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Maarten Balliauw's Blog: Reuse Excel business logic with PHPExcel
posted Tuesday May 06, 2008 @ 07:51:38
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BY CHRIS CORNUTT
Maarten Balliauw has made a new blog post today about a method he's using to help reuse some of the business logic that Excel spreadsheets can have in a PHP script with help from PHPExcel.
In many companies, business logic resides in Excel. This business logic is sometimes created by business analysts and sometimes by business users who want to automate parts of their everyday job using Excel. [...] Did you know you can use PHPExcel to take advantage of the Excel-based business logic without having to worry about duplicate business logic?
He creates a quick example of a script that can take in an Excal file and pull it into a PHPExcel object, ready for manipulation. He fills in values for the already defined fields (like "carColor" or "leatherSeats") and uses the getCalculatedValue method to perform the action on the cell. The output is dropped into a variable that can be echoed out or used later on in the PHP script.
tagged with: phpexcel excel business logic reuse tutorial example
Zend Developer Zone: Decorators with Zend_Form
posted Monday May 05, 2008 @ 12:57:34
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BY CHRIS CORNUTT
On the Zend Developer Zone there's a new tutorial (by Matthew Weier O'Phinney) covering the use of decorators with the Zend_Form component of the Zend Framework.
One point of flexibility [Zend_Form] offers has proved to be a pain point for many developers: decorators. This tutorial aims to shed some light on decorators, as well as provide strategies for creating your own decorators and combining them in creative ways to customize the output your forms generate.
Matthew starts with a little background behind the component to help you find your way around. Building on this, he shows how to use some standard output decorators and how to create decorators of your own. His example shows how to create a set of grouped checkboxes.
tagged with: decortor zendform tutorial background example
Mikko Koppanen's Blog: Fill patterns
posted Tuesday April 29, 2008 @ 15:24:50
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BY CHRIS CORNUTT
Mikko Koppanen has a quick post today showing how to use PHP and Imagick to create an image of text filled with another image layer behind it:
The fill pattern is used to annotate text but the named pattern could also be used to fill any shapes that allow fill to be specified (include circles, ellipses, rectangles, polygons etc etc).
His example is pretty simple (with a "Hello World!" output) that pulls in the background image, creates the composite layer over it, adds the text to it and sets the fill to the background image's layer. The whole this is wrapped up and output as a PNG file.
tagged with: fill pattern imagick tutorial example png background image
Padraic Brady's Blog: An Example Zend Framework Blog Application - Part 1 Introductory Planning
posted Tuesday April 22, 2008 @ 13:28:44
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BY CHRIS CORNUTT
Padraic Brady has kicked off a new series of blog posts with part one posted today - a look at the creation of a sample Zend Framework blogging application.
Starting any new application is like walking into a shop and being dazzled by the displays. You want everything but finally realise you only have so much resources to spend. So you isolate the specifics you must have, and focus on those.
This first part focuses on the planning stages of the application. He works through the features he wants the blog to have and some of the external libraries he's going to rely on (things like PHPUnit and jQuery). His goal for the series and the application is to have something he can replace his current blog with and to provide readers a step by step detail of the progress along the way.
tagged with: zendframework blog application series example planning
C7Y: Reflections on Designing an IRC Bot in PHP, Part 2
posted Friday April 18, 2008 @ 11:14:56
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BY CHRIS CORNUTT
Matthew Turland notes that the second part of his "IRC Bots in PHP" series of articles has been posted to the C7Y community site (from php|architect).
The precursor to this article introduced some background and an overview of the design for the Phergie project as an example of the concepts involved in a PHP IRC bot implementation. This article will go further into the topic of plugins including descriptions of those that are commonly needed to make a bot fully functional as well as the commonly needed core features to support plugin development.
In part one he set up some of the foundation code and explained some of the thought behind the structure of the bot. In this part he gets more into the heart of the bot, showing how to define functions for common IRC actions (join/part/ping/etc) and how he made a plugin system to handle custom actions. He also mentions topics like memory usage, data storage methods and some of the "niceties" he included.
tagged with: irc bot tutorial example plugin action memory phergie
Hasin Hayder's Blog: Working with models in orchid
posted Thursday April 10, 2008 @ 14:17:47
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BY CHRIS CORNUTT
Hasin Hayder has posted another in his series looking at the relatively young PHP framework, orchid. HE digs a little deeper this time and looks at the Model functionality it has.
As promised, orchid comes with real flexibility which lets you design your application in less time. [...] In this installment, we will learn how to achieve maximum speed and benefit by using the built-in model library of orchid with a toppings of the active record library.
He shows how to connect to the database backend through the framework (along with some dos and don'ts) and how to pull this connection into the Model functionality. His example inserts information into a "comics" table and shows how to pull it back out (with a call to the find() method).
tagged with: orchidframework model database example
Zend Developer Zone: Action Helpers in Zend Framework
posted Wednesday April 09, 2008 @ 08:53:34
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BY CHRIS CORNUTT
On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a article posted from Matthew Weir O'Phinney spotlighting one of the handy features of the Zend Framework - Action Helpers.
Action Helpers in Zend Framework are often considered a fairly arcane subject, something for experts only. However, they are meant to be an easy way to extend the capabilities of Action Controllers, negating the need to create your own base controller with custom functionality. The aim of this tutorial is to show you how to quickly and easily create and use Action Helpers to your advantage.
He covers some of the basics - setting up a controller to extend Zend_Controller_Action - and assigning helpers to it. He looks hat hooking in events, registering and retrieving the helpers with a Broker and how to create your own custom helper. Their example is a form loader that lest you load the code for a form by submitting its class name.
tagged with: zendframework action helper controller example tutorial
Hasin Hayder's Blog: Getting started with orchid framework
posted Tuesday April 08, 2008 @ 13:01:47
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BY CHRIS CORNUTT
Hasin Hayder has blogged about some of his "first steps" with a relatively new PHP framework on the scene - Orchid.
Orchid is a small framework with bare necessities to kick start developing killer php web applications. this framework is not flooded with unnecessary features and libraries. it only contains the essential helpers and libraries to boost up your development, not slowing it down. orchid features a very short learning curve, which will keep you trouble free.
He documents the step he followed - downloading the latest release (from the svn repository), making a first controller and adding a view to make his first "hello world" application.
tagged with: orchidframework beginner tutorial controller view example
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