Category Archives: open source

open source, PHP

A happy 20 years !

Leave a comment

In honor of the 20th anniversary of PHP, I thought I’d write a short story about my years in PHP.

I discovered PHP in 1997 after I started experimenting with Linux and we started a university team of the Distributed.net RC5 challenge. We had a so-called personal key proxy running and wanted to generate some personal statistics. I decided to learn this relatively new language called PHP, which was at version 2.0FI at the time, which served to create some basic stats. Afterwards we used the Perl-based PPStats, but I soon found it too slow and too messy to deal with, so I rewrote it in PHP.

GNet
My first major PHP adventure was a personal project called GNet, a search engine submission system (back in the days when most search engines didn’t crawl the web and if they did, they did so slowly and inefficiently). The system I built was both web-based as well as Windows-based. The web-based version was built in PHP 3.0, the Windows version was not a standalone system, but rather plugged into the web-based version to fetch the latest engine list, parameter lists, etc using some custom API (well there were no ‘standard’ APIs at the time anyway). This was an actual client-server based application with PHP running on the server side, back in 1999 🙂

phpAds(New) / OpenX
The end of the 90s was also the boom of the online advertising industry. And having a system like GNet meant I could actually show some ads and try to make a little money. There was a system called phpAds, written by Tobias Ratschiller. After version 1.4 arrived, Tobias seemed to have vanished and although I had created a number of bug fixes, nobody was able to put them into the official phpAds project, which was being run from Tobias’ website.
So I merged all the existing patches with mine, added some functionality, and released phpAdsNew 1.4.9, the new part indicating that this was the new release. The new would remain part of its name until 2007, when the project was renamed to OpenAds (it has since been renamed to OpenX and recently to Revive Adserver). Over the course of 2 years, I rewrote the core of the system and added features, until in 2002 I gladly handed it over to someone else to maintain.
Although I never made much money with the ads, the project was fun, I got to see the fruits of my labour being used by thousands of companies and I learned a lot running it.

Consultancy
The next few years I spent building mostly control panels and online ordering systems (for our own domain name, hosting and colocation business) and small websites and webapps.
In 2006 I started working for a number of Belgian companies as a freelance PHP developer. I worked for Internet Architects, Telenet, NMBS (Belgian railways) and a few more, before finally starting a dedicated PHP development company called Cu.be Solutions.

Open Source
Although phpAdsNew/OpenX was an open source project from the start, I had been out of touch with actual open source work for a while when I started working on PHPCompatibility a few years ago. I’m happy to see a lot of people using it.
But my contribution is so small compared to the massive amounts of code so many have contributed to the PHP core, frameworks, CMS systems, testing tools, and so much more.

The community
Open Source makes PHP great, absolutely. But it’s the PHP community that makes it all worth it ten-fold. In the past 8 years I’ve met the most amazing people from all around the world, each with their own distinct tastes, opinions, abilities, mindset, and so on… with one single thing binding them together : they’re all using this tool Rasmus Lerdorf built 20 years ago, this tool that has taken the web by storm and has been the undisputed number 1 web language for a long time, a language I will gladly use for another 20 😉

Happy happy birthday PHP ! Onwards to the next 20 !

open source, PHP, phpconsistent, testing

PHPConsistent : a new tool to verify your calls and documentation quality

2 Comments

Back in 2009 and 2010 I wrote about a PHPUnit patch I wrote to automatically verify parameter types in function calls. The feature never made it into PHPUnit and honestly it didn’t really fit into the feature set either. Although I still plan on releasing it as a PHPUnit extension that you can easily load, I’ve since been using it outside of PHPUnit, not just on tests, but on any PHP code.

Introducing PHPConsistent

PHPConsistent will verify your code using both dynamic and static analysis.

