Setting up mailcatcher as a service in Debian/Ubuntu

I've recently been changing joind.in's Vagrant system to use Debian and one issue I came across was getting Mailcatcher to start on boot and integrate property with the service command. To do this, I created an init script which is based off the skeleton and then stored this in /etc/init.d and then ran update-rc.d mailcatcher defaults to set up the correct links in the various rc.d directories. This is the init script: /etc/init.d/mailcatcher: #! /bin/sh… continue reading.

Posted on 30 September 2014 in Computing

Codes of conduct

As my mind turns towards the conferences that I'm attending this autumn, I came across Why you want a code of conduct & how we made one by Erin Kissane. I highly recommend that you read it and the links within it. The part that struck me most was the thoughts on a plan of action. It's all very well to have a code of conduct, but if the event's organisers haven't got a plan… continue reading.

Posted on 25 September 2014 in Me

Using ZF2 Forms with Twig

Following on from looking at how to integrate Zend Framework 2 forms into Slim Framework, let's look at the changes required if you also happen to want to use Twig. When it comes to rendering the form, we would want our template to look like this: <form method="POST" role="form"> <div class="form-group"> {{ formRow(form.get('email')) }} </div> {{ formElement(form.get('submit')) }} </form> The ZF2 view helpers, formRow and formElement now look like Twig functions, however we don't want… continue reading.

Posted on 23 September 2014 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 2, Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2

Sending attachments in multipart emails with Zend\Mail

I've written before about how to send an HTML email with a text alternative in Zend\Mail, but recently needed to send an attachment with my multipart email. With help from various sources on the Internet, this is how to do it. use Zend\Mail\Message; use Zend\Mime\Message as MimeMessage; use Zend\Mime\Part as MimePart; use Zend\Mime\Mime; use Zend\Mail\Transport\Sendmail; function sendEmail($to, $from, $subject, $html, $text, $attachments = null) { $message = new Message(); $message->addTo($to); $message->addFrom($from); $message->setSubject($subject); // HTML part… continue reading.

Posted on 16 September 2014 in Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2

Throw an exception when simplexml_load_string fails

I keep having to look up how to stop the warning that are emitted when simplexml_load_string & simplexml_load_file fail, so this time I've written the world's simplest little class to take care of it for me from now on: <?php namespace Rka; use UnexpectedValueException; class Xml { /** * Load an XML String and convert any warnings to an exception * * @param string $string * @param string $class_name * @param int $options * @param… continue reading.

Posted on 9 September 2014 in PHP

Redirecting in Slim 2 Middleware

I recently ran into a problem with calling redirect() in a Slim Framework 2 middleware class, so I thought I'd better document the solution so that I remember in future! The authentication middleware looks roughly like this: class Authentication extends \Slim\Middleware { public function call() { if (!$this->isLoggedIn()) { $app = \Slim\Slim::getInstance(); $app->redirect($app->urlFor('login')); } $this->next->call(); } // other methods… } The problem is that you can't call $app->redirect() in Middleware as redirect() is designed to… continue reading.

Posted on 2 September 2014 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 2

Integrating ZF2 forms into Slim

Let's say that you want to use Zend Framework 2's Form component outside of ZF2 itself. In this case, a Slim application. It turns out that Composer makes this quite easy, though there's quite a lot of code involved, so this is a long article. Start with a really simple Slim Application. index.php: require 'vendor/autoload.php'; $app = new \Slim\Slim(); $app->map('/', function () use ($app) { $app->render('home.php', array( 'form' => $form )); })->via('GET', 'POST'); $app->run(); templates/home.php:… continue reading.

Posted on 26 August 2014 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 2, Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2

Globally overriding validation messages for ZF2 forms

One thing that I always do when creating a Zend Framework 2 form is override the validation messages for a number of validators – EmailAddress in particular. I recently decided that I should probably sort this one out once and be done with it. Turns out that it's quite easy assuming that you use the FormElementManger to instantiate your forms. All that I need to do is create my own validator classes that extend the… continue reading.

Posted on 19 August 2014 in Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2

Creating a ZF2 form from config

I have a requirement to create a Zend\Form from a dynamically created array which means that I can't use the FormAbstractServiceFactory and so will use Zend\Form\Factory directly. If you need to override any form elements, validators or add new ones, then you'll need the correct plugin managers for the factory. The way to set this up is like this: $factory = new Factory(); $formElements = $this->serviceLocator->get('FormElementManager'); $factory->setFormElementManager($formElements); $inputFilters = $this->serviceLocator->get('InputFilterManager'); $factory->getInputFilterFactory()->setInputFilterManager($inputFilters); Your $factory is now… continue reading.

Posted on 14 August 2014 in Zend Framework, Zend Framework 2

View status of all Vagrant environments

I've just upgraded to Vagrant version 1.6, and vagrant global-status is possibly my favourite new feature. This command lists all currently up Vagrant environments wherever they may be on your computer: $ vagrant global-status id name provider state directory ————————————————————————————– dbc7770 joindin virtualbox running /Users/rob/www/thirdparty/joindin-vm 0683c7a default virtualbox running /Users/rob/www/thirdparty/joindin-zs7 The above shows information about all known Vagrant environments on this machine. This data is cached and may not be completely up-to-date. To interact with… continue reading.

Posted on 11 August 2014 in Software