If you have a .htaccess file in your web folders, Apache will have to parse the directives in this file and see if there are any .htaccess files in the parent folder. All this happens before your html or php file is hit by Apache. You can read more about the overheads of .htaccess in  this article. This article .htaccess vs httpd.conf by Dawid Golunski shows that he saw apache served about 6.6% less requests/second when .htaccess was used.

A quick Google search landed me on Paul Reinheimer’s blog where he’s created a php script just for this purpose. His htaccess to httpd.conf script parses all the htaccess files from the current folder and all sub-folders and creates a configuration file with the directives for you to place in your Apache’s configuration file.

Just download his script from this link, and place it in your web-root directory which you want to generate the Apache configuration file and run the following command from the command prompt:

php htaccess.php >~/site.conf

After you run that command, you should have a file site.conf in your home folder. You can open this file to get all the directives for you to place in the Apache configuration file. Once you’ve placed this in the apache configuration file, you’ll need to restart Apache for the changes to take effect. Before you restart, make sure you remove your .htaccess file from your web folders.

When I converted a Wordpress’ .htaccess file using this script, here’s the output I got

<directory var="" www="" blog="">
	<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">
	RewriteEngine On
	RewriteBase /
	RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
	RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
	RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
	</ifmodule>
</directory>

I just put this into the apache2.conf and restarted it, removed the .htaccess from the webroot in /var/www/blog and all the rules worked as they should. As with any script, if you have more complex directives in your .htaccess, test your sites thoroughly before pushing your changes into the production server.

The only (minor) disadvantage I found with this method is that the apache server has to be restarted to make changes to your rule-sets you put in the configuration files. It seems apache just has to be reloaded and doesn’t have to be completely restarted to get the changes to the configuration to take effect (thanks Keleo for the tip). Also this conversion will not be possible if your site is running on a shared webhost where you don’t have access to the apache configuration files.

Links:
Paul Reinheimer’s Article .htaccess to httpd.conf
Paul’s htaccess.php Script
htaccess vs httpdconf – Benchmarks

We got the final dates for the Bangalore PHP user’s meet. The Meet up’s happening on the last Saturday of this month – the 31st of October. We’ve already got more than 30 PHP’ers who have RSVP’ed that they’ll be attending this meet. We may be having a few people come in from Chennai also who want to make it to the event.

If you’re interested in joining us on the 31st, head over to http://www.meetup.com/Bangalore-PHP-Users/calendar/11578824/, signup and RSVP ‘yes’ to the event.

We have a proposed list of talks over at this page. If you’re interested in giving a talk at the event, let me know or simply add it to that list. We’ll finalize the talks as we get closer to the event. Remember that the PHP meetups are not just about the talks, it’ll be a great place for you to meet others in the same field of work. Get to know how others are using PHP and related technologies and discuss issues you’re facing with others how may be able to help.

This month, Microsoft has providing us the venue for us to meet, and so we’re meeting at their office which is just off the Intermediate Ring Road. Hope you see you at this month’s meet.

Links:
Bangalore PHP Users Oct Meetup Calendar
Proposed list of talks for the event

In order to kick start this effort, I’ve started a meetup community to help get things organized. If you’re interested in the meet up this month or the future, please join the group at : http://www.meetup.com/Bangalore-PHP-Users/

For this month’s meet, we’re in the process of choosing a venue for the event. For this we would like to get an approximate count of people who’d be interested in joining us. Once you’ve joined our Meetup group, head over to the poll here and let us know if you can join us this month: http://www.meetup.com/Bangalore-PHP-Users/polls/207590/

We’re tentatively planning the meet in the last week of October. We’ll have the final dates once we close on the venue. Our community members are already hard at work coming up with talks for the event. You can take a look at the proposed list of talks over at this page. If you also have ideas for talks at the event, please feel free to add your talk to this list.

See you there at the meetup. I’ll keep you all updated about this event on twitter and the Meetup group. So stay tuned.

Zend has launched the Simple Cloud project which allows PHP developers to write Cloud based apps without having to bother about the different cloud based solutions available. This works like an abstraction layer for various cloud solutions like Amazon, Windows Azure, Rackspace Cloud Hosting and a few more.

Initially this project aims at providing standard cross-cloud simple APIs for

• File storage- including Windows Azure blobs, Rackspace Cloud Files, Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network and Amazon S3
• Document Storage- including Windows Azure tables and Amazon SimpleDB
• Simple Queues- including Amazon SQS and Windows Azure queues

From Zend’s press release, “Zend Cloud will also provide adapters for local services to make offline coding and testing against cloud services as easy as connected development.”

