearweb 1.17.0pearweb_index 1.16.12PEAR 1.7.0RC2Text_Diff 0.3.2Date_Holidays 0.17.2pearweb_index 1.16.13XML_Query2XML 1.6.0pearweb 1.17.1
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On DevShed today, there's the second part in a two part series (another excerpt from the "Zend PHP Certification" from Zend) talking about getting the most out of your application and platform through some simple debugging/optimizing tools.   They start off with a look at debuggers - what they're for and a brief mention (high level) of how to use them. Next up is some simple suggestions for optimizing the performance of your application:  Hardware issues Web server issues Avoid overkill Zip it up Database optimizations  They also include a simple recommendation that all developers, looking for performance boosts or not should follow - "keep your code simple".
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Chris Shiflett has posted his own recap of the (just passed) php|works conference up in Toronto over on his blog.   I've been traveling non-stop since php|works, so I haven't had a chance to reflect on the conference, what I learned, who I met, and things like that. (Zak has been doing a good job of this lately, and I'd like to follow his lead.) I've probably forgotten more than I remember, but this is my recap.   Included in the things he mentions are:  The people he was able to meet (like Joshua Eichorn and Sebastian Bergmann) The talks he gave ("Truth about XSS" and "Agile PHP Testing") His interview with Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone The PHP 5 Certification and Wez Furlong's "Not PDO" talk
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Felix Geisendorfer shows, in a new blog post today, how to setup XDebug (the popular debugging extension for PHP) on a Mac OSx (or Win32/Linux) system.   One of the biggest obstacles when getting started with Xdebug was that I had a hard time finding good instructions on how to set it up on Mac OS X (I finally got rid of windows, yeah !). The only good resource I found was stored in Googles cache (wasn't live anymore) and had instructions on how to manually build xdebug from source.   His is a four step process of installing XDebug support on his MAMP setup - including a few configuration directives you'll need to apply to get XDebug support included.
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Clay Loveless, spurred on by a comment from a visitor to his site, has modified his Trac package to get things working correctly with the syntax highlighting.    As John Herren pointed out in the comments to yesterday's post, my suggestion for PHP syntax coloring wasn't working for several versions of Trac.   After a little digging, it turned out that my CSS rules were based on the non-standard SilverCity highlighting output, rather than the newer and more common native PHP highlighting.    His solution is to create a simple shell script, php_mimeview, to make adding cirrect syntax highlighting as easy as changing your config.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHPClasses.org: A PHP killer feature - Streams abstractionRob Thompson's Blog: Switch vs. IfPHPEverywhere: Octopussy numbers in PHPJob Posting: MODE Visual Seeks PHP Developer (Charlotte, NC)ProDevTips.com: Why PHP as a templating language sucksMatthew Turland's Blog: The Yin and Yang of TypingStubbles Blog: Stubbles 0.5.0 releasedChristopher Jones' Blog: Updated connection pooling in PHP's OCI8 extensionBen Ramsey's Blog: Congrats Costa Rica PHP!Carsten Lucke's Blog: Configuration issues with Xdebug on Debian Etch
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Edin Kadribasic has posted on his blog about a new compile of PHP 5.2 he's created using a new offering from Microsoft:   I have just completed the first build of the current php-5.2 CVS using the new compiler from Microsoft. The file is avaliable at php-5.2.1RC2-dev-Win32.zip.   The comments on the post indicate a possible problem (run time error) in the build, but no response yet on if it has been worked on or not.
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The Eclipse Project (who recently announced, in conjunction with Zend, the release of the PHP IDE PDT 1.0) are putting on a live webinar covering the software and its release.   This webinar will include a short history about the PHP Development Tools framework project, some statistical information (downloads, committers, bugs) and a demonstration of the project. The demonstration includes the different perspectives (PHP and PHP Debug) and the different views under each perspective. We will go through the creation of a PHP project, a PHP file and a debug session, where we will illustrate the debug features. During the presentation we will also see the relations to the WTP project which the PHP project is based on.   The event will be happening October 2nd (2007) at 9am PDT/12pm EDT/4pm GMT and will run about an hour. To attend, head to the event's page and click on the "Register" button on the right.
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As a part of their IRC discussion series, the PHP Thinktank Blog brings you the logs from their latest talk - Scott Mattocks on PHP-GTK.   Scott talked about what PHP-GTK is and what kind of things it can do as well as how you can run them on your own machine. There was also a sample link he gave out to show what an application might look like. He also talks about what sets PHP-GTK apart from the traditional PHP applications.   He gives a (very) small sample application as well as some explanations of some of the different components (widgets) that are included with the PHP-GTK installation. There's lots more where all this came from, so be sure to check out the whole talk log for more great PHP-GTK goodies.
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Debugging can be one of the most important tools to a developer (web or otherwise) and one of the more popular PHP IDEs, Zend Studio, makes it relatively simple to do. The Developer Tutorials website has this new tutorial to help you get started on the path to being bug free.   For the majority of experienced PHP developers, Zend Studio is considered the top-of-the-line PHP IDE. [...] In this tutorial, we will explore how to use the latest update of Zend Studio for debugging PHP scripts.   They walk through an overview of the IDE, some of the requirements and the install process and, finally, they finish it off with a few pages talking about how the get the debugging up and running.
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Picking back up on his blog, Sean Coates shares a Dashboard widget he's created to do quick and dirty PHP interpreting on the fly:   I found myself using php -r on the command line to test some simple code snippets, and it occurred to me that this isn't "The Mac Way." So, following the excellent documentation at Apple, I managed to come up with something pretty useful in an afternoon.   His widget sits happily, ready to take in PHP code and output the result at the click of a button.
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As mentioned by php|architect, there's a handy new widget that's been created by the folks over at Zipline Interactive to allow you to search PHP functions right from your desktop.   From the sidebars page on PHP.net:   If you use Microsoft Windows Vista you can now search the php.net function database directly from your desktop. The Microsoft Windows Vista Sidebar is a pane on the right side of your Microsoft Windows Vista Desktop where you can keep useful utilities. The php.net Function Finder will install in this bar giving you direct search access to the php.net database directly from your Desktop.   The actual download can be found over on Zipline's page and comes in the form of a .gadget file you can easily plug in.
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On the devthatweb blog, there's a new post from Pat Nakajima with a recipe for deploying a PHP application with the help of Capistrano (the Ruby on Rails tools for deploying web applications).   Recently though, I was working on a PHP project, and I decided that the time had come to rewrite my Mint recipe to allow deployment of any PHP project, totally independent of Rails. I set to work, and I'm happy to share the result.   The example makes it a simple matter of using the command "cap deploy:php" to use the recipe and push out your PHP application.