Pragmatism in today's world
TweetGT is a simple application that talks to Twitter. I wrote it as I couldn't find another way to send a geotagged tweet sent from an arbitrary location. Also, my friend Cal Evans says that writing a Twitter app is the new Hello World, so I thought I'd better find out how to do it! Obviously, I used Zend Framework :) The source is up on github so you can have a look at the… continue reading.
I've been reading the Proposal for Exceptions in ZF2 and like it. One thing that caught my attention was that it suggests that you can catch an interface. I hadn't heard of that ability before, so I pulled out my trusty text editor to have a play. Consider this code: <?php namespace My; interface ExceptionInterface {} class SplExceptionClass extends InvalidArgumentException implements ExceptionInterface {} class ExceptionClass extends Exception implements ExceptionInterface {} class A { static function… continue reading.
Testing controllers has traditionally been a hassle due to the requirements of setting up the bootstrap, the front controller and initiating the dispatch cycle. In June, Matthew addressed this with the release of Zend_Test_PHPUnit_ControllerTestCase way back in 2008. Later, Matthew helpfully wrote an article on how to use it and I have used that as a starting point for the information here. (Thanks Matthew!) The project I'm using is TodoIt, which is a simple ZF… continue reading.
My friend Cal Evans is putting on a virtual conference called Day Camp 4 Developers. The most interesting thing about this conference is that it is about the "soft skills" that you need as a developer. There are many conferences that deal withe the technical skills improvements that you need, but less that handle the rest of your job, so this piqued my interest. It's a one day tech-agnostic conference containing 5 sessions and all… continue reading.
Following on from the discussion on the FlashMessenger action helper, I thought I'd also cover another supplied helper: Redirector. Redirector does what it says on the tin and redirects the user to another page. I mostly use this when coming back from filling a form in, so that the user is then redirected to another page. In admin systems, this is usually a list page. On front end websites, this is usually a thank you… continue reading.
I've talked about Zend Framework's action helpers before, but haven't covered any of the action helpers that are supplied with Zend Framework. FlashMessenger is a helper that allows you to store messages between requests. The most common use I have for it is for a "saved" message after doing an edit of an item that then redirects back to a list. This is how it's used: Storing a message Storing to the FlashMessenger is easy.… continue reading.
The PHPNW conference is coming to Manchester again this year on the 9th October 2010 and I'm going to be speaking! With a nod to the future, I'm going to be talking about Zend Framework 2.0. I'll be talking about why there will be a ZF2 and what's going to be coming up with the release. PHPNW is a great conference and this year has expanded to three tracks! It's only £58 too if you… continue reading.
Matthew Weier O'Phinney has just published an article on how to create reusable widgets with action helpers. I had a twitter/IRC exchange yesterday with Andries Seutens and Nick Belhomme regarding applications that include widgets within their layout. During the exchange, I told Andriess not to use the action() view helper, and both Andriess and Nick then asked how to implement widgets if they shouldn't use that helper. While I ended up having an IRC exchange… continue reading.
After too many months of neglect, I have completely rewritten my Zend_Auth tutorial so that it is compatible with Zend Framework 1.10! As an experiment, I have written it directly in HTML, rather than PDF as before and cover the login form along with the login controller code required to authenticate a user using a database table. For good measure, I've included logging out and a view helper to show how to access the logged… continue reading.
I've updated Akrabat_Db_Schema_Manager so that it now supports table prefixes. It uses the application.ini key of resources.db.table_prefix as I couldn't think of a better one :) and then uses that for the schema_version table's name and also makes it available in your change objects. For example, if application.ini contains resources.db.table_prefix = "myapp", then the manager will create the table myapp_schema_version to store the current version of the schema. In your change classes, you can then… continue reading.