The goal is to improve code quality of your code and the libraries you use by :

  • Verifying your code is making calls using the right parameters and parameter types
  • Verifying if the in-line documentation (docblock) of the called functions/methods is accurate

It will compare :

  • Parameter types specified in the docblock <-> types of parameters passed upon calling the function/method
  • Number of parameters specified in the docblock <-> number of parameters actually present in the function/method definition
  • Names of parameters specified in the docblock <-> names of parameters actually present in the function/method definition

Sample output

Invalid type calling SomeClass->GiveMeAnArray : parameter 3 ($somearray) should be of type array but got boolean instead : library/App.php (line 5)
Parameter names in function definition and docblock don't match when calling JustAnotherFunction : parameter 2 ($inputFilename) should be called $inputFile according to docblock : application/Bootstrap.php (line 214)
Parameter count in function definition and docblock don't match when calling OneMoreFunction : function has 6 but should be 5 according to docblock : application/Bootstrap.php (line 215)

Performance

Keep in mind that PHPConsistent relies on Xdebug’s trace functionality, making it quite slow. It also needs to analyze the output of that trace, making it even slower. So it’s definitely not something you want to run on a production environment !

Want to know more ?

Check out the PHPConsistent Github page

Conferences, nginx, open source, PHP

Conferences, development, ideas, …

Leave a comment

I just returned from PHPCon Poland, a very nice conference taking place in the middle of beautiful scenery. Although there were only 5 talks in English (3 of which were given by Belgians – Thijs Feryn, Michelangelo Van Dam and myself), the conference was definitely interesting and fun.
I gave a relatively new talk, that I first presented as a 20-min ‘lightning talk’ at ZendCon Uncon 2011. It’s evolved into a 45-min talk (ok, it was only 38-min so I can add some content next time) titled ‘Remove PHP calls and scale your site like crazy’ in which I explain more about the Nginx extension we’re building to improve the performance and scalability of sites with user-specific content. I received some pretty good feedback on Joind.in and lots of people approached me afterwards, wanting to learn even more about it.

I also submitted 6 talks for Confoo, which is supposed to be one of the best web development conferences out there. Not sure if I’ll make it, but if you want to help out, feel free to vote for me. Registration is required to vote, but takes only a minute.

Lots of ideas buzzing in my head, but sadly not enough time to work on them. The Nginx thing is cool, but it’s what I call ‘phase 1’… which means there’s a ‘phase 2’ (in fact, there’s even a ‘phase 3’). But since that requires even more time, it’ll probably be for when phase 1 has been completed.

In the meantime, we’re on the hunt for people looking for a new challenge. If you’re looking to be seriously challenged, check out our jobs page and feel free to tweet/mail/call me 😉

codesniffer, open source, PHP

PHP 5.4 compatibility checks using PHP_CodeSniffer

34 Comments

Update (27 Nov) : Support for PHP 5.5alpha is included.

For those of you who are new to this concept, check my blog post from a while ago. It will explain the basic concept of using PHP_CodeSniffer to automate compatibility checks. But don’t use the download links, because they point to the old (PHP 5.3) version !

What’s new ?

Quite a few things have changed in this new release :

  • There’s no version specific release anymore. The previous codesniffer standard was called PHP53Compatibility, but it seemed quite stupid to make a new standard for every PHP version out there, especially since that would keep certain people from upgrading to the latest major PHP version. So the new PHPCompatibility standard works for 5.0 – 5.4
  • But since some people simply can’t upgrade to the latest version, I added version information to all the checks. For example : the deprecated  function checker will now tell you that session_register() is deprecated since PHP 5.3 and removed since PHP 5.4 – if you’re running 5.2 and want to move to 5.3, at least you know right away that you’ll have to fix that problem, because otherwise you can’t ever upgrade to 5.4. This version check is available on deprecated/removed function, deprecated/removed php.ini directives and deprecated/removed extensions.
  • Default timezone check has been added : since PHP 5.4, you need to have a default timezone set or PHP will complain. This is ofcourse only useful if you run the tests on a system with identical settings as your production environment.
  • A check for the removed functionality on break and continue was added. (Using a variable or function call as a parameter on break and continue is no longer allowed.)
  • 2 algorithms were removed in the hash extension, so there’s a check for that as well

