Stefan Mischook's Blog: Cannot load mysql extension error - Video Tutorial How To
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To help those facing a common problem with phpMyAdmin, Stefan Mischook has created a video to show how to fix the "phpMyAdmin Ã¢Â" Error Cannot load mysql extension" problem.   In a nutshell, PHP cannot find the library (mysql.dll - on Windows) it needs to connect to MySQL.   Fixing the problem is a (hopefully) simple four step process that he documents in the video. It's for Windows only, though, so those on other OSes will need to check out other sources.
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Gennady Feldman has posted the second part of his install instructions for setting up the Oracle Instant Client (11g) and the Oracle OCI8 drivers in PHP.   This is part 2 of my installation instructions. This is my attempt to provide an updated and simplified reference. I am leaving Part 1 as is, because that part can also be useful.   This updated tutorial shows the steps to installing 11g (versus 10g in the previous example) including the packages you'll need, the commands to make it work and a PEAR version of the install if you choose to go that route.
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The International PHP Magazine has posted results from their latest PHP community poll as voted on by visitors to their site. The question for this poll asked developers what they thought, of the choices on the list, was the most common mistake that PHP developers make.   Coming in at number one by an overwhelming lead was "Not escaping entities and SQL input" (a definite problem indeed) with the next highest option, "Not using a Framework" a full twenty percent lower. The next two options were closer (descending) - "Using old PHP versions" and "No or little use of Object Orientation".   There's a new poll this week for your consideration - this time asking which stage, of the five options, should come first in the development cycle of a typical content management system. Head on over and cast your vote today!
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Alexey Zakhlestin gave a talk for the PHPThinktank IRC channel recently on the topic of YAML, PHP, and some of the work that he's done combining the two.   It happened a bit of spontaneously, so noone was invited. It was my first try, to make introduction to yaml for php prgrammers, and if there is more interest I will give another talk which will cover more details, this time with proper scheduling :)   You can check out the log of the discussion for his entire talk (covering topics like what YAML is, where to get more information on it, some of its features, and a mention of the Syck library for parsing it).
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Lukas Smith is sending a wakeup call to the internet providers and web hosters out there - get involved in the PHP community!   We do not seem to have any ISP's active inside the PHP community. This is kind of odd, considering that PHP seems to be driving the business of hosters quite a bit. Why have none of them decided that PHP is important enough for their business that its worthwhile to ensure that their interests are taken into account?   He makes the suggestion of passing along the suggestion to bosses/co-workers/anyone who'll listen about getting involved. Suggested places to start would be as a part of the testers group or even contributing to the migration guide.
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Rob Richards mentioned in a previous book review about some of the issues he was having getting the Oracle extension enabled on his Fedora 8 system. Well, he's come back after doing some more testing/compiling and has found some resolution to his issues.   I really didn't need to get it running, but the sheer fact that I tried it and it wouldn't work, pissed me off enough to spend some time getting it resolved. Hopefully this helps anyone else having the same problem. I am currently using instant client 11.1, but I did try the 10.2 version with the same results.   He steps through the process he followed - tracking down the missing libaio files, correcting an issue with SELinux loading the Oracle libraries and his realization: he just needed to allow text relocation. Included in the post are the command line calls that'd need to be made to make it all happen.
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David has posted an article to the Expirmentalworks.net blog about a task that he and Johannes Schluter have finished up - importing the PHP CVS tree over into Git.   A few month ago Johannes Schluter and I started discussing about GIT and other decentralized version control systems. During our exploration of GIT we thought about importing the PHP CVS tree into git. A few weeks later and a lot of wasted cpu time, we finally managed to provide an inofficial GIT mirror of the PHP CVS repository. ItÃ¢ÂÂs provided by Johannes Schluter and mirrored by me.    The post documents the path they followed - using git-cvsimport, parsecvs and a path they needed to make - to finally get the import working without any flaws. You can check out their unofficial repository here (it's updates twice a day from the live CVS).
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In a recent post Brian Moon points out an advancement in something he's very excited about - the MySQL native driver for PHP.   I have been excited about the MySQL native drive (mysqlnd) since I first heard about it.  They are looking for testers now.   Brian also includes comments about the fact that the driver was originally intended for use in PHP6 and how some people have been talking about a back-port to PHP4 for those still hanging on.   Check out this post from Lukas Smith on the same subject with a bit more information on what the driver is and what it could mean for the PHP community as a whole.
