PHP Iterators
If you've spent any significant amount of time coding in PHP you're most likely familiar with PHP's foreach loop syntax. In simple terms, a foreach loop is an easy way to iterate over the elements of...
View ArticleApparatus (also Happy New Year!)
For a while now I've been working on a web-based PHP interpreter; an interface I can use to quickly test or develop code from my browser. Ultimately this resulted in Apparatus, an in-browser PHP...
View ArticlePHP Confirmation Emails
If you are implementing your own user management system you may want to ensure that emails associated with users' accounts are valid. The most straightforward way of doing this is to send an email to...
View ArticleApparatus Update Preview
I've been making some progress on the next version of Apparatus. Along with some bug fixes there are a few new features. One new thing is the option to attach a database to allow for more advanced...
View ArticlePHP Overloading
The lack of function overloading is one of my biggest complaints about PHP. If you're not familiar with overloading, its a feature of some languages that allows you to defined multiple methods (or...
View ArticleApparatus 0.4
A new version of Apparatus is available. Previously I wrote about several new features that would be included in this version, however rather than further postpone a release, I've decided to hold off...
View ArticleDoing Things the Hard Way
Every now and then I discover something that makes me feel like I've been doing things the hard way. The feeling is an interesting combination of excitement and embarrassment. I experienced this today...
View ArticleManaging URL Parameters in PHP
This is a function that I find myself using more and more often to create or modify URLs that contain a query string: Continue reading →
View ArticleFetching Remote Content in PHP
Reading in remote content with PHP can be an incredibly simple task: $url = 'http://example.com/foo.php?bar=1'; $remote_content = file_get_contents($url); One problem with the above solution is that it...
View ArticlePHP json_encode and json_decode Alternatives
The number of APIs and other remote services that either support or require json as a means for transferring data is growing. However, PHP does not have guaranteed support for json encoding or decoding...
View ArticlePHP Donts
The following is a non-comprehensive list (in no particular order) of things I often see people doing while using PHP that they probably shouldn’t. The purpose of this list is to inform; hopefully it...
View ArticleWeekly PHP Function
Starting this week I’m going to be writing a post about a particular PHP function. Each week a function will be chosen at random from php.net’s Function List and I’ll write about (including but not...
View ArticleWeekly Function: ctype_digit
I had actually never heard of this function before my random function grabber spit it out, or for that matter any of the ctype functions. What this function does is takes a value and determines if it...
View ArticleWeekly Function: gethostbyaddr
This function can be used to retrieve the host name for a particular IP address. For example, if you give it the IP address 74.207.242.169 it will output tinsology.net. Just off of the top of my head,...
View ArticlePHP 5.4 Preview
The alpha release of PHP5.4 came out about a month ago. Along with the release came an announcement containing several of the more important changes, but not much in the way of detail. Here is a quick...
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