One of the frustrating things with working with MySQL is of importing large sql dump files. Either you get a 'max execution time exceeded' error from PHP or a 'Max_allowed_packet_size' from MySQL. In a recent task I needed to import a table of around a million records on a remote host, which quickly became an exercise in frustration due to various limitations on the server. SSH was of no help as changing the configuration files was restricted to the root user. My last resort was to split the huge 'INSERT' statements into smaller size files.

His script needs a little extra time to run (he sets max execute to 600 seconds) and takes the SQL file in line by line, splitting them back out to over files based on a "count" value - "dump-split-*". Depending on the size of your files, using something like this might not be an option. You might need something more like the command line "split" feature to keep it outside of PHP's memory management all together.

Now that Symfony2 is just around the corner, we need to better organize community support for both symfony1 and Symfony2. As more people start using Symfony2, the user mailing-list is becoming more and more difficult to follow. [...] After an opinionated discussion on the mailing-list, I've decided to create two new mailing-lists that are replacing the current users mailing-list: one for symfony1 and another one for Symfony2. The current mailing-list has been switched to the archive mode; all messages will remain browseable and searchable but new messages will be rejected.

If you're a current member of the "users" mailing list and want a similar experience, you'll need to subscribe to both. Otherwise, pick the one you like and watch your inbox fill up. This break up makes it easier for people to find messages specifically related to their version of choice without having to look for the "[Symfony2]" tag in the subject line.

There are two similar security issues both taken care of by Suhosin patch and strict escaping/encoding rules. They both relate to injecting new lines into headers of network protocols. They are not very well known and i think its worth mentioning it. HTTP response splitting is a web based attack where hacker manages to trick the server into injecting new lines into response headers along with arbitrary code. If you use GET/POST parameters in the headers like cookie or location, then someone could provide new lines with XSS attack.

He gives some examples of how it might work via the header function so that superglobals might be abused (like adding information on the URL to inject into $_GET). To prevent the attack, you just have to ensure that no special characters make it into the headers or cookies. He also mentions that the Suhosin patch takes care of the issue automatically.

I recently wrote up a bunch of split testing code for an application of mine (listy.us) and decided to round out the code, smooth the edges, and make it available under a BSD license. The result is phpScenario (http://www.phpscenario.org), a free object-oriented split testing library for PHP 5.2+. I basically designed the library to be something you could just drop into a project, particularly a Zend Framework project, in a matter of minutes and be good to go. There are posts in the forums that provide very detailed setup instructions. At its very simplest, the library provides one-line A/B testing, and is fairly extensible. I think it'd make a great addition to designer/developer toolboxes.

Right now it's in its early beta stages, but it has plenty of (generated) documentation to help you out. There's also a basic example of its use and results on the main site. You can download it directly if you'd like to try it out.

Split testing is a way to experiment with a live site and find which headlines and text are the most effective. Amazon uses split testing to determine which versions of their site convert customers better. We'll use WordPress and Google's Website Optimizer to test two different headlines, and find which works best at capturing customer emails.

They walk you through their six step process to help you create the pages for testing, install the Google plugin and use the Web Optimizer tool to keep track of the results of your testing.

WordPress is a great CMS, but implementing some features within your theme can require a little lateral thinking. The content for your page or post is usually output by the theme code using a single function call. But what if you need to split the content into two or more blocks? That might be necessary if your theme requires multiple columns or sections on the page.

There's a built in call WordPress includes, "get_the_content", that returns the content rather than just echoing it out. With this handy function giving you just the content, you're free to split up the content however you want - on certain tags or as they suggest, using the "more..." tag and a few modifications to a few other scripts to split it out into DIV blocks.

The issue I ran into was due to all the generated PHP classes being housed in a single file. I had to process two WSDL files that had several identical user-defined types in common. As a result, I couldn't simply include the two PHP files generated from them because PHP doesn't allow you to define two classes with the same name.

He used the tokenizer extension to create a simple command-line script that did the splitting for him. This script could potentially be used for splitting out other kinds of files too - "unpacking" them from their combined state. You can download the latest version from Matthew's github account.

Usability guidelines can sometimes be of use in awkward places. I try to apply them to source code. [...] Of course, coding guidelines are there to make the code easy to read by everyone. But code usability goes somehow beyond. Let's see some of the differences.

He compares good versus bad code in a few different areas:

• Bad Code Comments
• Split Up Code
• Cleanliness
• New Conventions
• Listen To User Feedback

Each item is described, some including code examples to help make them more clear. Be sure to check out the comments for more good suggestions.

The replace is as simple three line call, much the same as PHP's and the split call, while a bit more complex, is still pretty straight forward (it just needs a few extra variables).

Other methods in the post include a "switch" method, defining a procedure and updating variable by its name.

We decided that this one package should be split into subpackages: one subpackage per region/country. Some advantages of this approach are that each driver / filter / subpackage gets it's own stability and version number - we wouldn't have to keep increasing the version number of Date_Holidays each time a new driver is added or when an existing driver gets a significant number of fixes.

To replace your current version of the package (with all of the regions built in) with a new version that still contains all versions, uninstall the Date_Holidays and grab the "Date_Holidays#all" package. Otherwise, you can check out the PEAR page for the main package and see the subpackage list if you only need one for your area.