Evert Pot's Blog: PHP serializer in userland code
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In this new blog post today, Evert Pot shares some thoughts on a custom solution he was looking to create as an alternative for PHP's serialize function.   I wanted to build this as a helper class for a draft-PHP-RPC server. The reason I needed a custom one was because I wanted to make sure I would be able to spit out PHP4-compatible serialized data, and in the future, when its ported to PHP6, also PHP5-compatible data.   He came across several issues in the development process including the slowness of his method compared to serialize() and a lack of a way to tell if two variables reference the same data. If you'd like to check out what he has so far, he's made the code available for download.
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Lorenzo Alberton has posted some updates about the PEAR packages that he maintains to his blog today including MDB_QueryTool, Mail_Queue2, MDB2, and Translation2.   Even if lately I've been coding way more in C/C++ than in PHP, I still keep an eye on PEAR developement: I reckon in the last month I've closed a bug a day, on average. And after my last call for help about my PEAR packages, I'm also pleased to announce that someone did indeed offer a hand. I'm happy to welcome not one, but two new developers!   Each of the items has links to their PEAR homepage and a few quick words on where the package stands (including developers involved or wanting to get involved). He also reminds developers out there that they can help out too if they want to jump in and get into PEAR.
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Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:Symfony Project: Book preview: read the Unit Tests chapterWebCheatSheet.com: Secure File Upload with PHPMichi Kono's Blog: The Best PHP Book Out ThereThe Bakery: Basic User Authentication in (CakePHP) 1.2.xPHPBuilder.com: Dynamic XML with PHPDavid Coallier's Blog: Zend_Db Without PDO part #3 (SVN Repository)?Community News: PHPLondon Conference 2007 AnnouncedMatthew O'Phinney's Blog: Overloading arrays in PHP 5.2.0Ilia Alshanetsky's Blog: 5.2.1 RC3 Released for testingJob Posting: Telio Telecom AS Seeks Senior Web Developer (Oslo, Norway)The Bakery: LightTPD and CakePHP setup in subdirectoriesJob Posting: Yahoo! Seeks Address Book Front-End Engineer (Sunnyvale, CA)HowTo Forge: PHP Programming BasicsJob Posting: Blue State Digital Seeks PHP/AJAX developer for politcal/tech consulting (Boston, MA)Zend Developer Zone:  AJAX Chat Tutorial Part 7 : Usability Improvements
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In a new post today, Clay Loveless talks about some issues he's been having with PHP and JSON, specifically with the JSON encoding method in PHP 5.2.1.   As of PHP 5.2.1, json_decode() no longer follows the published standards for JSON-encoded texts. Why not? For no reason other than the convenience of those ignorant of JSON standards.   His complaint stems from the results of a vat_dump statement - prior to this version it would give a NULL, but now it returns a "bool(true)" value back, resulting in some breakage of previous scripts. He spends the rest of the post explaining his voyage through the JSON world and how things are supposed to behave. He also digs a little deeper into the var_dump issue and why he thinks it's such a bad thing.
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Continuing on with his look at his OpenID library and its implementation, Padraic Brady has two new posts with more of the story.   From the first post:   As a follow on from my previous entry about OpenID in the Zend Framework, I've been in brief contact with Dmitry Stogov across a scattering of emails. Dmitry posted his OpenID proposal for the framework over at the Proposals Wiki earlier in the week. [...] It's actually very hard to comment constructively rather than simply handing over my code which probably says a lot more all by itself. [...] Anyway, I've agreed to port my OpenID library to PEAR as a PHP5 package. I checked with the mailing list, and the approach I've taken in splitting the library across a number of freestanding components hasn't seen any objections. On the flipside, it does help by providing upgrades to existing PEAR Encryption packages which are not yet migrated to PHP5 versions.   And from post number two:   Over the weekend, I managed to grab a few hours to dig around my OpenID library with the ultimate development tools: patience and experimentation. [...] What I've refactored towards is a splitting of the OpenID process based on three categories: Request, Redirect, Response.
