Maybe this pattern is not as useful as it is in J2EE world. With PHP everything dies within each request, so we cannot persist our instances between requests (without any persistent mechanism such as databases, memcached or external servers). But at least in PHP we can share the same instance, with this pattern, in our script.

He illustrates a bad side effect of this sharing of resources with a simple unit test that increments a counter in a class. He notes that, because the script shares the object, you can't reliably know the state of it as you don't know what's happened before your use. He recommends two things to help the situation - either not use them at all or destroy the instance each time after using it (counterproductive to using a Singleton, obviously).

In this Nettuts+ mini-series, we'll build a web application from scratch, while diving into a great new PHP framework that's rapidly picking up steam, called Laravel - a simple and elegant PHP 5.3 framework. First up, we'll learn more about Laravel, and why it's such a great choice for your next PHP-based web application.

They briefly introduce the framework and talk about some of the things that it offers for the PHP 5.3 users out there (including the use of packages called Bundles, the built-in ORM, migration and Redis support). They start you off on the road to building the sample application with instructions on downloading, configuring and creating the first controllers, templated views (with Blade) and a bit on asset management.

In PHP we've had a lousy culture of code-sharing. Because depending on code from others as been tricky, every major PHP application or framework has practically had to reimplement the whole world. Only some tools, like PHPUnit, have managed to break over this barrier and become de-facto standards across project boundaries. But for the rest: just write it yourself. But now Composer, and its repository counterpart Packagist, promise to change all that. And obviously new conventions like PHP's namespacing support and the PSR-0 standard autoloader help.

Making a package is as simple as setting up a JSON-based configuration file that names dependencies and package metadata (like name, type, etc). Composer generates an autoloader of its own to handle the loading of your needs based on the dependencies listed as a part of the package. If you'd like more information about Composer or to get the latest version and try it yourself, check out the project's github repository.

In the open source community there are many examples on how to share session data using database but i didn't found an example using MS SQL Server with the new Microsoft SQL Server Driver for PHP so I decided to write a new session handler from scratch. I used the last version 1.1 of the Microsoft SQL Server Driver. I tested the session handler using two Windows Server 2003 running IIS6 and Zend Server 5 CE. I used a SQL Server 2005 database to share the PHP session between the two servers.

He shows you how to set up the custom session handler, create the table where the session data will be stored and includes a sample test script (a part of his SQLSrv_Session class) so you can ensure that it's all cooperating as it should.

Friendfeed is an excellent life streaming service aggregating all your feeds from different service providers, compile them together, build a social network among your known people and finally deliver all these feeds as a mashup. [...] In this blog post I will try to focus on how to develop such a service like Friendfeed using PHP and JS and how to scale such a huge load successfully.

This first part looks at the photo sharing handling of the application, including links to libraries already written in PHP to connect to them (like Flickr and Smugmug).

Komodo IDE 4.0 is the first unified workspace for end-to-end development of dynamic web applications. A rich feature set for client-side Ajax languages such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript and XML, coupled with advanced support for dynamic languages such as Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Tcl, enables developers to quickly and easily create robust web apps.

Komodo is all about simplicity and helping you write your code. This includes features like a multi-language editor, integrating sharing abilities, the ability to create Firefox-like extensions to add to other applications, and full customization settings to make your worspace your own.

Find out more about the software on Komodo's page or just head over and buy this latest version for a discounted rate of $245 USD. There's also a trial copy you can download and check out before spending the cash.

Until last year, [Ronald] Diener's organization was paying thousand of dollars a year to a library software vendor, but the vendor's services had become inadequate for the task. The court's IT team determined that they could develop a better, cost-effective in-house solution that would at the same time be open to participation from outside.

The open source option available through Apache, MySQL, and PHP (AMP) would serve as a resource to collaborate with other organizations and libraries, even internationally, in creating a continually upgradeable software portfolio. This solution would both cut costs and enhance the value of what could be offered to their own clients and a larger audience of legal professionals.

They do mention the comment made about finding documentation on implementing an AMP setup, but other than that, they seem happy overall with the system - plus it's already saving them money.]]> Wed, 28 Dec 2005 07:26:56 -0600