On the Symfony Finland site there's a tutorial posted showing you how to run Symfony without a web server using Docker and PHP-PM.

Docker containers have been becoming an increasingly common deployment method in the past few years. I've deployed some Node.js app in containers, which are very simple to deploy as there's a single process that's easy to run. I found running PHP to be more complex.

[...] When running Nginx and PHP-FPM you are forced to run a pair of of containers, one for PHP-FPM and one for PHP-NPM. [...] But I would rather just run a single process to run the application. This is how Go, Node.js and even .NET Core apps are deployed. Can PHP do without a middle man?

While it may not be the most performant way to run a PHP and Symfony application, the author wanted to try it out and see how difficult it might be. The code for the setup is provided and, while the end result was a bit difficult to get to, it was possible.

Mike Purcell has a new post to his blog showing a method he's followed to be able to use the popular PHPUnit unit testing software without having to go through the PEAR installer to get there.

PHPUnit is a great tool to protect us developers from introducing new defects when adding new features or re-factoring code. However there is one HUGE downside to PHPUnit; it must be installed using PEAR. Personally, I don't like 'auto-installers', I’d prefer to know what exactly is happening behind the scenes with regards to which libraries are required and how they are being called. [...] After breaking down the PHPUnit source code, I realized it could be installed without going through PEAR, and without too much headache.

He walks you through the directories you'll need to set up (test/vendor), the commands you'll need to get the latest version and unpack it, changes to set up some symlinks and updating the PHPUnit source to modify the autoloader, bootstrap and phpunit executable.

On the Web Builder Zone today Giorgio Sironi has posed a question for all PHP developers out there - is it possible to (effectively) use PHP without a framework these days?

In the same days [of the PHP Barcelona Conference], I attended Matteo Vaccari's talk at Webtech 2010. It was in Italian, but the translation would sound like Framework-free web programming. The context was the Java platform, where frameworks are even more invasive than in PHP. In that talk, I learned some interesting points which are often overlooked while considering frameworks adoption, delighted by the hope of writing less code.

Three of the points mentioned were the learning curve (and eventual lock-in) of using a framework, upgrading/version management and the errors/bugs/missing features that come with using another group's code. Giorgio talks about using external libraries from frameworks (like the Zend Framework) by including them and that frameworks are generally "catch all" tools that you only may want these certain parts of to be effective.

David Coallier looks yet again at his method for using the Zend_Db module of the Zend Framework without having to use PDO to connect to your database. Due to the large amount of interest in the development, he's created a subversion repository to give developers the latest version:

Well that's right, over the past couples weeks I have received emails, have seen comments and bug reports on my blog about the package I started couple weeks ago that let anyone use the Zend Framework without having to use the PDO extension. [...] I have decided to setup a new svn repository related to it.

You can access the main repository for the latest downloads here: http://dev.agoraproduction.com/zend/svn.

David Coallier looks yet again at his method for using the Zend_Db module of the Zend Framework without having to use PDO to connect to your database. Due to the large amount of interest in the development, he's created a subversion repository to give developers the latest version:

Well that's right, over the past couples weeks I have received emails, have seen comments and bug reports on my blog about the package I started couple weeks ago that let anyone use the Zend Framework without having to use the PDO extension. [...] I have decided to setup a new svn repository related to it.

You can access the main repository for the latest downloads here: http://dev.agoraproduction.com/zend/svn.

In an effort to get streams more out in the, er, mainstream, Wez Furlong has posted an example of some code for a common operation many use cURL for - posting to a remote script - but with streams.

Every time I search for the code snippet that allows you to do an HTTP POST request, I don't find it in the manual and resort to reading the source. So, here's an example of how to send a POST request with straight up PHP, no cURL.

The example uses stream_context_create, fopen, stream_get_contents and an Exception to send off the message from an inputted array to the remote server. Smaller things, like the Content-length header on the request, are automatically handled by the wrapper functionality. You can check out this page for more information on the wrapper functionality.

In an effort to get streams more out in the, er, mainstream, Wez Furlong has posted an example of some code for a common operation many use cURL for - posting to a remote script - but with streams.

Every time I search for the code snippet that allows you to do an HTTP POST request, I don't find it in the manual and resort to reading the source. So, here's an example of how to send a POST request with straight up PHP, no cURL.

The example uses stream_context_create, fopen, stream_get_contents and an Exception to send off the message from an inputted array to the remote server. Smaller things, like the Content-length header on the request, are automatically handled by the wrapper functionality. You can check out this page for more information on the wrapper functionality.

It's never fun to have unexpected (bad) things happen, and the Atlanta PHP Users Group had just that last night when they met for their April meeting. The location they've been meeting at was closed up and the company they had previously collaborated with for meeting space had vacated. They are a group without a home.

Ben Ramsey has posted this new message on the APUG's message board to try to encourage members to share space they might know of or ask around about whatever space they could find. They pushed back the topic of the April meeting until next month, when they'll hopefully have a new spot to congregate.

If you're out there in the Atlanta area and have a meeting area you could spare for one night a month for this group, you can reply to this post to let them know.

It's never fun to have unexpected (bad) things happen, and the Atlanta PHP Users Group had just that last night when they met for their April meeting. The location they've been meeting at was closed up and the company they had previously collaborated with for meeting space had vacated. They are a group without a home.

Ben Ramsey has posted this new message on the APUG's message board to try to encourage members to share space they might know of or ask around about whatever space they could find. They pushed back the topic of the April meeting until next month, when they'll hopefully have a new spot to congregate.

If you're out there in the Atlanta area and have a meeting area you could spare for one night a month for this group, you can reply to this post to let them know.

As most people, especially those on a shared hosting environment, know, phpMyAdmin can be indespensible for managing your database setup. There are times, however, when you need to work with your databases without it - epecifically in doing a backup. If all you're left with is the command line and you need to make a backup quick, Sephiroth.it has a quick tip to help out.

I often read threads about export/import data from MySQL and it's always mentioned phpmyadmin as the only way to do that (with PHP indeed).

But that's not true, and it's indeed the slower way to do that, expecially when importing large database files (because phpmyadmin has problems with large db)...

He gives an example of the mysqldump functionality, complete with parameters for passing in things like a username and password. The reverse is also shown - reimporting the database data back into the system.