Wkhtmltopdf is extremely cool. I've used qtwebkit for generating server-side page images before using python-webkit2png, and that's fine (unlike using Firefox running in xvfb!), but I need to produce PDFs. So, I looked around and found several neat, simple PHP wrappers for calling wkhtmltopdf, and even a PHP extension. "Great", I thought, "I'll just install that and spend time working on the layouts since the code looks really simple". I spoke too soon.

He goes through each step of the process - installing the needed wkhtmltox and libwkhtmltox support, having to manually compile wkhtmltopdf and some of the small changes you'll need to make to the Makefile to get things to cooperate. He shows where to put the resulting application files and the name of the extension to enable in your php.ini.

For designers, Symfony2 has been a welcome change from those old flat PHP files. Twig is beautiful, the framework separates the code from the layout, and we no longer have to find our way through lines of PHP code. But if you are a designer working on a symfony project for the first time, these are a few tips that can help you get up and running quickly.

The four common problems they've seen are:

• How do I disable the toolbar at the bottom of the page?
• Errors about missing libraries/files
• No Javascript or no-css showing up
• A completely blank page

Today I ran into a problem where my PHP Application would throw this fatal error: "Fatal error: Exception thrown without a stack frame in Unknown on line 0". Which is so much fun, because it doesn't have a line number, so I had no direction as to what exactly was causing the problem.

He found a blog post that helped him track down the issue that, as it turns out, with serializing objects into the session and an error in the __sleep method.

Ran into this issue when setting up a new VPS for AutoRidge. This happens when using Nginx and PHP-FPM with PHP 5.3+ and the Suhosin patch when trying to run a PHP script using a PHAR package. From what I can gather, the Suhosin patch basically blocks PHP include/require functions from executing files ending with .phar, which results in a PHP segfault that leaves no trace of any error at all.

His solution is a pretty simple one - edit the "suhosin.ini" file to allow for the opening of includes in phar files (suhosin.executor.include.whitelist). You can find out more about the Suhosin security tool on the project's website.

When I started rewriting this blog, I knew from start that I want to use Zend Framework's full page caching, as, I think, that's the best cache for this purpose. Not much going on on the front end, much more reads than writes, no ajax or any other "dynamic" content. While implementing the cache, I ran into two issues.

His issues revolved around the feature not creating valid cache files due to a duplicate "startSession" call in his code and having the Google Analytics code included in the template (with different keys every time). You can find out more about this functionality in the Zend Framework manual.

strip_tags is one of the common go-to functions used for making user input on web pages safe for display. But contrary to what it sounds like it's for, strip_tags is never, ever, ever the right function to use for this and it has a lot of problems.

Specific problems mentioned include "eating" of valid text, not preventing typed HTML entities, the whitelist of tags opening holes and character set issues that could have security implications. Other tools are recommended in both the article and the comments like HTML Purifier, the option of BBCode and Markdown.

If you are using phpcloud.com and are experiencing errors with git [...] and you are trying to push large files (not sure what is defined as "large") you may need to change some git settings.

He points out two settings - one for Windows and the other for Linux - that increase the buffer size to handle larger files that might be included in your repository.

I read not too long ago that the mysql library in PHP is being deprecated as of v6.0 in favor of mysqli or PDO, so of course I had to update all of my database code keep on top of things. I spent about 5 or 6 hours over the course of 2 days familiarizing myself with the new syntax and updating my code offline. Without any testing, I decided I could go ahead and push the code "live" because I'm just that over-confident sometimes, although I did make a backup in case anything went wrong (or so I thought).

Two problems jumped out immediately - a SQL error caused by this bug and the other being a problem with preparing his statement inside of a session handling method.

The WinCache extension 1.1 for PHP has been released last year. Since then several customers reported a bug in the extension that prevents WordPress and other PHP applications from performing automatic upgrades or their plugins. This was reported on WordPress forum as well as on WinCache forum. The new build of WinCache with the fix for this problem is available now at the following location: https://sourceforge.net/projects/wincache/files/development/

He asks for feedback if things still don't work - either as a comment in the WinCache forum or as a bug to the PECL database. This will help them improve the support in future releases and make it even easier for those running WordPress on Windows to keep their sites running smoothly.

Developers are modern day artists whose masterpieces are not hung on walls but stretched out thin on web servers all over the world, yes that is very poetic, but I really try to look at developers as artists and puzzle solvers. [...] A different activity, to most its the simple act of going to get coffee or water, taking a stroll outside in the fresh air, some like sports, some like games.. everyone has their escape valve.

He gives an example of a friend (Chester) who, when he hit a mark he just couldn't pass, turned to a set of lego blocks to help clear his mind. The subconscious mind kicks in as you preoccupy the conscious and a lot of times the answer floats up to he top with little or no effort.