These APIs will be appearing soon on the Zend Framework as the Zend Cloud component. They will provide the basic functionality across the various cloud hosting services, but if you do need vendor specific functionality in your code, Zend Framework will provide vendor-specific libraries as well. They’ve already got Nirvanix, Amazon EC2, S3 and SQS covered. Microsoft’s proposed the WindowsAzure services for Zend Framework. IBM and Rackspace are also working with Zend to get their services covered. With these integrations in motion, they estimate that ZendCloud adapter with these features will be available in the Zend Framework by end of Q4.

An initial Simple Cloud API proposal and reference implementation is available now for community review and participation at http://www.simplecloud.org.

Links:

Zend Press Release – Zend Teams with IBM, Microsoft, Rackspace and Other Cloud Leaders on Open Source Initiative to Drive Cloud Application Development
MSDN Interoperability Blog – Microsoft, Zend and others announce Simple API for Cloud Application Services

A few weeks back I had attended the Virtual Tech Days events, specifically the Interop sessions. I was quite interested in seeing what Microsoft had to offer for PHP developers. Going through the oveview of the programs, they seem to have come up with quite a few solutions for PHP developers. One of the important integrations for PHP is the ability to run PHP directly from IIS, as a FastCGI app, without having to install Apache in Windows.

To make this task of installing PHP under IIS as easy as possible, Microsoft has provided Microsoft Web Platform Installer, which helps you install PHP and other server modules required to create your Web Platform. To get started all you have to do is to head over to http://php.iis.net/ and click on the install blue PHP button there. That launches the Microsoft Web Platform Installer interface which installs PHP along with the required dependencies required. If you’re on Windows XP, you’ll need Service Pack 2 more above and .NET framework 2 on your PC. I was pleasantly surprised with the ease of setting it up. Even though PHP works under IIS 6.0, it’s recommended that you run PHP under IIS 7.0 since some of the additional modules you’ll need (like the URL rewriting) are available on IIS 7.0.

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer installer works on Windows XP, Vista and Windows Server 2003 and 2008. Apart from installing the server components on your system, this installer also gives you quick installation of popular web applications like Wordpress, Moodle LMS and Acquia Drupal to get you kickstarted in creating solutions in PHP on Windows. To learn more about it, check out – http://www.microsoft.com/web/Downloads/platform.aspx

At this point most LAMP developers would be asking the question – But how will my existing application port over to the new platfom? Microsoft does provide a few additional modules which priovide the same functionality on IIS:

Rewriting the URL:

If you are looking for a functionality which is similar to Apache’s mod_rewrite, which allows you to create custom URL, here’s the answer to your problem. URL Rewriter for IIS 7.0 helps you create such custom URLs through rules on IIS. You can install URL Rewriter for IIS using Microsoft Web Platform Installer as well. For more information and links to documentations on this module head over to: http://www.iis.net/extensions/URLRewrite.You can also import your existing Apache’s rewrite rules into IIS using the URL Rewriter. Here’s an artice which shows you how: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/470/importing-apache-modrewrite-rules/

.htaccess rules in IIS?

Now how do you get all your .htaccess rules to work on IIS? To do this you’ll have to translate the rules which you created in .htaccess to IIS 7.0’s web.config settings. The web.config in IIS 7.0 uses an xml style syntax to define rules so you will have to translate you current .htaccess rules into this syntax. Here’s an article which helps you learn more on this process with examples to illustrate the transformations between the two formats- http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/557/translating-htaccess-content-to-iis-webconfig/

PHP Extensions in Windows

Now to get those PHP extensions which you use and love working on Windows. All PECL extensions for PHP (pecl.php.net) should work on Windows if you compile them. If you are looking for pre-compiled versions of these extensions for Windows, pecl4win.com used to host them earlier, but that seems to be down as of now. You can get some of the (unofficially) compiled PHP exenstions at: http://downloads.php.net/pierre/

To install an PHP extension, you’ll need to download the dll file for the extension. Then find the path to your extension directory in your php.ini. The path to the extensions should come in the line starting with extension_dir. If this is not set in your php.ini, you can create a new entry by adding this line in your php.ini –

extension_dir = c:/php/extensions/

Now you can copy the PHP extension dll’s you downloaded to this folder. To enable the extension you have to add the a line in php.ini in the following format: extension = abcde.dll, where abcde.dll is the file name of the dll you downloaded to the PHP extension directory. Restart your webserver and check in your phpinfo() to see if your extension has been loaded.

