Pierre-Alain Joye's Blog: Debugging symfony (or any php script) with vim and Xdebug
478822
Pierre-Alain Joye has posted an example of one way to use the XDebug software - to debug the symfony framework or any other script (with the help of vim).   Xdebug is one of the best debugger and profiler for php (maybe the only good one in open source :). The only problem is its lack of dedicated client. The only problem is its lack of dedicated client, however there is many plugins for many IDE or editors like Eclipse PDT or weaverslave and even for my favourite editor, Vim.   He quickyl runs through the installation of XDebug in your installation and the script needed to set up the debugging in vim. All that's left is to add the "XDEBUG_SESSION_START=1" flag to the end of your script name and letting the information flow in.
430750
In a new post to her blog today, Ligaya Turmelle mentions a conversation she was having with some of the PHP documentation team about their transitions and the possibilities for integrating something new into the system - creating phpt tests automatically.   Seems Philip and colder were talking on the IRC about possibly using the php doc examples to automatically generate some phpt tests to make sure the examples in the docs worked correctly. I personally think it is a great idea for another reason - it would give the QA team a base listing of phpt tests for the various PHP functions. With that base listing it would be easier to modify/add to the various phpt tests to cover the boundries of the function.   A script to implement this feature is already in the works - a preview of it can even be found here.
587204
In a new tutorial posted to his blog today, Pierre-Alain Joye shows how to generate backtraces on a Windows machine without the need for a compiler installed.   How to get a back trace on windows without having to compile PHP has been an impossible task for many of us. The difficulty was to first succeed to compile php (given that you have a visual C++ installed). If you are in the middle of a bug hunting session, no need to say that setting up a windows build system is the last thing you like, especially if it is your first time. Thanks to Edin's window binary and MS Diagnostic Debug , it is now possible to have a backtrace in a couple of clicks.   To use the method you will need a few pieces of software to help out but all are available for free. Next up are the steps to get things set up (simple) and the creation of the backtrace to catch the error, complete with screenshots for the whole way. The end result is a nice, pretty error message output to the browser (Internet Explorer) that also dumps the backtrace for you to use.
181510
Dave Dash has posted his own summary about a recent PHP-related conference that happened in Amersfoort - SymfonyCamp.   He talks about some of the presentations given, the other conference attendees, Fabien Potencier's Symfony 2.0 talk, his own talk on the Zend Search Lucene component and the "clean up" project they spent a day working on.   You can also check out Fabien's overview of the event (with more photos) for a different perspective.
388816
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
60069
The Zend Developer Zone has posted the fourth part (or a five part series) from Stefan Priebsch about testing and debugging your applications with XDebug.   Welcome to the fourth installment in our five-part series of xdebug articles on the Zend DevZone. This week, we will explore debugging PHP code with xdebug, the swiss army knife for PHP developers. [...] This fall, the problem of having no release-quality cross-platform xdebug client has been solved with the release of Eclipse PDT. Eclipse PDT is a free IDE for PHP supporting xdebug out of the box. So, without further ado, let us install Eclipse PDT to get started with debugging.   He includes the setup procedure for getting XDebug and the Eclipse PDT extension to play nice together (including some screenshots of example output).
154133
Tony Freixas has posted a new article covering his thoughts on high-performance debugging with PHP5:   In this article, I will show you how to use PHP 5 input filters to support debug, trace and assert statements so that a one-line change disables these statements and restores your script to full production performance.   He makes a custom solution, a simple method for just outputting simple debug statements via his own custom debugging classes - thDebug, theTrace and thAssert. He wraps all of these in a thDebugManager class to make them all play nice together.   With these in place, he moves on to the real key to the debugger, using the input filter extension that comes with PHP5. He makes a thAbstractStreamFilter abstract class to base the filtering on and, using this interface, makes his thDebugFilter class to handle the various debugging outputs. He uses the __autoload functionality to load it correctly into each page that needs it.
