In this new post to his blog today, Stuart Herbert suggests something that the PHP community really is in dire need of - a site/resource providing a place developers can point at to help refute some of the PHP rumors floating around and provide examples and test cases for one of the most stubborn PHP markets out there - business.
At work, we make and sell software written in a number of languages; our flagship product is written in PHP.
But one of the unfortunate side-effects of Stefan Esser's much-publicized departure from the PHP Security Team has been an increase in the number of IT staff we're coming across who "believe" both that open-source is inherently insecure, and that PHP in particular has incurable problems. These "beliefs" hurt ISVs trying to sell PHP-based applications into skeptical organizations.
He asks why there is no "Why PHP?" resource out there that clients/businesses in general can be referred to for better information. He also suggests one of the most logical fits for this kind of information and is surprised they don't really have something already - Zend. Check out the comments to see how much of the community is already behind the effort.
We have implemented Zend_Search into our content management system "Click and Change" and we would like to share our experiences with the developers' community. For this purpose, we decided to publish the complete source code and it's documentation.
They give a great overview of the application, from some of the interesting things they came across during development to some of the feedback/questions they've already recieved about the project. They have the source code for each of the files in the search engine, including small changes made after the fact. You can also download the entire project in one zipped up file.
Responding to this commentary from the SitePoint PHP Blog the other day, Jonnay has come up with some of his own thoughts on each of the topics mentioned.
Apparently there was some kind of PHP vs. Javascript fight, to see which language sucked the most. The results? Amazingly Banal, if not downright wrong.
Topics in each round of the fight included:
Syntax
Standard Libraries
Meta Programming
Error Handling
Garbage Collection
Jonnaycomes back with his (differing) perspectives on a few of the items - syntax, scope/namespaces/packaging, meta programming, AOP, and an overall commentary in which he reminds readers that defending either side isn't easy when the voting audience might not fully understand one language or the other.
John Mertic has a quick note on his blog about the latest release candidate for the Windows PHP installer (PHP5.2.0RC3) and some issues they've been having.
Rebuilt the installer for 5.2.0RC3. Edin was having problems building it so I'm going to do it and upload it; hopefully we can resolve the issue.
It's also noted that if you see issues with using the installer, try removing the previous PHP installation before running it again.
Mike Potter has posted an update to his blog about the unofficial Adobe PHP SDK he mentioned earlier with details about new information and corrections that have been added to the guide.
I've updated the (unofficial) Adobe PHP SDK to fix some problems after the initial release. Turns out a few files were missing from the .zip file, and some files were misnamed. I've fixed these problems and also added in a new, more simple sample to show how Flex can retrieve XML data from a PHP backend, without requiring the use of a MySQL database. Finally, I've also removed the .svn files from the .zip file, reducing its size to only 1.5 MB.
The latest version of both major branches of PHP have been released - PHP 4.4.4 and PHP 5.1.5 - fixing some of the major security problems that have been found in recent versions.
PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.1.5 and 4.4.4. The two releases address a series of security problems discovered since PHP 5.1.4 and 4.4.3, respectively.
Some of these problems included:
Added missing safe_mode/open_basedir checks inside the error_log(), file_exists(), imap_open() and imap_reopen() functions.
Fixed possible open_basedir/safe_mode bypass in cURL extension and on PHP 5.1.5 with realpath cache.
Fixed a buffer overflow inside sscanf() function.
Fixed memory_limit restriction on 64 bit system.
All information about the updates for these versions can be found in the Changelogs - PHP 4.4.4 and PHP 5.1.3. It's recommnded that you download these new versions and update your installation.
Building on this article from the IBM developerWorks site talking about "Five Common Database Problems", Kristian Kohntopp adds in some of his own comments for the five common problems from his perspective.
My experience in the field differs slightly from his observations, and so I thought a few annotations may be in order.
Each of the five in the list have large explainations following them, with slightly different takes on what was said before on the subject and sometimes even a few agreements here and there.
I've never disputed the fact that PHP has problems, but for some reason, everyone who tries to explain why PHP sucks misses most of the actual reasons it does. It's astonishing.
Chris also makes the comment that he doesn't actually give six reasons, but the first three of the ones he gives are solid ("No lexical scoping", "No namespacing", and "World's worst configure system").
It seems like there's not a site out there anymore that doesn't use a database of some sort. Frankly, they're just a simple way to get the storage you need without the hassle of having to manage the resource yourself. It even comes with its own language to help query the data! Of course, with the good comes the bad, and this new article from IBM's developerWorks site about five common database mistakes.
If only there were one way to use databases correctly... You can create database design, database access, and the PHP business logic code that sits on top of it in any number of ways, and you often end up getting it wrong. This article illustrates five common problems in database design, in the PHP code that accesses databases, and how to fix these problems when you see them.
Each of the items is discussed and explained with code samples for both the good and the bad side to make comparison easier. Knowing these issues before you develop your system definitely makes it easier, but they're still useful as a tool to fix things as well.
Joshua Eichorn has a new update on his Webthumb application he's mentioned before, noting some of the issues/updates that he's worked through so far.
Webthumb got off the ground yesterday without too many problems. It ran into problems right out of the gate since a large number of sites don't seem to want to finish loading correctly. I also updated the server config, Webthumb now supports flash (version 7), and has a lot more fonts installed so sites that need non-latin characters should be working correctly.
He's also laid out some "feature goals" that he'd like ot add in eventually, including better URLs, a searching method for thumbnails, and user accounts.