Improve your PHP Application’s Performance on IIS:

Once you’ve got your application working on IIS, here’s how to supercharge it. To boost the performance of PHP on your installation, you should check out the Windows Cache Extension for PHP. One of the ways this extension helps your improve the performance of your PHP application is by keeping the complied PHP bytecodes in memory for faster access and resuing this for subsequent accesses to the same scripts. Caching the opcodes in memory also helps reduce i/o overheads required to fetch the php scripts when they are accessed. To learn more about Windows Cache Extension for PHP and the link to the Microsoft Web Platform Installer installer for this module head over to : http://www.iis.net/extensions/WinCacheForPHP

All these tools and modules does ease the work of developers who need to deploy their applicatons in Windows without much effort. Overall, Microsoft has come a long way in getting PHP applications working on the Windows platform.

One you’ve got PHP working in Windows, you can start using the other Microsoft technologies like Silverlight for PHP and the PHP SDK for Azure. More on these topics in the upcoming series.

Image Credits:
Lighthouse Image from:http://www.flickr.com/photos/derohlsen/ Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Some of the practices include in the article are “I don’t need no documentation” syndrome and “My code is the way to go” when other better alternates are out there. Why don’t you head out and read the full article there?

PHP Worst Practices

You can download Zend Framework 1.9.1 at: http://framework.zend.com/download/latest

Here’s a chance for you all to win a free license for Gravity, a native S60 Twitter client with a really slick interface. MyNokiaWorld is holding a contest to giveaway 4 licenses to Gravity. All you have to do is to tweet or blog about the contest or subscribe to their RSS feed to enter the contest. Easy as that. You can even just follow them on twitter to enter.

For more information on this contest and how to enter, check out the site at: http://bit.ly/gkGp4

The good thing about PHP 6 is that by default all strings are treated as Unicode characters, unlike the earlier versions where a lot of the default functions in PHP used to break up unicode characters and essentially junked the data. UTF-8 is now  the default encoding for many of the PHP 6 functions, so you don’t have to worry about your unicode data getting junked. In PHP 6 you have to watch out when you’re handling binary data, you’ll have to explicitly typecast your binary data or risk getting it junked because PHP 6 thinks of it as unicode

$binStr = (binary)$rawdata;

You can also declare the encoding of your PHP script by the following command:

Even your OO code where you were following the pre PHP 5.3 object models will not work here, since object model compatibility is removed. So your classes should be like this:

 class newClass {
   private $variable;
   public function myMethod {
    }
 }

instead of the old notation in 4.3 which used to look like this:

 class newClass {
   var $variable;
    function myMethod {
    }
 }

Read more on this topic at Linux Magazine: Get Ready for PHP 6

Image Credits: Narno via Flickr

• Locale — deals with breaking locale data into components, assembling a locale string from components and displaying the names of countries, languages etc in a specified locale.
• Collator — a means of comparing and sorting strings according to local rules.
• Number formatter — allows you to format numbers in a variety of ways, and to parse textual representations of numbers.
• Date formatter — allows you to format dates and to parse textual representations of dates.
• Message formatter — allows you to compose messages from parameterized strings while formatting the data inside according to local rules and allowing choices dependent on the actual parameter value.
• Normalizer — a means of bringing a Unicode string to a standard, unambiguous representation.
• Grapheme module – handles parsing a string into a set of graphemes.
• IDN – handles internationalized domain names format

Read Stas’ article to learn how to use the new features this extension provides to make your website Internationalization ready.

If you’re using PHP5.2, you’re in luck since there is a PECL package which should run on PHP 5.2.4 and newer over at: http://pecl.php.net/package/intl

Link: http://devzone.zend.com/article/4799-Internationalization-in-PHP-5.3

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve always wanted to know how the various opensource search engines performed when running head to head with each other. I’ve personally not had the time nor patience to setup such a benchmark. Luckily Vik Singh has done just that and blogged the results of the benchmark.

He’s benchmarked the latest versions of Lucene, sqlite, Xapian, zettair and sphinx while indexing twitter messages (968,937 tweets to be exact) and Medical data sets. I was not too surprised when Lucene came up as a winner from these benchmarks

Read the Blog post by Vik to get the details of the benchmarks.

All you have to do to output data into an Excel file is to create an associative array with the data to be exported. For example if you wanted an excel sheet in this format:

all you need to do is to create an array like this:

$output = array(
    array("Serial" => "1", "Item" => "Cables", "Stock" => "100", "Cost per unit" => "$2" ),
    array("Serial" => "2", "Item" => "Phones", "Stock" => "40", "Cost per unit" => "$23" ),
    array("Serial" => "3", "Item" => "Keypads", "Stock" => "5", "Cost per unit" => "$4" ),
    array("Serial" => "4", "Item" => "Helmets", "Stock" => "54", "Cost per unit" => "$42" ),
);

