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Tuesday, June 8. 2010
You get NULL! Well you get NULL when you don't cast. Say for example you do the following: $dbh = new PDO ([.. ]); $stmt = $dbh->prepare ('SELECT accountid FROM dbo.Account'); $stmt->execute (); echo $stmt->fetchColumn (); // NULL
But when you do the following: $stmt = $dbh->prepare ('SELECT CAST(accountid AS varchar(36)) accountid FROM dbo.Account'); $stmt->execute (); echo $stmt->fetchColumn (); // "F05C92A1-3119-4206-A123-49A759AC99FB" I didn't think the casting would be necessary, since according to the manual: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa226054(SQL.80).aspx the datatype 'uniqueidentifier' has implicit casts with multiple data-types. But I guess it's just one of those things...
Friday, June 4. 2010
I was asked to create a web interface front-end with Microsoft Dynamics CRM as back-end. But I had some troubles setting up the connection, since it has to be done using a domain logon. This doesn't have to be a problem at all, unless your configuration is wrong! In this article I'll explain a few things and point you in the right direction when you have login problems.
As stated earlier, the server running the PHP installation is not Microsoft. In this case a AS400 installation, but it could've been a Linux installation also. I'm using PDO for this article and PHP version 5.2.11. Even if you don't want to use PDO, I recommend using it only for debugging (if possible) since that will give you *most likely* more debug information then the mssql_* family.
When using PDO with a MS-SQL database, you'll need to supply "dblib" as driver and DBLib uses FreeTDS as underlaying library. FreeTDS can be a source of troubles when you're trying to connect, if not configured properly. So I'll kick-off with a little information about it. Don't skip it if you have login problems!
Continue reading "Connecting from PHP on a non Microsoft OS to MSSQL with a domain account"
Monday, April 19. 2010
I had a problem with running test cases on multiple CI environments, where one of the two runs on PHP 5.2 and the other on PHP 5.3. This basically meant that all our pretty PHP 5.3 code caused the builds to fail on the 5.2 only machine. To solve this problem I needed a way to skip tests when the PHP version was less then 5.3.0. Besides the reason I needed this for a -less then ideal- setup. This can also be a generic way to skip certain tests, based on a PHP version. class someTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase { public function setUp () { // Testing if we are dealing with version 5.3.0 or higher if (! version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.3.0', '>=')) { $this->markTestSkipped ('Invalid PHP version, unable to run tests.'); } } public function test_testFoo () { // .. some awesum test case .. \\ }} You can also use the cool @depends annotation of PHPUnit and put the version logic in a test. This has my preference, but it's not always possible. In case you have some code that simply can't be parsed by the older PHP engines. If you know a better way to do this, please share!
Tuesday, November 3. 2009
IntroductionThis is a blog about running two PHP versions on one webserver and using multiple php.ini files, this combination can be a tricky one to tackle. But luckily one we can tackle quite easily as long as one of the PHP versions is >= 5.2.7. For this example I'll be using Apache, but the webserver flavor doesn't really matter. The most important part is the "PHP_INI_SCAN_DIR" environment variable. The whyThere could be a number of reasons to want what I'm about to talk about. In my case I have a project where I have a legacy code-base, running on a specific PHP version, and a new code-base which will be run on 5.3. Because the new code-base will be a ongoing progress of replacing the old, it first has to run side by side with the legacy code-base. So I wanted my development image to run two PHP versions. The old code-base used php.ini settings such as a include-path, error reporting, etc. Which will be different from the new code-bas, and those can no-longer be set with the 'php_value' feature of Apaches since the PHP version we'll be using for that runs as (f)CGI rather then as module.
Continue reading "Multiple PHP versions on one webserver"
Sunday, October 11. 2009
Recently I got asked if I knew about a system that supports multiple session back-ends at once. I didn't know about one and since it's not rocket-science I decided to spent a few hours and whoop something up. For the impatient, checkout: http://github.com/Dynom/SessionHandler What does it do?It is a drop-in high-availability storage back-end for PHP sessions by offering a redundant session storage system. It's as easy as including the lib, define the drivers you want to use (e.g. Memcache and MySQL) prepare their configuration/installation and done. If you already have a MySQL server and a Memcache instance running you can set it up in about 5 minutes. It's also easy to extend and write new drivers, just extend the template class and fill in the blanks.