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Joshua Eichorn is back today with the answers to the questions as posed by the readers of his blog previously.   Your AJAX answers from my AJAX questions post are below, I hope everyone finds them helpful.   The questions answered include:  How can I find out whether a connection is broken? Why would you want to use HTML_AJAX when there are far better tools for the job, pure javascript solutions such as prototype or jquery? What is the best way to 'degrade' a website when Javascript/XMLHttpRequest support is disabled? When utilizing an AJAX API such as Google Maps, how do you execute embedded Javascript commands in a page generated on-the-fly?    ...as well as a few more. Where appropriate, he also includes code to help illustrate his point.
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Hasin Hayder has provided some instructions he's created to install the Imagick extension for PHP on a Ubuntu linux system (7.10) in a new blog entry.   I already have ImageMagick installed in my machine and I tried to install the Imagick extension for PHP but I was stuck with strange errors. I have spent couple of hours today to figure out what I did wrong and Why I cant build that extension. Finally I've figured out that I must install ImageMagick from source first to build that extension. Heres how to.   He walks through the install, talking about where to get the package from, where to get the PECL extension for PHP and the compile process (with the result of a .so file PHP's extension can use).
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHPBuilder.com: AJAX and PHP Part 2 - XML Communication/ProcessingCommunity News: Zend Framework 1.0.0 ReleasedMike Potter's Blog: Slides for today's e-seminar on Flex and PHPBlogSecurity.net: Interview with Stefan Esser on WordPressCommunity News: India's First PHP UnconferencePro::PHP Podcast: Newscast for 2007.06.28JSLabs Blog:  How to create Microsoft Office Documents with PHPPEAR Blog: Request for ideas: New developer FAQPHP-Coding-Practices.com: Composing Methods: Split Temporary VariableRob Allen's Blog: Spanish versions too!
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In a new post Richard Heyes links to a replacement for the popular PEAR::DB package:   PEAR::DB is all well and good if you want to connect to multiple databases (I assume, I've never actually used it with anything other than mysql) but it is somewhat hefty on the bad side of 60k. Not a good thing if you're not using some sort of accelerator and have a high traffic site. Here's a class which replicates the PEAR::DB API (the bits that I use anyhoo) and weighs in at a much nicer ~11k. Sweet.   The class is posted for download here as a simple PHP source file with functions and values named similar to those in the PEAR::DB package.
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In this new post to his blog today, Tim shares some of the tools that he uses to develop his PHP applications (including supporting the CodeIgniter project).   IÃ¢ÂÂve been asked on several occasions to spill the beans on my development environment. Sadly, itÃ¢ÂÂs probably not the easiest setup - but it works for my stubborn mind.   Applications included in his list are things like PHP Eclipse, CuteFTP, XAMPP and Subversion. He also mentions a Firefox extension, Devboi, that offers quick access to several different reference manuals on the web.
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Stefan Mischook has posted part two of his video series looking at the use of sessions in PHP applications today:   This is the part 2 of 3 of my videos that introduces the beginner to PHP sessions. In this video, I get into practical examples where we see basic PHP sessions in action.   You can find the video here as well as part one if you need to catch up.
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Latest PHPClasses.org Releases:Multi-Dimensional Array HandlerMySQL2JSONBBCode ParsersphpcompilerProcessingExponsor ModSimplePagingweb20vnRouterSStatusMagic ArraysqlExecmyAltCaptchaDynamic Methodpreg_magic
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Edin Kadribasic has posted another new build of the PHP 4.x series and the latest MySQL libraries - PHP 4.4.6-win32 with MySQL 5.0.37.   I have compiled 5.0.36 libs mysqlf since that release didn't include pre-built windows binaries. I thought it would be the best if we bundled "original" MySQL DLLs so here is the PHP 4.4.6 binary compiled against 5.0.37 MySQL libraries. Upcoming versions of PHP5 are going to include this version of MySQL client library as well.   Click here to download this latest version (two files, both to be dropped into your existing install directory.
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In recent work, Ian Selby came across something odd - a setup where PHP was segfaulting without any real indication of where the error might be:   Starting to get a little frustrated, I took a peek at my error logs (/var/log/httpd/error_log for the unitiated), and discovered a wonderful message [about the segfault]. As any person scratching their head would do, I hit up google.. to no real avail. Just a bunch of php bug reports. So, what happened, and how did I fix it?   After searching through the code and narrowing down where it could be, the culprit looked like a custom session handler he was using. It uses MySQL to store the sesion information and, unfortunately, when Ian had compiled the server he didn't let PHP know about his unique setup.   His default installation was trying to use the default MySQL information (including the socket) to reach the database. Obviously failing, the server simply gave up and segfaulted. Thankfully, all it takes it a recompile with a few extra parameters and you're back in business.