Now to output this into an Excel file, all you need to do is to use the excel.php from Ignatius’s script and open a xlsfile stream to output the data. Here’s a script which creates the Excel file from the array above and allows the user to download the file to their system:

require "excel.php";
//open Excel Stream to output
$export_file = "xlsfile://tmp/example.xls";
 
$fp = fopen($export_file, "wb");
$output = array(
    array("Serial" => "1", "Item" => "Cables", "Stock" => "100", "Cost per unit" => "$2" ),
    array("Serial" => "2", "Item" => "Phones", "Stock" => "40", "Cost per unit" => "$23" ),
    array("Serial" => "3", "Item" => "Keypads", "Stock" => "5", "Cost per unit" => "$4" ),
    array("Serial" => "4", "Item" => "Helmets", "Stock" => "54", "Cost per unit" => "$42" ),
);
//write the array to Excel
fwrite($fp, serialize($output));
fclose($fp);
//set headers to download Excel sheet
header ("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate");
header ("Pragma: no-cache");
header ("Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel");
header ("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"" . basename($export_file) . "\"" );
 
readfile($export_file);

This script allows you to quickly export any data which you can form into an array quickly into an Excel sheet. If you’re looking for an Excel export with advanced features like formatting the cells in the sheet, adding colors or the likes of those, you’re out of luck with this script.

You can get this script and more information about it from the PHP Classes site:
http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/1919.html

You can get the deb files for this plugin over at GetDeb.net:
http://www.getdeb.net/app/GIMP+%22Save+for+Web%22+plugin

Just download the deb file for your version of Ubuntu and double click the deb file once downloaded to start the Package Installer.

What I liked about the design was the 30 degree tilt of the screen when the QWERTY keypad slides open. This allows the user to interact with the keyboard and the touch-screen at the same time. The tilt also allows the user to hold the phone with just the index finger – pretty comfortable – unlike the slide out of the E75.

One snippet which kind of surprised me in the presentation is that Axel mentioned that there  more than 1 billion users of Nokia phones. This particular model is targeted to users who are looking at having a personal experience with their mobiles – targeted towards people who share photos, videos, microblog, are active on social network and need a phone which doubles up as a personal computer on the go. During the Q&A session, one of the bloggers did ask about the high price of this model (expected to be around Rs. 35,000 during the launch). Axel answered that this mobile is meant for people who are looking a niche phone which provides the full online and social experience  the N97 provides.

After the presentations, I got to play around with the N97 for sometime – pics of the phone are at the end of this post.

Some of the points which caught my attention about the N97 are:

• A whopping 32GB of internal memory – which can be expanded to a maximum of 48GB. This is great for carrying around your media and there’s no need of another media player
• 16:9 screen ratio – perfect for viewing widescreen movies on the go – this unit’s got a TV out so you can project the movies on your phone on the big screen.
• A FM transmitter – to listen to your music on the car radio without the need of extra cables to hook it on.
• Home Screen Widgets – this allows you to have a pieces of the Internet on your home screen.
• The QWERTY keyboard had a good feel to it. Even though the keys on the N97 are smaller than the E75’s, they layout seems to just feel better laid out on the N97.
• The touchscreen also seems to perform better than the 5800’s.
• The phone comes bundled with the Facebook application, apart from other Social Media application like Hi5 and Qik. So you don’t have to hunt for these apps once you get your phone.
• The tilt of the screen when the keypad is open is a very useful feature allowing the user to place the phone on a table while typing out messages and emails, taking calls or surfing the web.

Thanks to Nokia India and Songita B. Verma & team for getting this event organized! It was great having to hear direct from the Design Team on the rationale behind the various features which are packed in the N-Series phones.

Learn more about the Nokia N97:
The Nokia N97 Datasheet
Nokia NSeries Background
Nokia N97’s product page

Some of the Pictures from the Event:

The N97 Presentation

Home Screen Widgets

Axel Meyer during his presentation

Q&A Session

First look at the N97

Trying out the Handwriting Recognition

30 Degrees Tilt of the Screen when the keypad's open

More pictures from the event are available on Flickr.

Google has brought out their Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 Phones. You can get the application by visiting m.google.com on your mobile browser. This application provides a shell for Google applications and services. When you start the app, you get a search screen, and the app detects your location to give you area specific suggestions.

As you start typing in a search term, you get search suggestions. Performing  a search opens up the mobile browser to continue browsing. The app provides a shortcut key to quickly jump to Google search from the Home screen on your mobile. This cuts down the number of keystrokes required to startup a Google search.

Apart from the quick access to Google Search and mobile apps, this app provides little else for Indian users, as the suggestions I saw while using the search were hardly relevant to my location.

Link : http://www.google.com/mobile/nokia_smart/app.html