Using PostgreSQL with PHP in Cloud Foundry

Having successfully deployed a PHP application to Cloud Foundry, I needed a PostgreSQL database for persistent storage. I found Lorna Mitchell's Connecting PHP to MySQL on Bluemix helpful and this article expands on that information. I want to create a cloud-based PostgreSQL database and connect it to Laravel's Eloquent in a Cloud Foundry application. This is how to do it. Create the database instance As I'm using Bluemix for my Cloud Foundry hosting, I'm using… continue reading.

Posted on 6 September 2017 in Bluemix, Cloud Foundry, Database, PHP

Deploying a PHP application to Cloud Foundry

I recently had a requirement to deploy a Slim application somewhere. As I already have a Bluemix account, it seemed sensible to deploy it to their Application Runtimes service which is an installation of the Open Source Cloud Foundry project. This turned out to be quite easy, but there are a number of steps involved, so I'm documenting it here. Setup the CLI tools I'm a command line person, so did it all via the… continue reading.

Posted on 30 August 2017 in Bluemix, Cloud Foundry, PHP

Adding a user to your Bluemix space

I'm at the stage where I need to give another developer access to my IBM Cloud Functions actions. I'm not really an infrastructure person and I found the user management pages on the Bluemix console incomprehensible, so used the command line. This is how I did it so that I don't have to work it all out again. Add the user to your organisation These are the steps to add the user to your organisation:… continue reading.

Posted on 25 August 2017 in Bluemix

Getting started with Serverless PHP

I've been interested in Apache OpenWhisk for a little while now and recently submitted a new feature to add PHP support to the project. As OpenWhisk is a serverless environment, most users do not run their own copy and instead use a commercial provider with IBMs Bluemix available now along with Adobes I/O Runtime and RedHat coming soon. As a result, my contribution, isn't practically useful until it's in production with a provider. Fortunately, and… continue reading.

Posted on 23 August 2017 in Bluemix, OpenWhisk, PHP

Logging in to Bluemix via wsk

To set up the authentication for the OpenWhisk cli tool wsk you do this: $ wsk property set –apihost {host} –auth {key} > /dev/null $ wsk property unset –namespace > /dev/null The host and key are provided to from your OpenWhisk supplier. For Bluemix OpenWhisk, you can find it by logging in and then going to the Download OpenWhisk CLI page. To make my life easier, I use a bash function to swap OpenWhisk environments… continue reading.

Posted on 9 August 2017 in Bluemix, OpenWhisk

Creating an OpenWhisk Alexa skill

In a previous post, I looked at the mechanics of how to create an Alexa skill to tell me which colour bin I needed to put out next. I'll now look at how I chose to implement it in OpenWhisk, using Swift. An Alexa skill consists of a number of intents and you register a single end point to handle them all. As I'm using OpenWhisk, I have direct web access to my actions without… continue reading.

Posted on 24 July 2017 in Alexa, OpenWhisk, Swift

Getting started writing an Alexa Skill

We now have 4 Amazon Echo devices in the house, and, inspired by a demo LornaJane gave me at DPC, I have decided to write some skills for it. This article covers what I learnt in order to get my first Swift skill working. Our bins are collected by the council every other week; one week it's the green recycling bin and the other week, it's the black waste bin. Rather than looking it up,… continue reading.

Posted on 17 July 2017 in Alexa, Development, OpenWhisk

Simple way to add a filter to Zend-InputFilter

Using Zend-InputFilter is remarkably easy to use: use Zend\InputFilter\Factory as InputFilterFactory; // set up InputFilter $specification = [ 'my_field' => [ 'required' => false, 'filters' => [ ['name' => 'StringTrim'], ], ], ]; $factory = new InputFilterFactory(); $inputFilter = $factory->createInputFilter($specification); // use InputFilter on some data $data['my_field] = 'Some string'; $inputFilter->setData($data); if ($inputFilter->isValid()) { Return false; } return $inputFilter->getValues(); // my_field is now trimmed How do you add your filter to it though? This is… continue reading.

Posted on 21 June 2017 in PHP, Zend Framework

Default route arguments in Slim

A friend of mine recently asked how to do default route arguments and route specific configuration in Slim, so I thought I'd write up how to do it. Consider a simple Hello route: $app->get("/hello[/{name}]", function ($request, $response, $args) { $name = $request->getAttribute('name'); return $response->write("Hello $name"); }) This will display "Hello " for the URL /hello and "Hello Rob" for the URL /hello/Rob. If we wanted a default of "World", we can set an argument on… continue reading.

Posted on 14 June 2017 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3

Slim's route cache file

When you have a lot of routes, that have parameters, consider using the router's cache file to speed up performance. To do this, you set the routerCacheFile setting to a valid file name. The next time the app is run, then the file is created which contains an associative array with data that means that the router doesn't need to recompile the regular expressions that it uses. For example: $config = [ 'settings' => [… continue reading.

Posted on 31 May 2017 in PHP, Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3

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