Where to get it

2 options :

  • Using git : run this in your PHP_CodeSniffer/Standards directory :
    ~ > git clone git://github.com/wimg/PHPCompat_CodeSniffer.git PHPCompatibility
  • Downloading a zip : download here and unzip the file in PHP_CodeSniffer/Standards/PHPCompatibility

How to run it

Start PHP_CodeSniffer like this :
phpcs --standard=PHPCompatibility

Enjoy !

As always, any feedback (or patches on Github) welcome !

caching, nginx, open source, PHP, scalability, tuning, zendcon

Zendcon, ACL talk, conferences and other stuff

6 Comments

ACL talk (Zend Webinar)
Remember I promised to post the code of my ACL Webinar somewhere in August ? That didn’t really happen, partly because of a lack of time, partly because after my initial hard drive crash (which made me lose my slides and code), I had another crash in August and then my boot SSD drive crashed in September. Dell was kind enough to replace the power supply, motherboard and 1 disk, but my data was lost (unless I pay over 500EUR to have it recovered, which is a bit too pricy for my liking).
So all those setbacks caused a lot of delay on my promise. Nevertheless, I presented the talk again at the Zendcon Unconference, also mentioning the plans I have in store for version 2. But ofcourse, I’ll have to release version 1 first. Currently I’m using DHTMLX Treeview for the backend treeview interface, but I’m not allowed to redistribute the commercial version I bought. So as soon as I can replace the backend treeview interface with a free one, I’ll release the entire code, including instructions on how to set it up. And since development for version 2 is already underway, I want to make sure I make a good choice there 😉

Zendcon 2011
Last week I spent a few days at Zendcon in Santa Clara, CA. I saw lots of interesting session there and presented 2 sessions during the Zendcon Unconference (community style version of the main conference) :

  • Creating dynamic ACLs in Zend Framework : the Zend Webinar I presented in August
  • Scaling dynamic sites like static sites : a first glimpse on a new Nginx module we’re building to make dynamic sites behave more like static sites in terms of scalability, without losing their dynamic nature

I received some encouraging comments, so I’m looking forward to presenting more on these topics in the next few months. The Nginx talk should also have some real-world benchmarks the next time I present it.
If you saw either one of my talks, please rate it at Joind.in

Next talks
I’m scheduled to talk at 2 more conferences this year :

  • T-Dose (Technical Dutch Open Source Event) in Eindhoven, The Netherlands on Nov 5-6, 2011 :
    • Nov 5 @ 11:00 : Caching and Tuning fun for high scalability – the talk I presented at phpBenelux, Dyncon and FrOSCon, this time in a condensed 50 minute version – this talk discusses the techniques you can use to keep your site running when it goes from 5 to 5 million visitors/day
    • Nov 6 @ 12:00 : Beyond the code : it’s not (just) about the code ! – a brand-new talk that’s aimed at 80% of developers. Short summary : “Most PHP developers focus on writing code. But creating Web applications is about much more than just wrting PHP. Take a step outside the PHP cocoon and into the big PHP ecosphere to find out how small code changes can make a world of difference on servers and network. This talk is an eye-opener for developers who spend over 80% of their time coding, debugging and testing.”
  • PHP Tour in Lille, France on Nov 24-25, 2011 : Caching and Tuning fun for high scalability – the same talk as on T-Dose, in a condensed version

Working on…
In the next few weeks, expect a few new posts about :

  • A cool new IPv6 project we’ll launch soon
  • Some Zend Framework 2 news and stuff
  • More news on the Nginx module we’re building. At Zendcon, there were 3 large PHP hosters who were interested in testing the solution, so you can expect more posts on that.