PHP provides two built-in functions to retrieve properties of a given class – get_object_vars and get_class_vars. Both these functions behave the same exact way, one taking an object as a variable and the other taking a string class name. The tricky thing about the two functions is that they behave differently depending on the call [...]
CodeWorks 2009 Dallas
I was fortunate enough to be selected as the regional speaker for the Dallas CodeWorks 2009 stop by the Dallas PHP User Group through a community voting and selection process. My talk was entitled Object Oriented Apologetics, and was essentially about letting people know what good object-oriented code is, when to use it, how to [...]
The One Character Block Comment
When debugging, I often find that I have to comment and un-comment a block of code several times during the process of trying to find out what’s going on. That used to mean typing and deleting comment block characters repetitively, but not anymore. Here’s a simple solution to that problem: Comment or un-comment an entire [...]
OKC PHP User Group Reboot
The local Oklahoma City PHP User Group is re-starting with the okcCoCo as the new venue. The new meetings will be on the second Tuesday of each month, starting with Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 6:30pm as the first official meeting. Visit the official OKC PHP User Group website to register for meeting reminders and [...]
PHP array_merge – Preserving Numeric Keys
This is just a quick post on PHP’s default behavior of re-indexing numeric keys when using PHP’s internal array_merge and array_merge_recursive functions, because it’s a problem I recently ran into, and was unable to find a quick solution to online.
Basically, the problem is that if you’re using numerically-indexed arrays with a set number that you [...]
Introducing… PHP DataMapper!
PHP DataMapper is an open-source project I’ve been building and working on for a little while now. It’s a lightweight Object-Relational Mapper based on the Data Mapper design pattern, setup using one mapper per table. The primary goal is to make database access one of the easiest parts of building your application instead of the [...]
Early Performance Benchmarking is a Disease
Benchmarking and performance concerns should be one of the last things you address while building your application, but it seems as though, in the PHP community especially, it’s often one of the first things novice developers think about.
Any PHP developer who’s been in the community for a while has heard preposterous claims like “use single [...]
Presentation Slides From Tulsa TechFest 2008
Well Tulsa TechFest is over, and it was a pretty good conference overall. Here are the slides of my presentations at the conference for those who are interested. I have voice recordings of both my presentations too, but unfortunately the digital recorder I bought has no way of directly accessing the files stored in [...]
Reading a FeedBurner Feed with PHP and cURL
Just thought I’d post a quick HOW-TO article on how to get the contents of a FeedBurner feed with PHP, because it’s something I was attempting to do last night that really annoyed me. Since I started this blog here, I decided to narrow another website of mine – czaries.net – to just distribute some [...]
Speaking at TulsaTechFest 2008
After anxiously awaiting a response from David Walker, the TulsaTechFest conference Director about an open speaking spot, I just about fell out of my chair today when I finally got the email with a confirmation that I was going to be presenting. I am very excited about this amazing opportunity, and have already begun putting [...]
