swiftenv: Swift version manager

Swift 3 development is so fast at the moment, that a new development snapshot is coming out every couple of weeks. To manage this, Kyle Fuller has rather helpfully written swiftenv which works on both OS X and Linux. Once installed, usage is really simple. To install a new snapshot: swiftenv install {version} Where {version} is something like: DEVELOPMENT-SNAPSHOT-2016-05-09-a, though you can also use the full URL from the swift.org download page. The really useful… continue reading.

Posted on 20 May 2016 in Swift

Filtering the PSR-7 body in middleware

Sometimes, there's a requirement to alter the data in the Response's body after it has been created by your controller action. For example, we may want to ensure that our brand name is consistently capitalised. One way to do this is to create middleware that looks like this: $brandFilter = function ($request, $response, $next) { // call next middleware $response = $next($request, $response); $content = (string)$response->getBody(); $newContent = str_ireplace('nineteen feet', 'Nineteen Feet', $content); $response->getBody()->rewind(); $response->getBody()->write($newContent);… continue reading.

Posted on 15 May 2016 in PHP, Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3

Slim 3.4.0 now provides PSR-7!

I've been neglecting Slim's PR queue recently, so this weekend I dedicated a lot of time to merging all the good work that our contributors have done. As a result, I'm delighted to release version 3.4.0! This release has a larger set of changes in it than I would have ideally liked which is a direct consequence of having gone two months between releases rather than one. One particularly interesting addition that we have a… continue reading.

Posted on 9 May 2016 in PHP, Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3

Compiling Swift on Linux

Swift is open source, which means that we can build it ourselves. This isn't too hard to do, but takes some time. Set up the dependencies and grab the code Firstly, you need a lot of memory and as it takes ages, give your VM plenty of CPUs! My Macbook Pro has a quad core process, so I tell Virtualbox that it can use all 4 using this configuration in my Vagrantfile: config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do… continue reading.

Posted on 3 May 2016 in Swift

DI Factories for Slim controllers

When using classes for route actions in Slim 3, I recommend using a single class for each route. However you can use a single class for multiple routes. To register a class method to a route you pass a string as the route callable where the class name is separate from method by a colon like this: $app->get('/list', 'MyController:listAction'); Slim will retrieve MyController from the DI container and then call the listAction method using the… continue reading.

Posted on 28 April 2016 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3

Easily install Swift on Linux

This is the simplest set of steps that I've found so far in order to get Swift on (Ubuntu) Linux. Essentially, you can download a snapshot and you're good to go. If you're not already on Ubuntu 15:10, create a VM. Vagrant is an easy way to do this: $ vagrant init ubuntu/wily64 $ vagrant up $ vagrant ssh Install the dependencies: $ sudo apt-get install clang libicu-dev vim (Vim isn't an actual dependency, but… continue reading.

Posted on 26 April 2016 in Swift

Unit testing with Swift PM

As I tend to work with Swift on Linux, I've been working out how to unit test using the Swift Package manager. This article is my way of remembering what I've learnt so far! Let's do this in the context of writing an a Todo entity from the Todo-Backend project. Create a package Creating a package is easy with Swift PM: mkdir Todo cd Todo swift build –init library (you can replace library with executable… continue reading.

Posted on 20 April 2016 in Swift

Overriding Slim 3's error handling

Slim 3 registers two error handers: errorHandler to trap PHP Exceptions phpErrorHandler to trap PHP 7 Errors This means that if you want to override the default error handlers, you need to override both error handlers with your own code. Each error handler is a callable. The signatures are: errorHandler: function ($request, $response, $exception) phpErrorHandler: function ($request, $response, $error) To override a error handler, simply register a new callable with the Container: $container = $app->getContainer();… continue reading.

Posted on 13 April 2016 in PHP, Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3

Using Eloquent in Slim Framework

Eloquent is one of the easier ORMs to get started with, so let's look at how to use and test it within a Slim Framework application. Set up You can add Eloquent to your Slim project via composer: composer require illuminate/database You now need to bootstrap it. To do this we need some settings, so lets do that in our standard Slim configuration: $config = [ 'settings' => [ 'db' => [ // Eloquent configuration… continue reading.

Posted on 6 April 2016 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3

Free the Geek appearance

I was delighted to spend an hour chatting with Matt Setter on episode 14 of Free the Geek. In this podcast, we talked about Slim 3 and development in general. Matthew gives me a great introduction (thanks!) and then we delve into the chat. We talk about the importance of semantic versioning as I think this is key to stability in a project. It's not very glamorous to work on code where you have to… continue reading.

Posted on 30 March 2016 in Software