Business Software

An overview of the changes in PHP 8.3

2023-11-25T21:55:00.000-08:00

1. PHP 8.3 Release Overview:

PHP 8.3 has reached feature freeze, with beta releases already available, and is scheduled for general availability on November 23, 2023.

The release focuses on cleaning up the language and aligning features with the language's evolution in recent years.

2. New Features in PHP 8.3:

Typed Class Constants: Constants in PHP 8.3 can now declare their type explicitly, impacting interfaces, abstract classes, and child classes.

Dynamic class constant and Enum member fetch support: Allows accessing class constants and Enum members dynamically.

json_validate() function: A new function for efficiently validating JSON strings.

Random extension additions: Enhancements to the "Random" extension for generating random bytes.

Addition of mb_str_pad(): A new function similar to str_pad() but works with multibyte strings.

3. Addition of #[\Override] attribute:

Developers can use this attribute to indicate that a method intends to override a parent method. It helps prevent mistakes during code upgrades.

4. Changes and Deprecations in PHP 8.3:

Various changes and deprecations are introduced, including improvements to unserialize(), class_alias support for aliasing PHP builtins, and more.

5. Considerations When Upgrading or Migrating:

Due to the number of deprecations and changes, PHP teams are advised to closely inspect their codebase when planning the migration to PHP 8.3.

The blog suggests checking the official PHP documentation for migration guidance, which becomes available closer to the release date.

6. Final Thoughts:

While the new features may not be a significant factor for migration, PHP 8.3 offers quality of life improvements, and upgrading ensures three years of community support.

Developers are encouraged to start investigating changes that might impact their applications and review the official PHP documentation upon release.

Laravel Tutorial: Step by Step Guide to Building Your First Laravel Application

2017-09-19T00:41:00.000-07:00

Since its initial release in 2011, Laravel has experienced exponential growth. In 2015, it became the most starred PHP framework on GitHub and rose to the go-to framework for people all over the world.
Laravel focuses on you, the end user, first which means its focus is on simplicity, clarity, and getting work done. People and companies are using it to build everything from simple hobby projects all the way to Fortune 500 companies.
My goal with this Laravel tutorial to create a guide for those just learning the framework. This guide will take you from the very beginning of an idea into a real deployable application.
This look at Laravel will not be exhaustive, covering every detail of the framework, and it does expect a few prerequisites. Here is what you will need to follow along:

A local PHP environment (Valet, Homestead, Vagrant, MAMP, etc.).
A database. I’ll be using MySQL.
PHPUnit installed
Node installed

Note: For the local PHP environment I am using a Mac and like to use Valet because it automatically sets up everything. If you are on Windows, you should consider Homestead or some flavor of a virtual machine.
I am attempting to go through the process of creating a new application just as I would in a real world environment. In fact, the code and idea are taken from a project I built.

Planning

Every project has to start from somewhere, either assigned to you by your work or just an idea in your head. No matter where it originates, thoroughly planning out all the features before you start coding is paramount in completing a project.
How you plan is dependent on how your mind works. As a visual person, I like to plan on paper, drawing out the way I picture the screens looking and then working backward into how I’d code it out. Others prefer to write a project plan in a text file, wiki, or some mind mapping tool. It doesn’t matter how you plan, just that you do it.
For this guide, we are going to be building a link directory. Here is a list of basic goals for this links app:

Display a simple list of links.
Create a form where people can submit new links.
Validate the form
Insert the data into the database.

Let’s get started building all this out.

The First Steps

With a simple plan of attack outlined, it’s time to get a brand new empty project up and running. I like to put all my projects in a ~/Sites directory, and these instructions will use that location. I’ve already “parked” this directory in Valet, so any folders will automatically be mapped to “foldername.dev” in the browser.
Open your terminal application and switch into this directory.

cd ~/Sites

Next, install Laravel’s command line installer:

composer global require "laravel/installer"

Once that finishes you can create the project by running:

laravel new links

This will create a new directory named “links” and install an empty Laravel project. Visiting “links.dev” in the browser now shows the default Laravel welcome page:

Now scaffold out the authentication system by running:

php artisan make:auth

Even though this tutorial will not dive into authentication by running this command, it will modify our views and routes. So by doing it early, we don’t have to worry about it messing with any of our code.
With the basics setup and working it’s time to start doing some coding.

Building a List of Links

If you start thinking about the whole finished project, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The best way to fight this is to break everything down into small tasks. So, let’s start with showing a list of links.
Even though showing a list of links sounds like a small task it still requires a database, a database table, data in the table, a database query, and a view file.
Creating a migration will be the first step, and the Laravel Artisan command line tool can help us create that.

php artisan make:migration create_links_table --create=links

Now, open the file this command created. It will be located at database/migrations/{{datetime}}_create_links_table.php
Inside the up method add our new columns:

Schema::create('links', function (Blueprint $table) {
      $table->increments('id');
      $table->string('title');
      $table->string('url’)->unique();
      $table->text('description');
      $table->timestamps();
});

