Zend Developer Zone: Dynamically Creating Compressed Zip Archives With PHP
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The Zend Developer Zone has a new tutorial that focuses on the dynamic creation of zip archives in a PHP application.   PHP too has included support for the ZIP format since PHP 4.x but it was only recently when, idly browsing the PHP manual, I realized that PHP 5.2.0 includes a re-engineered version of the ext/zip extension, one based on the zlib library. Bored and not a little intrigued, I decided to try it out. And over the next few pages, I'm going to tell you what I found.   The tutorial does require that you have the zip extension installed before getting started. He starts with the basics (reading and opening a zip file) but quickly moves on to creating and decompressing them. All of the code needed is included of course, so you'll be up and working with your own zip files in no time.
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Based off of a previous article from Mike Willbanks, Stuart Herbert has posted some of his own thoughts on tuning and tweaking your applications for the best performance you can get out of them.   There's some good advice in there, and I thought it'd be a good idea to quickly add a bit more detail about the separate approaches that Mike raises.   He goes over the APC caching, memcache, the "gzip trick", the "Not Modified" header and optimized SQL statements.   He also mentions one thing that Mike didn't mention - a split between static files (no PHP needed) and their dynamic cousins. Having a more pure Apache (no PHP installed) can help give a minute jump in speed that, depending on the size of the site, could really add up from a user's perspective.
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Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone has posted a new book review of one of Packt Publishing's latest PHP-related offerings - "PHP Programming with PEAR".    For those who have been living under a virtual rock for a while now, PEAR is the "PHP Extension and Application Repository". In a nutshell, it is a collection of classes, it's a framework, and it's a distribution system. Most importantly though, it's an excellent place to find the classes you need so you don't have to re-invent the wheel. (Ok, beginner's time is over, I promise).   PHP Programming with PEAR, written by Stephen Schmidt, Carsten Lucke, Stoyan Stefanov and Aaron Wormus, takes a look at some important PEAR classes and how you can use them.     He mentions what the book covers (which packages) and highlights some of his favorite bits, including the chapter on web services.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:ProDevTips.com: Writing a CMS/Community with Smarty and the Zend Framework: Part 6Nessa's Blog: Using an .htaccess with PHP Compiled as CGIArnold Daniels' Blog: How I PHP: The Output Handler - ContinuedMartynas Jusevicius' Blog: PHP 5 features: Class autoloadingSean Coates' Blog: Actually Solving a Problem (believe it or not)The Northclick Blog: Message Queue Project: First working versionStefan Mischook's Blog: A Question about object properties in PHP ClassesJob Posting: G2 Technology Seeks PHP Developer (Memphis, TN)Rob Allen's Blog: Zend_View: Access the view from a view helperDavid Walsh's Blog: Using PHP Generic Objects To Organize Your Code
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted their latest edition of their podcast - PHP Abstract. In this episode Yossi Leno looks at using the Zend Toolbars to work in your applications.   Our special guest for this episode of the PHP Abstract podcast is Yossi is the product manager for the development tools group at Zend. He is going to talk to us today about using the Zend Browser Toolbars for Debugging and Profiling your applications.   There's two ways to get the new show - download it directly or subscribe to their feed and get the latest ones hand delivered. They've also started a new program to help bring in more community input into the podcast (oh, and they pay too - $75) for making your contribution.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest podcast in its PHP Abstract series. This time it's hosted by Paul Jones, developer of the Solar framework project, who talks gives an overview of the project and its place in the PHP community.   Today's special guest is Paul M. Jones. Paul is an internationally-recognized expert PHP developer and technical consultant living in Memphis, TN. On his blog, he writes mostly about his software projects, but also touches on management, business, politics, and culture.   You can grab the show directly or subscribe to the feed to get this and more great shows from the podcast (with topics covered like PHP & Java, CodeIgniter, Security and much more)
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Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone has posted his wrapup of this year's Dutch PHP Conference held in Amsterdam.   The chairs are all folded, the displays are back in their tubes and the speakers have all move on to their next big thing. Before the shadows of time fog our memory, let's take a look back over our shoulder at what was The Dutch PHP Conference.   Cal talks about the attendance (sold out!), a link to his keynote code in action and an overview of some of the talks presented.
