Quick instructions for setting up name-based virtual webhosting on your local OS X box.

Attention, this post is in German language.

Nach meiner Anreise gestern startete heute Morgen um 9:30 die PHP World, im Rahmen des Internet World Kongress am Rande der Systems. Nach der soeben beendeten Keynote von Zeev Suraski erwarten uns nun weitere interessante Vorträge rund um PHP:

• Suchmaschinenoptimierung trotz/mit PHP
• Web Services und PHP - ein Widerspruch?!
• PHP für High-End-Anwendungen
• (Un)sichere PHP-Seiten
• Datenbank-Abstraktionslayer in PHP

Gehalten werden diese natürlich von bekannten Persönlichkeiten der PHP Community, wie Stephan Schmidt und Lukas Smith. Nicht zu vergessen, mein eigener Vortrag "PEAR von A-Z", welcher der vorletzte an diesem Tag sein wird. In diesem Sinne nur ein kurzer Überblick über den Kongress und die Empfehlung an alle "Nicht-Teilnehmer" in diesem Jahr, dieses Event im nächsten Jahr nicht auszulassen.

Together with other partners Florian Müller of MySQL is leading a new initiative against software patents . Visit the site and read why software patents are a bad idea and how you can help . The site is also available in other languages: German , Spanish , French , Dutch and more.

Or, "how __call() bit me in the ass" -- and an apology.

For those who were still trying to download my RSS feed from this URL:

http://www.coggeshall.org/rss.php

I finally noticed you and have setup a redirect to the proper location:

http://blog.coggeshall.org/rss.php

Please update your readers if you are still pointing to the new locations. I'll keep the redirect in place but the new URL is where all the action is at. Thanks!

So, while this vim posting is nice, it clearly hasn't caused me to blog more. Since I can't think of much interesting to posit about at the moment, I'd like to take the easy way out and have you generate some content! What do you think PHP is missing in PHP5? The question is intentionally open-ended (i.e. missing features, process, extensions, etc.). Don't feel the need to be gentle.

[update - comments re-enabled. DOH!]

I'm published! :-) My article about YaWiki is in the new issue of  International PHP Magazine (released today). Everybody go out and buy a copy.

Some month ago I implemented a PHP script [1] to handle images that I integrated into the "Manage" respectively "Edit" menu in Wordpress. The script allows images located in a certain directory to be rotated, resized and cropped. The cropping is based on a library provided by Walter Zorn, whom I mentioned earlier this year already. A PHP script building a cropping interface around that library can be found at amunts.com [3]. The script discussed here is an updated version (added cropping) of what I posted in March [4]. Use it or leave it! ;-)

[1] http://www.circle.ch/php/files/edit-images.phps
[2] http://www.walterzorn.com/dragdrop/dragdrop_e.htm
[3] http://php.amnuts.com/index.php?do=view&id=12
[4] http://www.circle.ch/blog/p1371.html

So recently I made time to maintain what was becoming a large digital mess inside of my computer at home. Although as one might expect my Redhat 8 installation was in perfect condition and operating just fine, the Windows XP installation I had for a dual-boot was all but completely shot. Since I installed Windows after Linux, and I figured it was time for a clean sweep anyway I just went ahead and nuked the entire computer (minus archive partitions) and re-installed fresh.

After installing Windows 2000 I did two things:

1) Downloaded Firefox to replace Internet Explorer

2) Went straight to Windows Update to fix all of the security holes they've found so far in the operating system.

One of the upgrades that Microsoft provides is of course for the vast quantity of security holes in their Internet Explorer browser (Service Pack 1). Although the download and installation went smoothly, upon reboot Windows 2000 was completely unstable. First off, I couldn't even get the system to boot without blue-screening about some sort of kernel-level uncaught exception, then once I got it to finally boot the scripting engine which powers so much of Windows was shot to the point where I could barely get IE to uninstall.

Needless to say, this is a perfect example of how an architecture which attempts to be everything to everyone is a really bad idea. That service pack should have never crashed the entire computer. However, it's a likely scenario when you tie critical system components like the kernel directly into things like a web browser as our good friends at Microsoft did when they attempted to side-step their legal troubles. Regardless of whatever stupid reason possessed them to do it, when upgrading your browser can take down your kernel there is an obvious and significant flaw in the architecture -- one that once again reaffirms my loyality to alternatives.

My advice? Do what almost 20% of all internet users are doing now and go download Mozilla firefox. I promise you installing it will never bring down your kernel, isn't prone to system-threatening security holes, and best of all just works.

Finally, I am close to finished with this code. Its only been 5 months since I first teased you with my work on automating SOAP web services.

Since then, a lot of code has been re-done, re-worked, deleted and generally slapped about.

All of my web services related classes are now as follows:

Crtx_SOAP_Server

Can be used with Crtx_SOAP_AutoDiscover to automatically expose code as a SOAP server

Crtx_SOAP_AutoDiscover

Takes any PHP code and parses it into a Crtx_XML_WSDL object

Crtx_XML_WSDL

A WSDL toolkit, for easily generating WSDL yourself

Crtx_XML_WSDL_Parser

Parses WSDL XML files and outputs a Crtx_XML_WSDL_Parser_Result object

Crtx_XML_WSDL_Parser_Result

A very basic class designed to hold the result of Crtx_XML_WSDL_Parser

Crtx_XML_WSDL_CodeGenerator

Takes a WSDL XML file and outputs a PHP code skeleton

As you can see, I've been busy, and I'm nearing a release.

The only thing really stopping a release, is I have still yet to decide on how to handle warnings/notices. Fatal errors are all pure exceptions now however.

The neatest thing about this code, is when you automatically expose some PHP code, it will do 1 of 3 things when called:

1. When called in a browser, it will display basic documentation for the server
2. When called with the GET param 'wsdl' (i.e. example.com/myserver.php?wsdl) it will return the WSDL XML - similar to .NET I believe
3. When called with a SOAP Client its the actual SOAP Server

For more information on Cerebral Cortex in general, you can view the Cerebral Cortex Wiki.

- Davey