Setup Doctrine Migrations to update MySQL timestamp on update

One project I'm working on uses MySQL exclusively and is also using Doctrine Migrations. I wanted to set up a column called updated that was automatically set to the timestamp of the last time the row was changed. This is done in SQL like this: CREATE TABLE foo ( id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL, bar VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, updated timestamp DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, PRIMARY KEY(id) ); It's not quite obvious how to do… continue reading.

Posted on 20 January 2015 in PHP

Shorter directory text in Bash prompt

Rather helpfully, David Goodwin left a comment about how he shortens the space taken up by the directory section of his terminal's PS1 prompt by using a Bash script to remove the middle portion. This is a really good idea, so I ported it into my PS1 set up which resulted in some rearranging and thought I'd share here as I modified for OS X and I don't want to lose it! The relevant portion… continue reading.

Posted on 16 January 2015 in Software

Setting OS X's Terminal Tab to the current directory

I use many tabs in a Terminal window quite frequently, and while the window title will show the current directory name, the tab title doesn't. You can manually change it using shift+cmd+i, but who can be bothered? Automating it so that the tab title always matches the current directory turns out to be really easy and just requires a few lines in ~/.profile. Firstly, we need a function that sets the tab's title to the… continue reading.

Posted on 13 January 2015 in Software

Exclude elements from Zend\Form's getData()

If you need to exclude some elements from a Zend\Form's getData(), the easiest way is to use a validation group. For example: class SomeForm extends \Zend\Form\Form implements \Zend\InputFilter\InputFilterProviderInterface { public function init() { $this->add([ 'name' => 'name', 'options' => ['label' => 'Name'], ]); $this->add([ 'name' => 'email', 'options' => ['label' => 'Email'], ]); $this->add([ 'name' => 'submit', 'type' => 'button', 'options' => [ 'label' => 'Filter', ], ]); $this->setValidationGroup(['name', 'email']); } public function getInputFilterSpecification() {… continue reading.

Posted on 6 January 2015 in Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2

2014 in pictures

2014 is coming to an end, so as usual, let's look back at the year as highlighted by the photos that I've taken. This year, I took at least one photo every day, so there's been plenty for me to choose from! I've done this recap in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. January As usual, there was flooding in Worcester, but clearly the biggest personal event of the month was breaking my elbow… continue reading.

Posted on 31 December 2014 in Me

Recursively deleting elements from an array

I had a need recently to delete items from a nested associative array and also any empty sub-arrays. My initial thought was to use array_walk_recursive, but this doesn't work as you can't unset nested elements and you only have access to the leaves. Clearly I needed a recursive function. I'm sure that this has been done many times before, but this is my solution: /** * Remove any elements where the callback returns true *… continue reading.

Posted on 30 December 2014 in PHP

SSL certificate verification on PHP 5.6

I recently updated my local OS X Zend Server installation to PHP 5.6 and when I ran composer self-update, I got this error message: [Composer\Downloader\TransportException] The "https://getcomposer.org/version" file could not be downloaded: SSL operation failed with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages: error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed Failed to enable crypto failed to open stream: operation failed Googling around, I finally worked out that there have been various SSL improvements in PHP 5.6 and that the problem… continue reading.

Posted on 23 December 2014 in PHP

Overriding the built-in Twig date filter

In one project that I'm working on, I'm using Twig and needed to format a date received from an API. The date string received is of the style "YYYYMMDD", however date produced an unexpected output. Consider this: {{ "20141216"|date('jS F Y') }} creates the output: 20th May 1976 This surprised me. Then I thought about it some more and realised that the date filter is treating my date string as a unix timestamp. I investigated… continue reading.

Posted on 16 December 2014 in PHP

Converting databases between MySQL and SQL Server

I regularly deal projects that target SQL Server, but mostly develop against MySQL to avoid having to run a full Windows stack locally all the time. One of the nice things about PHP with DBAL and Migrations is that the database is pretty well abstracted from my code. Of course, this means that I don't target any of the specialist features, but for these projects, this hasn't been an issue. To convert data from SQL… continue reading.

Posted on 11 December 2014 in Database, Software

Validating JSON with ZF2's Zend\Validator

Let's say that you have an admin form where the user can enter JSON and you'd like to validate that the JSON parses before allowing the user to submit. To do this, you can use the rather excellent jsonlint project by Jordi Boggiano. Obviously, add it via Compser :) Usage is simple: use Seld\JsonLint\JsonParser; use Seld\JsonLint\ParsingException; $parser = new JsonParser(); $result = $parser->lint($json); if ($result instanceof ParsingException) { // $json is invalid JSON } We… continue reading.

Posted on 9 December 2014 in Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2