Zend\Input fallback value

Recently an issue was reported against Zend\InputFilter where the reporter has discovered a regression where the fallback value wasn't being populated correctly. Matthew investigated, fixed it and asked me to review it. I was fascinated as I didn't realise (or had completely forgotten!) that Zend\Input and Zend\InputFilter supported fallback values so I looked into it and it turns out that it's simple and works exactly as its name implies. For the basic case of using… continue reading.

Posted on 11 August 2015 in Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2

Zend\Input and empty values

I'm forever getting confused about how the combination of Zend\Input's required, allow_empty & continue_if_empty interact with an empty value, so I've decided to write it down. These settings define what happens when you try to validate an empty value for a given input. For Zend\Input, empty means exactly equal to null, an empty string or an empty array. Firstly, let's start with the three settings: Setting Default What it does required true When true, the… continue reading.

Posted on 4 August 2015 in Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2

Checking your code for PSR-2

Most of the projects that I work on follow the PSR-2 coding style guidelines. I prefer to ensure that my PRs pass before Travis or Jenkins tells me, so let's look at how to run PSR-2 checks locally. PHP_CodeSniffer My preferred tool for checking coding styles in PHP is PHP_CodeSniffer. This is command line tool, phpcs, that you can run against any file. PHP_CodeSniffer can test against a number of standards. The default is PEAR,… continue reading.

Posted on 28 July 2015 in PHP

Custom OAuth2 authentication in Apiiglity

I have a client that's writing an Apigility API that needs to talk to a database that's already in place. This also includes the users table that is to be used with Apigility's OAuth2 authentication. Getting Apigility's OAuth2 integration to talk to a specific table name is quite easy. Simply add this config: 'storage_settings' => array( 'user_table' => 'user', ), To the relevant adapter within zf-mvc-auth => authentication config. However, if you want to use… continue reading.

Posted on 21 July 2015 in Apigility, PHP

Replacing Pimple in a Slim 3 application

One feature of Slim 3 is that the DI container is loosely coupled to the core framework. This is done in two ways: The App composes the container instance rather than extending from it. Internally, App depends on the container implementing the container-interop interface. You can see this decoupling in the way that you instantiate a Slim 3 application: $settings = []; $container = new Slim\Container($settings); $app = new Slim\App($container); Slim 3 ships with Pimple… continue reading.

Posted on 14 July 2015 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3, Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2

Debugging PHP SOAP over SSL using Charles

I'm currently integrating against a SOAP server using PHP which wasn't working as I expected, so I wanted to find out what was happening over the wire. I have Charles installed and use it regularly with OS X's system-wide proxy settings. However, PHP's SoapClient doesn't use these, so I had to work out how to do it manually. Enabling SoapClient to send via a proxy is really easy and is documented by Lorna Mitchell in… continue reading.

Posted on 7 July 2015 in PHP

First beta of Slim Framework 3

Last night, I tagged beta 1 of Slim Framework 3! This is a significant upgrade to v2 with a number of changes that you can read on the Slim blog. For me, the two key features that I'm most excited about are: PSR-7 support, along with the standard middleware signature of: function($request, $response, $next) { return $response; } Dependency injection container with container-interop compliance. We ship with Pimple by default, but I'm planning to use… continue reading.

Posted on 3 July 2015 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3

Selecting the service port with PHP's SoapClient

I'm currently integrating with a SOAP service which has two different services defined. The relevant part of the WSDL is: <wsdl:service name="Config"> <wsdl:port name="BasicHttpBinding_IConfiguration" binding="tns:BasicHttpBinding_IConfiguration"> <soap:address location="http://nonsecure.example.com/Configuration.svc"/> </wsdl:port> <wsdl:port name="BasicHttpsBinding_IConfiguration" binding="tns:BasicHttpsBinding_IConfiguration"> <soap:address location="https://secure.example.com/Configuration.svc"/> </wsdl:port> </wsdl:service> I discovered that PHP's SoapClient will select the first port it encounters and doesn't provide a way to select another one. This was a nuisance as I wanted to use the SSL one. Through research, I discovered that I can… continue reading.

Posted on 30 June 2015 in PHP

Accessing services in Slim 3

One of the changes between Slim Framework 2 and 3 is that the application singleton has gone. In Slim 2, you could do this: $app = \Slim\Slim::getInstance(); // do something with $app In general, you didn't need access to $app itself, but rather you wanted access to something that the app knows about, such as a database adapter, or the router for access to the urlFor method to create a URL to a route. With… continue reading.

Posted on 23 June 2015 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3

Testing my ZF1 app on PHP 7

Zend Framework 1 is still actively maintained and we fully intend to ensure that ZF1 works with no problems on PHP 7 when its released. Now that PHP 7.0.0 Alpha 1 has been released, it's time to find out if your Zend Framework 1 app works with it. The easiest way to do this is to use a virtual machine. My preference is Vagrant with Rasmus' PHP7dev box. A simple VM I wanted to test… continue reading.

Posted on 15 June 2015 in PHP