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Gareth Heyes has a new post today talking about one of the vulnerable values in the $_SERVER superglobal - PHP_SELF.   I thought it might be a good idea to gather a few test cases demonstrating the problem. Why PHP allows these URL's is beyond me and it wouldn't take much work to filter out these malicious URL's in the PHP code.   He provides four test cases to show how simple it is to abuse - one using a HTTP header, another pushing XSS through, the third mentions search pages and the fourth a direct code injection.   You can download the code here.
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Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:WaxJelly Blog: Simple PHP script using the YouTube API (with pagination)DevShed: Uploading Files and Navigating Directories in PHPPHPit.net: PHP5 Class Basics, Part 1SpinDrop.us: Using Zend Search Lucene in a symfony appCommunity News: PHP Appalachia IRC ChannelZend Developer Zone: Work with XML Data in the Zend FrameworkColdScripts.com: Mapping Framework PopularityWaxJelly Blog: A More Complex PHP script using the YouTube API (with video details) PART 2KillerPHP Blog: PHP Interfaces: when and why you should use them instead of classes?PHP-Tools Blog: Analyzing aide (advanced intrusion detection environment) output with PHPZend Developer Zone: Pro PHP XML and Web Services Sample ChapterZend Developer Zone: Cool Image Thumbnail ClassNefarious Designs: Object-Oriented PHP Part 4: PHP5's Improved FeaturesSebastian Bergmann's Blog: Zend/PHP Conference 2006William Candillon's Blog: phpAspect presented at the EPFL
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:Job Posting: WorldNetJobs.com Seeks Expert PHP Developer (Multiple Locations - FL/MD/NY)Stefan Reuter's Blog: Profiling PHP ApplicationsRich Zygler's Blog: People work with WS-* web services in PHP? Why?PHPBuilder.com: Securing Data Sent Via GET RequestsKore Nordmann's Blog: Comparision of PHP image librariesJim Wynia's Blog:  WebDAV, PHP and YouPadraic Brady's Blog: Namespaces (or Yet Another Pointless Opinion Piece)Christopher Jones' Blog: PHP 5.2.5 RPMs with OCI8 and PDO_OCI are availableZend Developer Zone: PHP Abstract Podcast Episode 29: PHP Women Podcast (Recorded Live)Evert Pot's Blog: PHP WebDAV Integration Library
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In this post to his blog, Chris Shiflett talks about some issues surrounding character encoding and the cross-site scripting issues it can open up in your application.    In the post [on Good and Bad PHP Code], he provides a few useful PHP interview questions, including some questions from Yahoo. He explains that good PHP code should be Structured, Consistent, Portable and Secure   In the comments, many additional improvements have been suggested, but there's one that has yet to be mentioned. When using htmlspecialchars() without specifying the character encoding, XSS attacks that use UTF-7 are possible.    Included in the post is an example to illustrate the point as well as a solution, a simple one involving the header() function, to help correct the problem and prevent bad things from happening.   Be sure to check out http://shiflett.org/blog/2007/may/character-encoding-and-xss#comments">the comments for more great tips.
