Andre Liem has posted five simple tips (part one of a two-part series) on ways to optimize your PHP applications.
After experiencing some issues with an application running the Zend Framework, I realized there were a lot of things I was not doing to optimize my application. There are simple and more complex actions you can take to speed up your application. Since time is precious, and developers with an expertise on optimization are not always available, I've split this post into two sections (simple and more advanced). This post focuses on the simple part.
His simpler suggestions include using the YSlow extension in Firefox, minification of Javascript and CSS, merging CSS/JS requests, using gzip and avoiding CSS background images.
DevShed continues their series looking at user authentication in PHP applications with this third part of the nine part series. The focus is on the creation of the authentication scripts.
In this article we will continue to discuss the application-wide scripts that we started to talk about in the last article. These special scripts are used by all the scripts and pages of the application. We will continue to look at the func.inc script that has several useful functions defined in it.
Their func.inc script contains the helper functions the rest of the application can use (like isAdmin, isAuthd, genpass and checkEamil). They explain each of the the functions and include an example of them in action. The also include the other half of the pair - the logout script.
Chris Hartjes has posted his method for creating a development setup that lets you use multiple environments with your code.
In anticipation of my talk at PHP Quebec 2009 I've been going over my slides and thinking about what I'm going to update for it. One little nugget I'd thought I'd share is one way of handling having multiple environments your code must run in.
It uses a PHP variable in the $_SERVER superglobal - a custom one, APP_ENV - set by the application and checked to ensure global options are correctly set.
IBM developerWorks has this new tutorial they recently posted looking at making a semantic CRUD (create, read, update, delete) application that uses MySQL and SPARQL.
Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations are the most basic database operations, but they are also the most crucial. CRUD operations are typically done using the Structured Query Language (SQL) on relational database systems. As the Web is becoming more and more data-oriented, there is a need to shift from SQL-based CRUD operations to semantic Web-based CRUD operations. Learn how to use PHP to perform CRUD operations over the semantic Web.
They include the SQL code for both sides (MySQL/SPARQL) on each of the CRUD steps. They take these and show how to plug them in to a PHP SQL call and briefly mention abstraction and a few reasons why you might want to move to SPARQL.
Chris Hartjes has started up a new series on his blog about converting legacy applications over to shiny, new CakePHP framework versions.
In my rapidly dwidling spare time I have been working on a project to convert an existing site for a legal services company over to PHP. I'm *this* close to being done, so I thought I'd share what I went through to get to where I am right now. [...] So after giving the code review I was asked to do the rewrite. The client realized that they had some serious maintenance issues on their hands and were in the process of creating a new look-and-feel for the site. Being the framework guy that I am, I indicated that porting the code over to a framework would be the best way to reduce maintenance issues going forward.
The series will document the process he followed to convert the application over. In part two he'll get into the meat of things - reworking the database structure.
Justin Carmony recently put together a blog post looking at the biggest database design oversights that PHP developers can make in their applications.
I've thought of some of the biggest oversights I've had when working with PHP and MySQL and put them in a list. This is my personal list, and I'm sure some people can think of some other oversights that belong on the list as well. This list is just for PHP & MySQL, not PHP and any database. I know many people like using software like Doctrine to allow switching between different database types. That is beyond the scope of this article.
He includes a list of five - not having a data access layer, designing for only one database connection, not including developer logging, having queries written in procedural code and no separation of reads and writes to the database.
Our client is currently looking to add three PHP web developers to their
team. The ideal candidate will have a strong background with PHP and
good understanding of HTML (JAVA experience is also beneficial). The
client would also prefer an understanding of internet services, web
services, and security.
On DevShed.com today they're continuing a series with part two of their look at user management - more specifically at the creation of a user management application for access control.
Any application that is security critical will have some kind of method to track and maintain user activity. In this article we will begin to build a user management system that will give us control over who has access to which part of our application.
The system's functionality will also provide authentication support (not just role management) and allows for user registration, "forgot my password" and password management. Code and database information for the ten files needed to make the system are included.
Douglas Clifton has taken some time to look at a group of the web application frameworks out there (not just PHP - Pearl, Python and Ruby too) and offer up some opinions on them. This new post is the result.
It just wouldn't be fair after my last post to ignore the tried-and-true server-side Web application frameworks. I am certainly familiar with all of them, though I haven't necessarily used every one in a production environment.
It's light weight, fast, and stays out of your way. There are any number of class modules to choose from, and you can discard what you don't need to lighten the load even more.
Douglas Clifton has a quick new post to his blog looking at an invaluable tool in application development (and not just in PHP) - cachegrind output.
Valgrind is a entire suite of open-sourcetools, including basic debugging, profiling, and more advanced techniques such as threading, memory management, and leak detection. For the purposes of this article, I will focus on Cachegrind, and in particular within the domain of Web applications. Although there are a number of developers contributing to Valgrind, Julian Seward is the original designer and author.
He talks about the cachegrind software and the PHP-based profiler that can create these files - XDebug. He also includes a list of a few of the cachegrind viewers including KCachegrind and Webgrind.