Save the file and run the migration:

php artisan migrate

Now we need to enter some data and Laravel provides two features that help with this. The first is database seeds and model factories. But before we can use those we will need a model which can be generated like this:

php artisan make:model Link

Open the ModelFactory.php file and let’s add one for the links table:

$factory->define(App\Link::class, function (Faker\Generator $faker) {
    return [
        'title' => $faker->name,
        'url' => $faker->url,
        'description' => $faker->paragraph,
    ];
});

Next, create the link seeder, so we can easily add demo data to the table:

php artisan make:seeder LinksTableSeeder

Open the LinksTableSeeder.php file that was just created, and in the run method we will utilize the links model factory we created above:

public function run()
{
    factory(App\Link::class, 10)->create();
}

Open the DatabaseSeeder.php and add this to the run method:

$this->call(LinksTableSeeder::class);

You can now run the migrations and seeds to add data to the table automatically:

php artisan migrate --seed

Routing and Views

To build out a view showing the list of links first open the routes/web.php file and you should see the default route below:

Route::get('/', function () {
    return view('welcome');
});

Laravel provides us two options at this point. We can either add our code additions directly to the route closure, where the “return view..” is, or we can move the code to a controller. For simplicity let’s add our needed code to fetch the links directory in the closure.

Route::get('/', function () {
    $links = \App\Link::all();
    return view('welcome', ['links' => $links]);
});

Next, edit the welcome.blade.php file and add a simple foreach to show all the links:

@foreach ($links as $link)
{{ $link->title }}
@endforeach

If you refresh your browser, you should now see the list of all the links added. With that all set, let’s move to submitting links.

Submitting Links

The next major feature is the ability for others to submit links into the app. This will require three fields: title, URL, and a description.
I am a visual person and before planning out features that will require HTML I like to draw them out so I can get an idea of what I’m building in my head. Here is a simple drawing of this form:

Since we’ve added all the core structure, model factory, migration, and model, in the last section, we can reap the benefits by reusing all those for this section.
First, create a new route in the routes/web.php file:

Route::get('/submit', function () {
    return view('submit');
});

We will also need this view file so we can go ahead and create it at resources/views/submit.blade.php and add the following boilerplate bootstrap code:

@extends('layouts.app')
@section('content')
    
class

="container"> <div class="row"> <h1>Submit a link</h1> <form action="/submit" method="post"> {!! csrf_field() !!} <div class="form-group"> <label for="title">Title</label> <input type="text" class="form-control" id="title" name="title" placeholder="Title"> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label for="url">Url</label> <input type="text" class="form-control" id="url" name="url" placeholder="URL"> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label for="description">Description</label> <textarea class="form-control" id="description" name="description" placeholder="description"></textarea> </div> <button type="submit" class="btn btn-default">Submit</button> </form> </div> </div> @endsection Now, let’s create a route to handle the POST data and do our validation. Let’s create that route and add our validation rules in:

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

Route::post('/submit', function(Request $request) {
    $validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
        'title' => 'required|max:255',
        'url' => 'required|max:255',
        'description' => 'required|max:255',
    ]);
    if ($validator->fails()) {
        return back()
            ->withInput()
            ->withErrors($validator);
    }
    $link = new \App\Link;
    $link->title = $request->title;
    $link->url = $request->url;
    $link->description = $request->description;
    $link->save();
    return redirect('/');
});

This route is a little more complicated than the others. First, we are injecting the Illuminate\Http\Request which will hold all of the POST data. Then, we create a new Validator instance with our rules. If this validation fails, it returns the user back with the original input data and with the validator errors.
Finally, if everything passed validation, we use the “App::Link” model to add the data.

Conclusion

Congratulations on making it through the tutorial. This guide was designed to get you started on building your app, and you can use this as a building block to you gain the skills you need to build your application. I know this covers a lot of features and can be overwhelming if you are not familiar with the framework.
I hope this introduction to Laravel shows you why so many people are excited about the framework.
Join the weekly newsletter and check out the Laravel tutorials section of the site to go deeper and learn even more about the framework.

Install Elastix from USB Step by Step

2017-03-29T11:01:00.001-07:00

Install Elastix from USB Step by Step

Elastix is one of the best Open Source Unified Communications Servers available today, it is very easy to install but the installer is designed to be run from CDROM and we can make the installation in several devices that don´t have an optical drive. This document will guide you to modify the installer so you can install entirely from an USB Flash drive.

Warning:
The Server Security is a very important and serious aspect in a VoIP server, this guide will not cover that but there is plenty of information on that topic in the Internet. If you are looking for a professional installation contact me and I'll be glad to help you for a
very reasonable price.

JQuery autocomplete tutorial with PHP and MySQL

2017-03-22T04:35:00.001-07:00

My goal was to make an autocomplete on a site that passed also another value as the selected to the new page.