Continue reading "Multiple backend session storage handler"
Friday, September 25. 2009
I like solving puzzles, probably one of the reason why I like programming as much as I do. I also like finding challenges and experimenting, as such I came to the idea to start the PHP Quiz series. They contain typical combination of PHP quirks and lesser known features of PHP. The reason behind the quizzes is not to advocate bad or good coding practices, but it's intended to let you find out the why in all of it. I believe that by understanding what happens it can make you a better programmer and you might spot bugs easier then without knowing what happens. The series are not ordered in level of difficulty but merely in the order that I found out about them, thought about them or where simply sent in. But in general I think it's safe to say that your knowledge of PHP should be quite a leap forward from novice before you can answer most questions. This however doesn't mean that, once you can do the quizzes flawlessly, that you are a superior programmer. There is a big different between knowing how to design an application and knowing why $array = array(1,1) + array(2,2) only results in an array with two elements. An overview of all the PHP Quizzes: http://blog.dynom.nl/categories/PHPQuiz_12
A special thanks to the people who sent in code samples, happy quizzing!
-D
Monday, September 21. 2009
Welcome to another part of the PHP Quiz series, again some interesting questions to crack your brain about. If you have some nice additions or questions, be sure to leave a comment. Enjoy part three! As always, think of the answer before you execute the code or look it up. You can find round two here. Unset castWhat is the type of $a and what is the type of $b
Form funWhat will the output be? <form method= "post" action= "" enctype= "text/plain"> <input name= "search" type= "text"> <input type= "submit"> </form> <?php error_reporting( E_ALL ); echo (string ) filter_input (INPUT_POST, 'search'); ?> Fun with stringsStrings in PHP are versatile, but how versatile are they... What will the output be? $juggling = "Itffkhmf"; $rox = "Spy"; $b = $c = ""; for ($i= 0; $i<strlen ($juggling); $i++ ) { $b .= $juggling[ $i ]; $b++; } for ($i= 0; $i<strlen ($rox); $i++ ) { $c .= $rox[ $i ]; $c--; }var_dump( $b, $c );
Continue reading "PHP Quiz part 3"
Thursday, June 25. 2009
In these blog series I'd like to talk a bit about some "Did you knows". These series contain information I came across along the way and I mention them here to give you insight or just to make you aware of it's existence. The information is by no means in chronological order and mostly not even covering "state of the art" or "brand new" items for that matter. Some are directly code related, others are just brief descriptions. Basically it's just a pile of PHP and web related information. You can find part one here.
Continue reading "Did you know... part two"
Thursday, May 14. 2009
A short quiz this time, but that doesn't make it less fun. Do you know the answer to all of them? Get a cup of coffee and kill 10 minutes with round two...
As always, think of the answer before you execute the code or look it up. You can find round one here.
Array pointerWhat will the output be ?
$array = range(0, 5); next($array); foreach($array as $v) { echo $v; }
ArrayAccess and isset fun isset or not isset, thats the question.
Typo?The output might be confusing..
ReferencesHow many notices will be thrown?
error_reporting(E_ALL); function a ( & $array) {} function b ($array) {}a ($array); b ($array);
Continue reading "PHP Quiz part 2"
Wednesday, April 15. 2009
Here a few of those "how did that work again" things, in Zend framework. Mostly for myself but hey, I'm not greedy. If you know some new/nifty ones, feel free to leave a comment! Loading a view from a different directorypublic function someAction () { // Option one $titleView = new Zend_View (); $titleView->setScriptPath ( APPLICATION_PATH . 'views/scripts/'); // Option two $titleView = new Zend_View (array('scriptPath'=>APPLICATION_PATH . 'views/scripts/')); $viewResult = $titleView->render ('_my_view_script.phtml'); }
Continue reading "Zend framework reminders"
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