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Patrick Reilly has a new post today encouraging developers out there looking for an opportunity to volunteer in the community to check out the Zend Framework project's many needs.   Most components and subprojects need volunteers to help with documentation, unit test coverage, code reviews, improving integration with other ZF components, and enhancing architecture and design for the purpose of improving extensibility and ease of use with new components. If you see a subject area or component that interests you, please contact any project members currently associated with the component.   The project is starting several wiki "websites" dedicated to each of the components/efforts inside of the main framework project. Areas for these include:  Auth Team Documentation Team MVC Team Web Services Team
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted episode eighteen of their PHP Abstract podcast series - another episode from Davey Shafik. This time he goes on an "API rant".   Todays special guest is Davey Shafik. If you are a regular listener of PHP Abstract, you will recognize Davey's name from previous podcasts. For those of you new to PHP Abstract, Davey is a full time PHP Developer with 10 years experience in PHP and related technologies. He is an author of both magazine articles and books. Davey keeps his mind sharp by trying to tackle problems from his unique perspective. Today, Davey is going to rant a bit about APIs.   The show can either be downloaded directly, listen to the show via the built-in web player, or you can subscribe to the podcast's feed to get this and more great content from PHP Abstract.
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The Zend Developer Zone (and Zend) are running a new contest where you could win yourself a free copy of their popular Zend Studio IDE.   It's a very poorly kept secret that Zend is working on the next generation of Zend Studio. They must be getting down to the 'fit and finish' pieces of the project because my buddy Yossi wrote me and asked me to enlist the help of the PHP community at large. So here's his request. The Zend Studio team needs your help. They are looking for a code snippet to showcase the syntax highlighting and debugging capabilities of Zend Studio.    They're looking for certain types of code snippets and a list of the criteria are included in the ZDZ post. The deadline's at at midnight (Pacific) on July the 26th, so get those snippets together and get them sent off for your chance to win!
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In this new post to the Zend Developer Zone, Cal Evans talks about his meetup with Danny Kolke and Ahmad Baitalmal of Etelos where they recorded a great PHP-related conversation.   On the podcast we talked about Zend, PHP5 and Etelosâ EASE programming language. For those of you not familiar with Etelos, here is a quick blurb from their web site.   Cal gave his impression of what Etelos is creating and an opinion on the quality, stating that Etelos/EASE looks phenomenal. Especially of note is Cal's comments about not needing a computer science degree to get a website up and running with a database backend.
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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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Matt Wade has posted a quick item to APress' Inside Open Source blog today mentioning an update to an item he'd previously mentioned - issues with the Zend_Cache module.   One of my complaints was the Zend_Cache did not accept lifetimes on a per object basis, but rather the lifetime was at an application level. I just received notice in my inbox that the issue has been fixed! The change is currently in svn, and should be in the 0.80 preview release. Thanks go to Fabien for the fix.   You can download this latest version of the Framework (0.7.0) from the Zend Framework website.
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Now Old Grumpy goes for a (Micro)soft target Column Iâm a fan of shell extensions â those plug-ins for Windows Explorer which provide easy right-click access to all manner of context sensitive actions. For example, my favourite ZIP compressor is WinZip: simply right-click on a folder and you can instantly create an archive containing everything within that folder. Magic! But having said that, shell extensions, like other things, should be used in moderation; they can seriously impact system performance if you invite too many of âem to the party.â¦
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The Zend Developer Zone is back today with the latest edition of their podcast - episode two of PHP Abstract. This time, special guest Matthew Weir O'Phinney talks about the benefits of using a change management system.   This episode is the second published by the Zend Developer Zone with the first being a look at security with some tips from Eli White.   You can download the show directly from the site or add in their podcast feed to your aggregator and get the latest episodes delivered right to your desktop.
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In a new post to the JSLabs blog today, there's a mini-tutorial showing how to, with the help of the new hooks in PHP 5.2, create a file upload progress meter.   This progess meter is based on the yahoo user interface library and alternative php cache (APC).  You will need both of these for it to display properly.  PHP 5.2.0 or higher is also required. (I have written a previous article on alternative PHP cache here).   He gives a brief overview of how things work (including the php.ini setting to make it happen) and has a screenshot of the resulting output. You can check out the demo here or just grab the source and jump right in.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted their latest podcast in the PHP Abstract series. This time, it's a focus on planning in your programming projects - how to get the most structure out of the simplest planning.   Davey [Shafik] is going to talk to us about one of the most neglected areas of software development, planning the project.   Grab the podcast directly here or subscribe to the feed to get this and other episodes of this quality podcast.