Auto generating basic models for a Zend Framework app

Published at April 11, 2008 in Zend Framework, Code snippets, Experiments and PHP. 0 Comments

Do you have a database with foreign keys and just wish you could have something automatically create your ZF free sony ericsson ringtones | free ringtones verizon | free verizon real music ringtones | music real ringtones ringtones | polyphonic ringtones | country music ringtones | cingular download free ringtones | phone ringtones sprint | free cellular phone ringtones | alltel free ringtones | motorola q ringtones | free ringtones maker | download free real ringtones verizon | cingular ringtones | free ringtones for verizon wireless phone | free mobile phone ringtones | tv ringtones | download free mobile ringtones | free ringtones 3gforfree | motorola tracfone ringtones | models from it? Well, today that was me. So as a little proof of concept, this is the code I came up with to do it for me…

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Second Life at the University of Sussex

Published at March 12, 2008 in Sites and General. 0 Comments

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7290762.stm

If you get a chance, swing by the campus in Second Life. The SURL is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Sussex/75/16/38

Anyway; congratulations to Tom (the intern) for such a great job and Beth (the previous intern) who assisted!

Zend Framework 1.5 preview release

Published at January 29, 2008 in Zend Framework and PHP. 0 Comments

For those that don’t know by now, version 1.5 of the Zend Framework is now out in preview release. Congratulations to everyone who has had apart in getting out this release - from programmers to documentation writers to project managers!

There are a lot of very interesting updates and new features. Some notable ones are the inclusion of Zend_Form, Zend_Layout, OpenID and LDAP adapters for authentication, Technorati web service, as well has handy tweaks Zend_Db_Table such as being able to directly access the select object.

As it’s a preview release the code isn’t intended for production systems just yet, though I hope the time frame for getting it to stable release is short enough so that I can use it soon, but long enough to work out any major kinks. ;-)

The lesser of two evils?

Published at December 17, 2007 in General. 2 Comments

A few times I have been asked at work to decide on whether we should build an application or use something that’s out there already. Unfortunately, it’s never an easy choice for us… On the one hand something can be built that’s geared exactly to what is needed, but nothing else, and it’ll take time to plan, design and build it. Yet on the other hand you can have something that’s already been built so all the designing is not required, but it may have a lot of extra functionality that you have to rip out or things don’t work just as you want it to so will have to alter it anyway.

At this point I bet you’re thinking, “Andy is now going to give us the answer on what the best choice is, you just see…” Actually, no. No, I’m not. I can in all honestly say that I don’t know what the best course of action is. On one side I really favour creating the application myself because then I know exactly how it’ll work. But on the flip side of that, I’ll then have to do all the work and might not be able to put in all the features that are able to go in applications worked on by many people.

I suppose there is no clear winner here as it would probably depend on budget and deadlines, but I thought I’d open it up for debate anyway. Anyone want to comment?

Force a file download

Published at October 24, 2007 in Code snippets and PHP. 0 Comments

Here's a small function that will allow you to force a file download.

View as plain text
PHP:
  1. /**
  2. * Force a file download via HTTP.
  3. *
  4. * File is required to be on the same server and accessible via a path.
  5. * If the file cannot be found or some other error occurs then a
  6. * '204 No content' header is sent.
  7. *
  8. * @param string $path Path and file name
  9. * @param string $name Name of file when saved on user's computer,
  10. *                     null for basename from path
  11. * @param string $type Content type header info (e.g., 'application/vnd.ms-excel')
  12. * @return void
  13. * @access public
  14. */
  15. /* public static */ function download($path, $name = null, $type = 'binary/octet-stream')
  16. {
  17.     if (headers_sent()) {
  18.         echo 'File download failure: HTTP headers have already been sent and cannot be changed.';
  19.         exit;
  20.     }
  21.    
  22.     $path = realpath($path);
  23.     if ($path === false || !is_file($path) || !is_readable($path)) {
  24.         header('HTTP/1.0 204 No Content');
  25.         exit;
  26.     }
  27.  
  28.     $name = (empty($name)) ? basename($path) : $name;
  29.     $size = filesize($path);
  30.  
  31.     header('Expires: Mon, 20 May 1974 23:58:00 GMT');
  32.     header('Last-Modified: ' . gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s') . ' GMT');
  33.     header('Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate');
  34.     header('Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0', false);
  35.     header('Cache-Control: private');
  36.     header('Pragma: no-cache');
  37.     header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
  38.     header("Content-type: {$type}");
  39.     header("Content-length: {$size}");
  40.     header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=\"{$name}\"");
  41.     readfile($path);
  42.     exit;
  43. }

Very easy to use, too! Here are some examples of how you might call the function:

View as plain text
PHP:
  1. download('./myfile.txt');
  2.  
  3. download(__FILE__, 'a file for you.php');
  4.  
  5. download('/home/you/files/spreadsheet.xml', 'ssheet_' . date('Ymd'), 'application/vnd.ms-excel');

Portal (the game from Valve)

Published at October 22, 2007 in General. 2 Comments

A couple days ago I bought Portal via Steam, and even though it's probably one of the shortest games I've played it is undoubtedly one of the best! The premise is pretty simple; solve puzzles by using the portals that you can shoot in to the floor, ceiling or wall and walk through (or in some cases, fall in to or be shot through!) But a simple concept doesn't mean it's a simplistic game. It's great to look at (considering it came from Half-Life 2 this is no surprise), has a fantastic sense of humor running through-out, and will sometimes mess with your head ("...OK, so I have to shoot this wall, to fall through that ceiling and.. woah! I can see me walking through the ceiling from down here!")

The only downside to this game is that it's very short - completed within a few hours easily. And that's only a negative because the game is so captivating that it really leaves you wanting more.

There is a hack to integrate the Portal gun in to Half-Life 2 game play that I am looking forward to trying out because it'll add a whole new dimension to the game play.

$20 well and truly spent well!

Zend Certified Engineer

Published at October 19, 2007 in works07 and PHP. 0 Comments

During the php|works conference in Atlanta this year I took the PHP5 Zend Certification, and I'm pleased to say that today I found out I had passed! So I am now pleased to say that I am a Zend Certified Engineer for both PHP4 and PHP5.

And just to prove it...

Simple image view helper for Zend Framework

Published at October 3, 2007 in Zend Framework, Code snippets and PHP. 1 Comment

Here's a simply view helper for the Zend Framework that can be used to display image tags. It checks to see if the image file exists and if not then it'll use the data url scheme to output a very simple image that, ironically, says 'NO IMG' on it. :-) Please note, though, that I've only seen Firefox support this scheme, as wonderful as it is!

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php|works day 2

Published at September 14, 2007 in works07. 2 Comments

Today is the second and final day of the conference, and here's what went down for me...

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php|works speakers

Published at September 14, 2007 in works07. 0 Comments

As people going to the php|works sessions will tell you, there are a lot of good speakers here. Speakers that really know what they're talking about and have been involved in their subject for quite some time. You know; the kind of people that you as a developer really want to emulate. But I've noticed something that makes me really happy, and that is that the speakers are also attending other people's talks, listening and asking questions. It's nice to see because it shows that no matter how much the speakers know about their subject, there's always something new to learn and they're not so pretentious that they think they know it all.

Hope for us all yet, eh?