In his latest postDavid Coallier asks the PHP community how they use namespaces (to be included in the upcoming PHP 5.3 release):
Quick and simple question to the community. Before asking it, I'd like to remind you that this is not a bashing contest nor a competition to say why you don't like the namespaces implementation. What I would like to ask you all today is, how do you use them? File structures, Directory Structures, Naming Conventions you use, or even, have you used them at all? Are you planning on using them? If yes, why? If no, why?
Comments on the post range from an idea of "libraries" of code out to complaints on the operator chosen and others pushing them aside and not using them at all.
Even with the release of PHP 5.3 looming closer and closer on the horizon, there's a few things that are still being worked through - one of which is the much touted namespace support. Elizabeth Smith has posted a few of the issues that she's having with how they're being implemented, four and a half of them, to be exact.
The first thing to clarify is that I like the new implementation overall, it's fairly light and although it isn't really namespacing or packaging in any sense of the word, the best way to describe it is aliasing, it does help keep code easy to use. In fact I have a couple of projects and even a PHP extension that's all namespaced code.
Her list of five (four and a half) things are:
multiple namespaces in a file
you can't have ANYTHING before the namespace statement but an opening <?php tag
The autoload and resolution paths
Functions in namespaces
No use * and three million use statements (this is the one with the workaround - class_alias)
Lukas Smith has asked a question of the community with the release of PHP 5.3 coming nearer and nearer - who out there is using namespaces already?
As I said in my last post we are not yet sure if we need to make some changes to namespaces before we can move from alpha to beta in the current 5.3.0 release cycle. What I did not ask for explicitly is feedback from people that have already started developing code with namespaces. These people are likely the best source of feedback on the current state of namespaces and if the proposed changes to namespaces would be useful or not
He mentions that the Doctrine project is already playing with them and, apparently, some of his commentors - one using them on a library in development, porting over XJConf to use them and other various projects.
On the Sanisoft blog today Tarique Sani has posted about a method for using the CakePHP framework without a database to back it up.
We recently programmed a CakePHP app which relies solely on remote server talking Saleforce API for all data operations. The first challenge that we faced was how to prevent CakePHP from insisting on a database connection. The solution was simple enough and I never gave it much thought till the same question was brought up by more than one person on the CakePHP list. The solution involves creating a minimal dbo source file.
It's a simple three step process to follow - making the dbo source file, set it up as the default driver and tell CakePHP to $useTable = false.
A new tutorial has been posted to php|architects C7Y community site looking at some practical uses of the PHP tokenizer to work with your source.
In this article we take a look at the PHP tokenizer and its potential at analyzing and processing PHP source code. We will build several working examples, which you can start using and extending for your own purposes.
The author, Stan Vassilev, explains what the tokenizer is for, how it parses the code (via a lexer) and how to get at the tokens that are created. He uses the token_get_all and token_name functions to get the information and creates a wrapper class around them to strip whitespace and comments.
After hearing Stefan Priebsch's talk at this year's Dutch PHP Conference, something occurred to Derick Rethans - there was a small sort of issue with using namespaces and possible future PHP's own namespace.
One of the things that came up is the conflicts that can arise with internal classes. In PHP 5.3 this would alias the class Interval in the namespace PEAR::Date to the class Interval. For now, this code would work just fine. However, if PHP would introduce a class "Interval" at some point in the future (and PHP can do this as it owns the global namespace) then the above code would suddenly stop working
He offers a simple solution that can prevent this sort of conflict for the future - defining your "use" and then creating a new instance of the namespace into a variable instead of just an "as".
The Developer Tutorials blog has posted their five reasons why they think you should be including PHP in your development.
Sure, it isn't perfect. It has its problems; from professionalism to consistency and even versioning. Still, it's a fantastic language for web development; it's efficient, scalable and, when used appropriately, effective. Read on for five reasons you should be using PHP for web development.
On PHPBuilder.com today there's this new tutorial for those out there at the most basic level of PHP development looking to get up to speed on what PHP is and what makes it one of the most popular web scripting languages out there.
PHP (or Personal HomePage Tools) was created by Rasmus Lerdorf over three years ago to track visitors to his homepage. PHP has since evolved into a powerful server-side markup language with syntax that resembles a mix between Perl and C.
They cover all of the key questions - what is PHP, why use it and a simple explanation of a basic script (outputting the date) as well as links to other external resources where you can get more information.
According to I-nfotech, there's ten projects that every PHP developer out there just can't live without:
As a php web developer, you should know that php is probably the language that has the biggest code repository. So no matter what module you want to include in your project there should be an open source solution. [...] Anyway, after many years as a web developer, I've compiled a list of php classes that can be easily integrated in any project and I am regularly use.
He has it broken up into the ten different categories including "sending emails", "user manipulation", "fetching RSS feeds" and "grabbing remote content". Some of his choices are things native to PHP (like the mail function) but others are external classes like the Magpie RSS package.
David Coaller has posted about a major change in the way namespaces will be implemented in the upcoming PHP 5.3 release - a change from using "import" to "use" for including a namespace in your code.
PHP Namespaces are no longer using the "import" keyword, this has been replaced to the keyword "use". Quite simple he ? There are a few reasons behind that move, but let's all drop the political reasons and say at least that many many projects in the open source world do use the import() function to do all sorts of weird imports, and it's just simpler to use "use".
