Andy's blog o' goodness – Page 10 – php, web stuff, raspberry pi… even blacksmithing!

June 5, 2008

StringToTitle filter

I like the filtering capabilities of the Zend Framework, but for some reason there doesn’t seem to be a string to title case filter (though there is a string to upper and string to lower). So here it is:

PHP/Zend Framework Comments: 0

June 2, 2008

Damn hackers.

Someone exploited a hole in the version of WordPress that I Was using and managed to destroy my last post about automatically creating model for your Zend Framework app. Unfortunately, I just don’t think I have a recent backup of the database around so might not be able to recover it easily. This has forced me, of course, to update...

General Comments: 0

April 11, 2008

Auto generating basic models for a Zend Framework app

Do you have a database with foreign keys and just wish you could have something automatically create your ZF 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… But before we get to that, a few caveats: It’s just a proof...

Code snippets/Experiments/PHP/Zend Framework Comment: 1

March 12, 2008

Second Life at the University of Sussex

The team that I work in – University of Sussex Web Team – have just created large portions of the campus in Second Life. Well, when I say “the team” it was mainly down to our graduate intern who has done a fantastic job… So much so that it’s been reported in a local newspaper, on the radio, on a...

General/Sites Comments: 0

January 29, 2008

Zend Framework 1.5 preview release

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,...

PHP/Zend Framework Comments: 0

December 17, 2007

The lesser of two evils?

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...

General Comments: 2

October 24, 2007

Force a file download

Here’s a small function that will allow you to force a file download. [php]/** * Force a file download via HTTP. * * File is required to be on the same server and accessible via a path. * If the file cannot be found or some other error occurs then a * ‘204 No content’ header is sent. * *...

Code snippets/PHP Comments: 0

October 22, 2007

Portal (the game from Valve)

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...

General Comments: 2

October 19, 2007

Zend Certified Engineer

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…

PHP/works07 Comments: 0

October 3, 2007

Simple image view helper for Zend Framework

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...

Code snippets/PHP/Zend Framework Comments: 2