I have a MySQL database with a table called Customer with several fields but the important ones are :

`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`firstName` varchar(50) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`lastName` varchar(50) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`customerCode` varchar(6) NOT NULL DEFAULT ''

`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,

`firstName` varchar(50) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',

`lastName` varchar(50) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',

`customerCode` varchar(6) NOT NULL DEFAULT ''

For the HTML I used a simple inputfield (which can be in a form) :

<form action="" method="post">
    <input type="text" placeholder="Name" id="customerAutocomplte" class="ui-autocomplete-input" autocomplete="off">
</form>

="text" placeholder="Name" id="customerAutocomplte" class="ui-autocomplete-input" autocomplete="off" >

Using jQuery autocomplete one combines the autocomplete to the inputfield so at the page is a piece of Javascript.
For this I inserted the jQuery scripts that you can find here.

GeneralSQL: TempDB running out of space

2017-01-27T03:24:00.001-08:00

GeneralSQL: TempDB running out of space: First of all need to check, if any stored procedure (or nested) are running in Transaction. If transaction is very long means there are lot...

SmartTutorials - php mysql jquery javascript ajax html5 css3 CAKEPHP tutorial: Export MySQL SELECT Query into CSV File

2017-01-27T03:21:00.001-08:00

SmartTutorials - php mysql jquery javascript ajax html5 css3 CAKEPHP tutorial: Export MySQL SELECT Query into CSV File: Sometimes we need to export MySQL SELECT query results into CSV format for testing or some other purpose. Here we are going to see how to o...

Monty says: In search of a BSD/LGPL/Apache licensed client lib...

2017-01-27T03:20:00.001-08:00

Monty says: In search of a BSD/LGPL/Apache licensed client lib...: We have received many requests for a client library for MariaDB (and MySQL) under a license other than the GPL, and decided that it's no...

mySQL DBA, Architecture, Dev, Scale, HA, Code : Building a realtime Feed with RabbitMQ Node.js AMQ...

2017-01-27T03:18:00.003-08:00

mySQL DBA, Architecture, Dev, Scale, HA, Code : Building a realtime Feed with RabbitMQ Node.js AMQ...: Being a backend programmer, I rarely code in JavaScript. Today I code a lot of cross browser JavaScript with the fantastic lib jquery and it...

mySQL DBA, Architecture, Dev, Scale, HA, Code : Federating THE friends table in a Sharded mySQL en...

2017-01-27T03:18:00.001-08:00

mySQL DBA, Architecture, Dev, Scale, HA, Code : Federating THE friends table in a Sharded mySQL en...: A friends table is the cornerstone of social applications. Its purpose is to define relationships and help answer the question what are my ...

mySQL DBA, Architecture, Dev, Scale, HA, Code : INNODB Tablespace Copy in Go Lang

2017-01-27T03:17:00.001-08:00

mySQL DBA, Architecture, Dev, Scale, HA, Code : INNODB Tablespace Copy in Go Lang: I just uploaded a quick tool that I think you will find useful if you need to consolidate, expand innodb databases if tablespaces are in use...

Open Source For Geeks: Introduction to crontab - scheduling tasks in Linu...

2017-01-27T03:11:00.001-08:00

Open Source For Geeks: Introduction to crontab - scheduling tasks in Linu...: Background Cron is a daemon that runs in background and helps executing commands or set of commands at a predefined time. You can use to...

Open Source Photogrammetry: openMVG a C++ open source Multiple View Geometry l...

2017-01-27T03:09:00.001-08:00

Open Source Photogrammetry: openMVG a C++ open source Multiple View Geometry l...: : "open Multiple View Geometry" is a library for computer-vision scientists and especially targeted to the Multiple View Geometr...

Open Source GIS Blog: Video: Open GIS Data Portals

2017-01-27T03:02:00.001-08:00

Open Source GIS Blog: Video: Open GIS Data Portals: Open GIS data portals are becoming more common, and can contain lots of geospatial data, but is it a case of too much of a good thing? ...

Open Source Software & Usability: LibreOffice updating its user interface

2017-01-27T03:01:00.001-08:00

Open Source Software & Usability: LibreOffice updating its user interface: I saw a recent blog post from LibreOffice about an upcoming change to their user interface. They call it the MUFFIN, a new "tasty"...

How to Install and Configure pfSense 2.1.5 (Firewall/Router)

2015-10-30T02:59:00.001-07:00

How to Install and Configure pfSense 2.1.5 (Firewall/Router)

pfSense is an open source network firewall/router software distribution which is based on the FreeBSD operating system. pfSense software is used to make dedicated firewall router for a network and it is considered for its reliability and offers many features which mostly found in commercial firewalls. Pfsense can be included with many third party free software packages for additional functionality.

As we are using many popular firewall’s in industry level such as Cisco ASA, Juniper, Check Point, Cisco PIX, Sonicwall, Netgear, Watchguard etc.. We can use the pfsense in free of cost with rich web interface to configure all our network components. pfsense supports traffic shapper, virtual ip, Load balancer and much more. It has several Diagnostics tool by default.

Zimbra and Samba Integration Howto

2010-06-08T03:56:00.000-07:00

Zimbra and Samba Integration Howto

This howto explains how to implement the zimbra collaboration suite that offers a spam and virus free email solution and how to integrate it with a samba domain so as to manage the domain using zimbra, In lay man terms, every user with an email account could use his/her username to login to any computer within that domain and have access to his/her files that are stored centrally. Easing the administration of such a domain.