Pragmatism in the real world

Cure for BSS announced!

Cal Evans has announced a cure for Blank Stare Syndrome! You know the problem: you're in a conversation and someone mentions something about a new technology that you haven't heard of. Your eyes glaze and you have that Blank Stare… Sixty Second Tech is the solution. Once a week, it will deliver a short podcast (presumably about 60 seconds long!) that explains one technological concept per episode that you (or your less-techy friends!) need to… continue reading.

Simple Zend_Form Example

Following on from the Simple Zend_Layout Example, Zend_Form is now in the trunk, so here's a super simple, complete example that shows it in action: (clearly the form is unstyled :) You can construct a Zend_Form directly from a config file or can build it in code. This example builds it in code. Setting up This example uses the same basic skeleton as the Zend_Layout code with the addition of a forms directory: As you… continue reading.

A View Stream with Zend_View

One of my biggest issues with using PHP as the templating engine in View scripts is that the easiest way to echo a variable is the least secure. Consider: <?= $this->var ?> Perfectly legal, dead easy to understand, but doesn't escape $var which is what you want more often than not. To resolve this you need something like: <?= $this->escape($this->var) ?> But who remembers to do that?! I don't and I have short-open-tags turned off… continue reading.

Subversion Externals

Subversion's svn:externals property is the mechanism that is used to automatically check out data from other repositories into your working directory. This post is to remind me how to do it as each time I need the information, I end up Googling for it. To start, let's assume you have a lib/ directory and want to put ZF's library/ and incubator/library/ code within it so that the result looks like this: myApplication/ lib/ incubator/Zend/ Zend/… continue reading.

UK PHP Conference

I'm not sure how many people follow my the Zend Framework in Action website yet, so I thought I'd advertise here that I've just posted about my upcoming session at the UK PHP Conference. Go and read it and then subscribe to the RSS feed!

Code cleanliness guidelines from Etienne Kneuss

I don't often post links to articles I read via my RSS reader as I assume that most people who read this blog also read sites like Planet PHP, PHP Developer or DevZone. Having said that, Etienne Kneuss has posted an article aimed at less experienced PHP programmers providing some quick guidelines to code cleanliness which are actually a very good reminder to us all.

New Zend Framework Blog/Website

I thought I'd start a new website to talk about all things Zend Framework, so I'm introducing www.zendframeworkbook.com to the world. The intention is to highlight interesting things that I see on the Zend Framework mailing lists and also to talk about book stuff periodically as well. Obviously, if you follow the ZF mailing lists religiously, then you may find that you recognise the content of a lot of the posts, but if not, then… continue reading.

OT: Need something? Ask Hoosgot!

If it takes off, I expect everyone will be talking about hoosgot over the next weeks and months. The idea is to allow you to ask the world if anyone has got what you want maybe help you find what you are looking for, given the international nature of the web. All you have to do is include "hoosgot" (pronounced "who's got") or "lazyweb" in your blog post or tweet and it'll pick it up.… continue reading.

Notes to self, re: IE6

I've just spent way too long today debugging stuff in IE6 that I already knew once I found the problems! So, next time I have vertical spacing issue in IE6, I can come here and remind myself that in IE, <form> has margin on it by default… Also, the YUI panel doesn't seem to work properly in IE6 if it's contained within an element that is positioned "relative" with CSS. Now that Christmas is over,… continue reading.

Simple Zend_Layout Example

Zend_Layout is in the trunk now, so here's a super simple MVC example that shows it in action: This example consists of three view files: the outer layout file, the index action view script and a right hand side bar. The remainder of this post describes the key files. If you just want to poke around with the code, then it's at the bottom, so page down now! Setting up This is the directory layout:… continue reading.