Development

How to check if the correct PHP version, the correct modules and other stuff are available, when you’re creating a PHP application, you expect other to use. Show me

With PHP5 accessing webservices just go so much easier, and now there’s a section in the PHP Lab to prove it. If you’re PHP Developer looking for examples on how to access Google APIs or any other WebService with SOAP.

In the book the DaVinci code there’s a fun little device called a “Cryptex”. It a container for a secret message, and to open it, you need to align some dials to the correct position. In an quiz somewhere you were invited to crack such a cryptext consisting of 6 dials with 6 letters on each to find the correct combination, which would spell a word. To find the solution quickly, all you need is PHP.

… even crashes. While it shouldn’t matter too much, the eye candy (cool graphics, sweet effects and other eye pleasing stuff) on a Mac even makes me smile from time to time – and you just have a little more forgiveness to a program, which crashes with grace. Take Adium - my favourite Instant Messaging client. Being a multi language expert (and thus speaking both MSN, Jabber, GTalk, ICQ and other protocols) it does have a hard time, and some times – weeks if not months apart – a may go down in flames.

Browsing in other people code can be an interesting experience. Sometimes you learn stuff, other times you just get scared of the things you see. One recent observation I seem to make a lot, is that handling “application configuration” is often handled less gracefully as a would have wished. The plain basic configuration handling in many PHP applications seems to be creating a php-file and declare all configuration values in this file – then have all other scripts in the application include this one config file – and sure it works.