I was wondering today why use mbstring rather than iconv in Dokeos, and honestly I didn't remember exactly why I had chosen mbstring in the past, but finding information about the *differences* between the two. [...] Searching a bit more, I found a PPT presentation from Carlos Hoyos on Google.

Essentially, it boils down to how the library is integrated - mbstring is bundled and iconv is pulled from an external source. So, if you're looking for maximum portability, he recommends mbstring.

If you try to get informations about parameters from methods of internal classes - forget that. Examining several internal classes my key findings are: either there is no information about parameters available and the reflection API says the method does not have any parameters, or the information about the parameter is wrong.

He includes code examples along side the output from the script to illustrate his point.

he bad news: mysqlnd might have bugs. How to report and debug these bugs - using mysqli_debug() - is subject of this posting.

They step you through the process for finding out what's causing the problems (internal versus external debugging) and how to make client traces with the mysqi extension to make it even easier for the developers to track down the problem. They also suggest a few things to send along with your bug report - like the PHP code calling it or the SQL you're using to select/update/insert/delete the data from your database.

The 39 page guide ($15 USD from Lulu.com) provides a wealth of knowledge about working with graphics in PHP including a detailed look at some of the more advanced functionality of GD. The book covers your first steps with GD and graphics, working with primitives, creating an image based on external data, and embedding them into an XHTML/HTML page of your choosing.

The page for the book on DevGuide.net itself even provides a great list of resources for those looking to get into graphics with PHP - with links to everything from the basic software (webservers, PHP, etc) out to the libraries you'll need and some other tutorials to help you even after you've worked through the book.

So I've been using microsoft visual studio (actually it's Visual C++ Express, but uses the same stuff behind the scenes) to work on getting things compiled on windows. PHP-Gtk2 allows for some nifty extensions, well at least on linux. So I've been working to get versions of libglade, scintilla, gtksourceview and mozembed working on windows. It's a long, slow process. Here's the deal so far.

She talks about her current situation (what's compiling and what's not) and the software that she's trying to get up and running. She also mentions a problem she's been having with an error message talking about "unresolved external symbols" she'll need to track down (or get some help on - anyone out there seen it?)

For three days I fought with compiling PHP5.2 on windows. The point was to be able to compile PHP-GTK2 a little more often. [...] I'm always up for learning something new and I thought I had enough google skills and entry level knowledge to get things going. Alas, it has all failed.

She recounts the steps she followed in her effort to get the setup working, including setting up the compile environment (no small task thanks to dependencies for Visual C++ Express Edition) and getting down into the PHP. This causes troubles of its own - from command line options not getting passed to external library dependencies - with the ultimate unfortunate result.

All the way to the end and the linker fails AGAIN. What the heck? So I start doing some searching...turned off EVERYTHING and tried to build and ended up with weird iconv and libxml errors - even with disable-all.

nothing works.

I've run into an issue, or rather a friend of mine has. He asked me for advice, I gave it to him, but I'm curious how others would do this. The problem is this:

Team A, has been working on some code for a few months, Team A has a class called "SomeClass". Team B, is an "outsourced" team, who is writing a SOAP interface to Team A's code. Somehow, due to whatever reasons, Team A and Team B developers didn't talk.

Team B also created a class and called it "SomeClass". These classes are in files called "Aclass.class.php" and "Bclass.class.php" . There are some files, that include both files.. obviously, you end up with a "cannot redeclare class" fatal error.

Vidyut's suggestion was to just to change the class names. Unfortunately, this might not work if there is no communication between the two parties - they cannot come to a compromise on the naming.

He question to the community is "How do you handle an issue of single namespace, or rather no namespace ?"]]> Wed, 01 Mar 2006 07:04:27 -0600 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/4609 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/4609 Andi Gutmans has posted his feelings on the growing trend of PHP developers turnng to the C level of things to add new functionality to the PHP development.

One thing I have noticed, is that quite often, PHP developers who are seeking for new PHP features are prematurely trying to implement them in C. Although, there are definitely cases where you want to write your code in C, I think in some cases PHP is too quickly dismissed.

Developing features in PHP not only takes less time, but is also less prone to bugs, easier to maintain, and more stable and secure. Also, in the majority of cases, whether such a feature were implemented in C or PHP, would not make a significant different to overall application performance.

He gives the example of the ZSearch functionality that they mentioned in the php|architect webcast for the Zend framework - entirely implemented in PHP, not C. He also mentions a point that web developers would do good to take to heart - the bottlenecks usually aren't in the code - it's dealing with external resources that's the problem...]]> Thu, 05 Jan 2006 06:37:38 -0600