Tag Archives: PHP

Disclaimer – I haven’t read this yet, I’m heading out the door and home to make myself some dinner! I see that this paper is from 2002 but when the author recommended using Perl I had to link this and read it later! Cracked me up. hehe.

… few languages are as bad as PHP for doing serious development work. The author and his colleagues have had good results with Perl, and believe that languages such as C++, Java, and Python should serve equally well.

Following on from previous posts on PHP and MVC and in particular on using Smarty caching in the MVC design pattern, I used Smarty to cache the output of an app at work this morning.
I agonised in my last post about where to put the caching, should it go into the viewer, or the model, or the controller?

• I finally decided to make the viewer responsilble for deciding if the template is cached or not.
• The controller then asks the viewer if the current page is cached, if it’s not, then it runs whatever functions the model needs to generate the page.

class mvcViewer
{
  function mvcViewer()
  {
    $this->cacheKey = md5( $_SERVER[ 'REQUEST_URI' ] );
  }

  function display()
  {
    // modified to use the cacheKey.
    $this->assign();
    $this->smarty->display( $this->formTplName . ".tpl", $this->cacheKey );
  }

  function is_cached()
  {
    return $this->smarty->is_cached( $this->formTplName . ".tpl", $this->cacheKey );
  }
}

class mvcController
{
  function main()
  {
    switch( $this->page )
    {
    default:
    $this->model = new mvcModel( $form );
    $this->view = new mvcView( $this->model, "mvc-Index" );
    if( $this->view->is_cached() == false )
    {
      $this->model->doSomethingHere();
    }
    break;
    }
  }
}


The beauty of this is that the model doesn’t need to know about the caching at all. The developer can concentrate on the business logic of his application without worrying about the underlying architecture. That’s one reason for keeping the cache key in the viewer too. Don’t lets confuse the developer!
Of course, this presumes the most simplistic caching system, but it would suffice for most cases!

This is for later reading. This article might be useful if I want to do any “artificial intelligence” programming in PHP.

Now here’s an interesting discussion on kuro5hin.org
I’ve always wanted to look at Zope, as it’s based on Python I thought it’d offer me lovely OO programming and fast development. Reading some of the comments here I have to wonder, especially in light of Russell’s rant about the complexity of Java. (Picked up by Keith who might be a deceptive right-wing troll but he writes some good techie stuff!)
But then I think there’s room for both types – pure computer scientists who will most likely drive future ideas, and those that get the job done in the real world.

PHPList was mentioned on various blogs a few weeks back and we’ve used it here a few times. I’m not 100% happy with it however as it’s missing some glaring features and those make sending emails very difficult.
I searched freshmeat.net earlier today and installed LetterIt, a similar piece of software from Germany.
It’s a fairly simple program, doesn’t look very flash, but it does work well, and we just sent out a mailing to over 1,000 customers this afternoon with it.

John posted a bit about implementing an MVC design in PHP. He quotes a comment stating that MVC is overkill in PHP land, mainly because PHP isn’t Java.
I do things in a simpler way, and I really should post an example application soon!

A few? There are 20 tips here. Excellent reading!

harry Fuecks has written a very long article on PHP5 at sitepoint. It’s been a very busy day so I haven’t had time to look at it, but after a quick scan it looks like a good read.

There’s a major security update available now for Geeklog. If you’re hosting a Geeklog site then it’s time to upgrade. As they say themselves, This is the first major security issue with Geeklog that has been found in a long time..