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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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Matthew O'Phinney has two new posts that talk about something object-oriented developers seem to shy away from - globals in their classes and how they can make things more difficult to make "embeddable applications" a reality.   In my previous entry, I ranted about the use of globals in popular PHP applications, and how they make embedding said applications difficult. I develop using object-oriented practices, and can honestly say I can't recall ever having slung a global variable around in my own code. Globals seem hackish to me, and as a result, trying to get applications that use them to behave correctly has been a challenge.   In the first part, he notes an interesting find about the $GLOBALS value and illustrates with a code example how he was able to get around it in his instance (wrapping a Serendipity instance in a Zend Framework app).   In part two, though, and uses another code example to show what kind of issues he was seeing with the $GLOBALS - a script that sets some globals in different instances and echoes the results back out.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:Sebastian Bergmann's Blog: Support for the Cancel Case Workflow PatternCommunity News: The PDO v2 ProposalSite News: Popular Posts for the Week of 01.25.2008ProPHP Podcast: PHP Newscast for 2008/01/24Developer Tutorials Blog: Why you should be using YAML for configJob Posting: InvestorGuide.com Seeks Web Developer (Fairfax, VA)Pierre-Alain Joye's Blog: Debugging symfony (or any php script) with vim and XdebugCIO.com: You Used PHP to Write WHAT?!Demian Turner's Blog: Seagull 0.6.4 Release (fixes Security Isse from 0.6.3)Developer Tutorials Blog: PHP Qualifications: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
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Chris Hartjes is taking on what he calls his "next foolish project" - a console for the CakePHP framework.   On the CakePHP mailing list, somebody familiar with Ruby on Rails' console functionality asked "why isn't there one of these in Cake?" [...] So I got to thinking about how to do this. On the surface, it seems the easiest way to do this is to write a PHP script that takes entries on the command line, run the input through an 'eval' statement. Sounds easy enough, and I could write that in a hurry. I think the trickiness comes in figuring out how to hook it into CakePHP so that you can access Models that already exist.   For those attending the Vancouver PHP Conference, attend his talk and you might get  amention of how far he's come with the idea. Otherwise, stay tuned to his blog for updates.
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Evert Pot has posted about a library he's creating to integrate WebDAV support with PHP and make things simpler for those needing to access the shares.   I intend to make this library as easy as possible to use, without making it a black-box-like system. Focus will not be on everything WebDAV could possibly provide, but instead on the features that are actually supported by the operating systems.   His goal is to make it as simple as making a 'File' and 'Directory' class to interface with the remote system and has two things he's deliberating on as far as features to include in the library - support for the custom properties WebDAV allows and the ability to lock files and directories.   If you'd like to check out the current progress of the library, check out its page on the Google Code site (as well as this discussion group he's set up).
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Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:Matthew O'Phinney's Blog: svn:externals (and the Zend Framework)Mark Jaquith's Blog: WordPress 2.0.6: Feedburner issue, and fixJob Posting: Unborn Media Inc Seeks PHP/MySQL Developer (Boston, MA)Zend Developer Zone: Tutorial : Using Zend Framework Without PDONetmag.co.uk: Make your own SoapChristopher Jones' Blog: Duplicate Columns in "2 Day Plus PHP Developer Guide"International PHP Magazine: Poll Question: Which is the Best PHP MVC Framework?William Candillon's Blog: phpAspect alpha 0.1.0 is released!Community News: phpthrowdown Registration OpenZend Developer Zone:  AJAX Chat Part Tutorial 6 : Updating the User ListIBM developerWorks: U2 PDO Driver Tutorial, Parts 1 & 2Stoyan Stefanov's Blog: Reusing an existing database connection with MDB2DevShed: Introducing the Memento PatternNexen.net: PHP statistics for December 2006Sandro Groganz's Blog: Syntax Highlighting & Migrating Permalinks in WordPress
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Aaron Wormus has a new note on his blog today about his presentation at this year's Zend/PHP Conference & Expo and another speaker he's excited to hear.    One of the Zend conference sessions that I'm pretty excited about is Don Samisa Abeysinghe's (of WSO2) "Fully Fletched Web Services with PHP".   I'll be presenting a session on "Moving to PHP5 with Style." This tutorial/case study will be based on experience in transitioning several codebases from PHP4 to PHP5, creating unit tests & started a move towards a service based architecture without a complete platform rewrite.    Aaron's talk fits under the banner of the "PHP Development" talks, including others on topics like hosting PHP applications on Windows, working with PDO, unicoding in PHP6, and using PHPUnit.
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To prepare the way for the upcoming PEAR book from Packt Publishing correctly, Stoyan Stefanov has posted this info about the book and where to find the latest details on it.    Here's the link to publisher's page dedicated to the PHP Programming with PEAR. Guess who wrote the chapter for MDB2? ;)   It's an honour to me to be in the company of the other authors, people who have done a lot for the PEAR community    He also mentions some of the topics that the book will contain, including accessing databases with MDB2, creating and parsing XML documents, and accessing web APIs. The book is coming out in September, so keep on the lookout for it at your local bookseller soon.