521521
The results of the latest poll from the International PHP Magazine are in. The question this time asked which, of the options given, were your favorites in the Smyfony project's feature set. There was a clear winner above all of the others - the scaffolding that it makes so simple.   Some of the other options that were included but didn't get nearly as many votes were:  Simple templating and helpers Multilingualism and I18N support Object model and MVC separation Ajax support  Following at a distant second was the "Object model and MVC separation" choice (and to others, "Enterprise ready" and "Ajax support" nipping close at its heels).   Be sure to cast your vote in this week's poll that asks your opinion on some of the rules that the PHP Throwdown has set in place. Vote for the one that you think fits best with the spirit of the competition.
467744
In this new post to his blog, Tobias Schlitt shares some VIM tips with the PHP community, specifically about PHP Documentor integration functionality. He's gone back and documented the functionality now to make it that much easier to use.   Because I had a talk about how to use VIM in respect to PHP source code editing, I took the time during the week, to write some extensive documentation for PDV, the PHP Documentor plugin for VIM.   He's also documented the VIM file type plugin as well, and both are available through his SVN of PDV. There's also to updates mentioned - one about splitting up the .vimrc and file type plugin and added the repository to the official SVNServe list making it easy to check out.
390086
In another quick note from Chris Shiflett, there's a summary of php|works and some of the comments made about it:
288007
After long discussions and much opinion being thrown around, Andrei Zmievski points outintegration of namespaces into the upcoming PHP6 release.   Ladies and gentlemen, we have namespaces.   According to the post from  \
466365
Cameron Olthuis wants to share the tools that he finds th emost useful with the entire web, so he's posted them here on his blog.   His list includes libraries from all different technologies, not just PHP. Several are Javascript-related, but it's always good to have a complete toolkit on hand when trying to tackle some of the more difficult things.   Included in his list are things like:  Moo.fx - a Javascript effects library Swat - an open source web application toolkit PEAR - the PHP package repository Mochikit - lightweight Javascript library    Be sure to check out the post and its comments for more great resources!
313545
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?
41064
Gerd Schauffelberger writes on the PHP-Tools Blog today about the contents of the latest issue from the German PHP Magazine, specifically an article covering the PEAR package HTML_AJAX.   This article's target is (1st) to give a brief introduction to AJAX and how things work from Javascript an PHP side in contrary. Also (2nd) I wanted to show that you actually don't have to muck around with a mess of Javascript (browser compatibility issues and such) because it's it is all done by the Joshua Eichorn's HTML_AJAX framework.    The article doesn't build up an entire application (as Gerd mentions) but it does provide you a good base to work from and gives you a good direction to head from to learn more about this powerful package.
155453
Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHPBuilder.com: AJAX and PHP Part 1Developer.com: Threads Versus The Singleton PatternNick Halstead's Blog: Google Gears Caching of WordPress in PHPDevShed: PHP, MySQL and the PEAR DatabaseDave Dash's Blog: Installing a PHP that can do symfony+doctrine on DreamhostChristopher Jones' Blog: Upgrade PHP with Oracle Application Server on LinuxPHP.net: PHP 5.2.3 ReleasedPro::PHP Podcast: Newscast for May 31st, 2007Secunia.com: PHP Integer Overflow Vulnerability and Security BypassPHPBuilder.com: PHP and Regular Expressions 101
641738
In a new post to his blog, Robert Swarthout about a PHP frontend he's been developing for working with Subversion repositories:   The frontend needed to be designed in such a way that each developer could access their working copies and make the full range of actions against them. I decided to also use an AJAX setup so that pages would be quickly loaded and updated by a single toggle of a folder.   A few issues popped up, including tracking edits correctly through the interface. His solution revolved around an Apache MPM that could serve different pages to different users and groups. With this solution in place, the functionality could be built up, a list of which he provides including:  create working copy from repository (svn checkout) svn blame svn delete search files (via a grep/find combination, omitting .svn folders) svn rename
343797
As a companion to the podcast version of his review, Matthew Turland has posted his comments in text form over on his blog today.   I received an e-mail recently from a very nice gentleman at Packt Publishing - their representative asked if I would be willing to review one of their books, namely PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects by Shu-Wai Chow. Reviewing books is not something I had done before, so I thought I would give it a good old-fashioned college try.   He mentions the size of the book (and how it's not an indication of the quality) and the basic structure of the book, including spotlights on some of the specific topics covered.