Installing 32 bit packages on Ubuntu 14.04

This had me stumped for a bit, so I've written it down. If you have a 64 bit version of Ubuntu and want to install a 32-bit package, you simply add :i386 to the end of the package name like this: $ sudo apt-get install libstdc++6:i386 However, this didn't initially work for me as apt-get couldn't find the package: $ sudo apt-get install libstdc++6:i386 Reading package lists… Done Building dependency tree Reading state information… Done… continue reading.

Posted on 30 November 2015 in Computing

Slim 3.0 RC2 Released

I released Slim 3 RC 2 today after a longer than expected gap from RC1. The gap was caused by two things: Real LifeTM was busy for all the core team members People test RCs, but not betas! Obviously, the important one here was testing. Thank your everyone who tested RC1! As a result, a number of important issues were raised after RC1 was released which we had to address. Two key BC-breaking ones involved… continue reading.

Posted on 9 November 2015 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 3

Writing PSR-7 middleware

Within Slim 3's Request object, there's a method called getIp() which is determines the client's IP address. However it's rather simplistic and potentially risky as it checks the X-Forwarded-For header with no ability to ignore this header or whitelist whether we trust the final proxy in the chain. Determining the client's IP address is an ideal use-case for middleware as we can inspect the headers in the request and then set an attribute so that… continue reading.

Posted on 5 November 2015 in PHP

Changing Apigility's auth token expiry

By default, the OAuth 2 token that is generated in an Apigility app expires in 1 hour. Upon expiry, the client is expected to use the refresh token to get a new access token. You can see this when you authenticate via a POST to /oauth as you get this response back: { "access_token": "3812aaea7640a2567c66e21e2587450821103552", "expires_in": 3600, "token_type": "Bearer", "scope": null, "refresh_token": "72d5df08c971526a4ba7c83ec2a7b92d82d9715b" } If you need longer than 1 hour, then simply add this… continue reading.

Posted on 29 October 2015 in Apigility

Render an array based on accept header

I'm currently working on an API using Slim 3 and needed a generic way to render arrays to XML, JSON or HTML based on the Request's Accept header. This is just good practice. The Accept header is used by a client to specify the media types that it accepts. Therefore if our client would like XML, I'd like to give it XML. Similarly for JSON. I also like to support an HTML rendering on my… continue reading.

Posted on 22 October 2015 in PHP

Kathy

Today is Ada Lovelace day which exists to highlight the many amazing and talented women in STEM. I'm bending the rules a little as I'm going to talk about Kathy today though she is not in STEM. I've never known anyone so excited by what's new in technology. She has always embraced technology to do her job better, she was one of the first in her office to be assigned a computer (back in the… continue reading.

Posted on 13 October 2015 in Ada Lovelace Day

The beginner's guide to rebasing your PR

You've successfully created a PR and it's in the queue to be merged. A maintainer looks at the code and asks you to rebase your PR so that they can merge it. Say what? The maintainer means that there have been other code changes on the project since you branched which means that your branch cannot be merged without conflicts and they would like to you to sort this out. These are the steps you… continue reading.

Posted on 8 October 2015 in PHP

The beginner's guide to contributing to a GitHub project

This is a guide to contributing to an open source project that uses GitHub. It's mostly based on how I've seen Zend Framework, Slim Framework and joind.in operate. However, this is a general guide so check your project's README for specifics. TL;DR Skip to the summary. Step 1: Set up a working copy on your computer Firstly you need a local fork of the the project, so go ahead and press the "fork" button in… continue reading.

Posted on 22 September 2015 in PHP

On blocking ads

There's been a discussion on Twitter this evening about ad-blockers now that Apple has enabled users of iOS to install ad-blocking plugins into their Safari browser. Note that this is not at the OS level and there is no default ad-blocker. The user has to choose to go to the App Store, install an ad-blocker app and then go to Settings->Safari and enable the app. As we all know, Twitter isn't ideal for conversations requiring… continue reading.

Posted on 17 September 2015 in Me

Simple Ansible file for Z-Ray preview

Recently, Zend made available a Z-Ray Technology Preview which takes the Z-Ray feature of Zend Server and makes it stand-alone. This is very interesting as it means that I can run it with the PHP 5.6 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Vagrant set up that I prefer. I decided to create an Ansible playbook to install Z-Ray into my VM. The Z-Ray instructions are clear enough, so it was simply a case of converting them to… continue reading.

Posted on 15 September 2015 in PHP