PHP

I’ve been playing with XML-RPC – a remote procedure calling using HTTP as the transport and XML. If you’re interested in how to use XML-RPC in PHP, go to the lab page on XML-RPC with PHP.

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.

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.