The Zend Framework blog has a new post sharing a method for managing your application's configurations with the help of the zend-config-aggregator package, a product of work on the Zend Expressive framework.

With the rise of PHP middleware, many developers are creating custom application architectures, and running into an issue many frameworks already solve: how to allow runtime configuration of the application.

configuration is often necessary, even in custom applications. [...] Faced with this reality, you then have a new problem: how can you configure your application, as well as aggregate configuration from other sources?

As part of the Expressive initiative, we now offer a standalone solution for you: zend-config-aggregator

The post walks you through the installation of the package and introduces some of the included configuration providers. The tutorial then shows how to put the component to use, aggregating several different kinds of configuration files. It also shows how to use caching on the results and auto-enabling third party and custom providers.

Johannes Schlüter has written up an article covering an interesting feature of the latest MySQL server release related to its JSON column handling: JSON Aggregation functions.

[The JSON datatype, functions and generated columns] combined allow building very powerful applications without committing to a fixed data structure on every part, but I was missing one thing a lot: Aggregation.

A topic I'm thinking a lot about is finding ways to select nested data. In MySQL we typically have two ways for this. Either one sends multiple queries to retrieve different nesting levels or one builds JOINs which tend to deliver repetitive responses.

He points out that one solution is the GROUP_CONCAT function, but the results of this can be difficult to work with and larger data may override the small memory space allowed. Instead he introduces two new functions in v8 to help with this nested data selection: JSON_ARRAYAGG and JSON_OBJECTAGG. He provides a brief example of the use of these two functions together to replace the "concat" handling from before.

Derick Rethans has a new post to his site introducing the aggregation framework that's a part of the MonogDB database system. The aggregation framework gives you functionality to access aggregated values from queries without having to map/reduce.

I wanted to find out which cuisines are used in all of the documents of my dataset. Described in a different way: I want all the different cuisine=... tags as used in my dataset. Traditionally you would write a really complex™ Map/Reduce job, but since MongoDB 2.2, there is a new feature called the aggregation framework. The aggregation framework is meant to be an easy way to do fairly complex aggregation jobs.

He talks about the various keywords and features the framework provides like "$match", "$project" and "$unwind". There's also code snippets included that show both the Mongo command line format and the PHP MongoClient format for making the queries. For those more familiar with writing RDBMS SQL, this functionality might help to replace some of the concepts you've been missing.

Nick Halstead has posted a few more of his programming tips in the series he's running - three more to be exact dealing with readable code, aggregation, and code structure tips.

• Programming Tips #3 "Divide, Indent, Comment and Name": "We all started programming at some point in our life, some of us on our own, some under guidance of teachers, parents, but even now there are few tips, that should be known by everyone."
• Programming Tips #4 "Aggregation over Inheritance": "My favourite rule is to favour aggregation over inheritance."
• Programming Tips #5 "Readable Code": "It’s easier to debug, and later to maintain. Make it readable by using descriptive identifiers, properly tabbing the code, and breaking down the application into functional and reusable pieces."

You can check out the full list of his programming tips in this list.

Nick Halstead has posted a few more of his programming tips in the series he's running - three more to be exact dealing with readable code, aggregation, and code structure tips.

• Programming Tips #3 "Divide, Indent, Comment and Name": "We all started programming at some point in our life, some of us on our own, some under guidance of teachers, parents, but even now there are few tips, that should be known by everyone."
• Programming Tips #4 "Aggregation over Inheritance": "My favourite rule is to favour aggregation over inheritance."
• Programming Tips #5 "Readable Code": "It’s easier to debug, and later to maintain. Make it readable by using descriptive identifiers, properly tabbing the code, and breaking down the application into functional and reusable pieces."

You can check out the full list of his programming tips in this list.

Derick Rethans has a quick new post today about the "discovery" of a new Planet site focused around the world of eZ Publish.

No, this is not something that New Horizons found as that mission hasn't been launched yet. It's Planet eZ publish, an aggregation of blogs about eZ publish, similar to Planet PHP that aggregates blogs about PHP.

Some of the blogs already included in the list are from people like: Derick himself, Tobias Schlitt, Kristof Coomans, and Paul Borgermans. The RSS feed for the site can be found here...

Derick Rethans has a quick new post today about the "discovery" of a new Planet site focused around the world of eZ Publish.

No, this is not something that New Horizons found as that mission hasn't been launched yet. It's Planet eZ publish, an aggregation of blogs about eZ publish, similar to Planet PHP that aggregates blogs about PHP.

Some of the blogs already included in the list are from people like: Derick himself, Tobias Schlitt, Kristof Coomans, and Paul Borgermans. The RSS feed for the site can be found here...