Prendre un Café

An Interactive PHP Shell: phpsh

2009-11-04T03:00:00-08:00

Just found this nice project contributed by the Facebook team, phpsh. Basically, it’s an interactive and advanced command line interface to php, a kind of super-php -r similar to what you can find in Python or Ruby. Ironically enough, phpsh is mostly written in Python, by the way.

To install phpsh, just get it from github^[1]:

$ git clone git://github.com/facebook/phpsh.git
$ cd phpsh
$ python setup.py build
$ sudo python setup.py install

To run phpsh:

$ phpsh
Starting php
type 'h' or 'help' to see instructions & features
php> ="hello world"
hello world
php> =2 + 2
4
php> $a = 8

php> =$a
8

Note that you don’t have to open or close <?php tags, you can print something just by prepending an = sign to the command, and no need to type semicolum at the end of a call. Easy^[2].

You can access a function documentation by just prepending the d keyword to its name:

php> d strlen
 
# strlen
 
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
 
strlen -- Get string length
 
### Description
 
int strlen ( string $string )
 
Returns the length of the given string . 
 
### Parameters
 
string     
 
The [string][1] being measured for length. 
 
### Return Values
 
The length of the string on success, and 0 if the string is empty. 
 
### 
 
   [1]: #language.types.string

You can define your own classes and functions, and run them:

php> function foo($a){echo $a.'!';}
php> foo('bar')
bar!

Same goes for classes:

php> class Foo {public function bar($a){echo $a.'!';}}
php> $f = new Foo()
php> $f->bar('baz')
baz!

You can even execute shell command from there:

php> ! ls -la

Of course, you can ~~import~~ include and require files. As a concrete example, let’s roughly play with the symfony API:

php> ! symfony -V
symfony version 1.2.2-DEV (/Users/niko/Sites/vendor/symfony12/lib)
php> c /Users/niko/Sites/vendor/symfony12/lib/autoload/sfCoreAutoload.class.php
Extra includes are: ['/Users/niko/Sites/vendor/symfony12/lib/autoload/sfCoreAutoload.class.php']
php> sfCoreAutoload::register()
php> =sfYaml::load('foo: bar')
array(
  "foo" => "bar",
)
php> =sfYaml::dump(array('foo' => array('bar' => 'baz')))
"foo:\n  bar: baz\n"

Last but not least, when enough playing, type q or press ctrl + d to quit phpsh.

Notes

[1] So yeah, so you need git. And Python, of course.

[2] Anybody putting "rather use python then" will have serious troubles, even if I strongly agree.

Ce billet intitulé An Interactive PHP Shell: phpsh a été rédigé par Nicolas Perriault et publié sur le blog Prendre un Café sous licence Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

A Symfony 1.3 Gem: Open Files Listed in Exceptions with the Editor of your Choice

2009-10-12T09:22:00-07:00

I’ve just stumbled upon a nice new feature of Symfony 1.3, the ability to open any linked file within standard exception page with the text editor of your choice, at least if it provides an url scheme/protocol to open them. Texmate provides natively this feature, so let’s see how to configure a symfony project to allow its files to be opened directly in textmate when encountering a stack trace.

In the config/ folder of the project, create a settings.yml file with this content:

dev: #yeah, we never know
  .settings:
    file_link_format: "txmt://open?url=file://%f&line=%l"

That’s it. Now any standard exception page (in dev environment only, right?) will provide a txmt:// link to every PHP file listed in the stack trace. And at the correct line number. Neat.

Ce billet intitulé A Symfony 1.3 Gem: Open Files Listed in Exceptions with the Editor of your Choice a été rédigé par Nicolas Perriault et publié sur le blog Prendre un Café sous licence Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

Scrum.py, présentation et conférence Scrum et Python le 23 octobre à Montpellier

2009-10-12T03:17:00-07:00

Si comme moi vous effectuez une veille quotidienne autour des outils et technologies Web, vous n’avez certainement pas pu passer à côté de l’engouement massif pour le langage Python ces derniers temps. De plus en plus de développeurs PHP passent sur ce langage^[1], souvent par l’entremise de l’excellent framework Django, que présentera mon camarade de jeu David Larlet le vendredi 23 octobre prochain à Montpellier à l’occasion d’une conférence donnée dans le cadre de l’évènement Scrum.py.

L’efficacité potentielle du meilleur outil technique étant réduit à néant s’il n’est pas efficacement encadré par une méthodologie de conduite de projet adapté aux contraintes d’un métier souvent difficile, Claude Aubry, un des tous meilleurs experts français sur le sujet, présentera quand à lui les avantages et intérêt de Scrum durant cette même journée d’information gratuite, à laquelle je vous invite à vous inscrire en ligne dès à présent.

David proposera également un atelier Django les 18, 19 et 20 novembre prochains, tandis que Claude animera une formation Scrum les 2, 3 et 4 décembre.

L’évènement est organisé par le collectif Particul.es, et les places, tant pour les conférences que pour les formations, sont limitées ; alors n’hésitez pas à vous inscrire rapidement.

Notes

[1] Et j’avoue me réfréner fortement à faire de même tant les inconsistances de PHP me portent quotidiennement sur les nerfs

Ce billet intitulé Scrum.py, présentation et conférence Scrum et Python le 23 octobre à Montpellier a été rédigé par Nicolas Perriault et publié sur le blog Prendre un Café sous licence Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

Simple Continuous Integration of a Symfony Project using Hudson

2009-10-06T06:36:00-07:00

I love tests, I just cannot program without them anymore, especially with Symfony. And as I write a lot of them on a daily basis, the full test suite can take a very long time to be executed ; running a symfony test:all command before every granular commit suppose you have to wait sometimes more than 5, 10 minutes or more for the whole tests to be ran: hardly acceptable. Post commit hooks can be a solution, but what if a lot of devs are working simultaneously on the same project? Added to the previously seen test execution duration, it can become a problem difficult to deal with.

Here comes continuous integration : regularly, eg. every hour, the symfony project will be built up and configured from scratch, then the full test suite will be executed and the resulting log will be aggregated. It’s a very convenient way to keep an eye on the overall code quality and integrity of the project.

There are several open source continuous integration software available on the market: Cruise Control (and phpUnderControl), Continuum, Integrity, the uncertain but awesomely looking Sismo which powers the Symfony continous integration server… But I recently had the opportunity to test Hudson, a java based one. It’s very simple to install, setup and configure, and has tons of plugins. So let’s see how it can be used to test a Symfony project.

Hudson Installation

That’s really not the hardest part, because you just need a working JRE 1.5 installation on your machine, and to retrieve the latest version of the program.

Then, you can launch it directly from a shell prompt:

$  java -jar /path/to/hudson.war

If you fear to break something or just want to give it a go without the hassle of firing a term, just launch the available Java Web Start version.

On debian/ubuntu, it’s just as easy as:

$ sudo echo deb http://hudson-ci.org/debian binary/ >> /etc/apt/sources.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install hudson
$ sudo /etc/init.d/hudson start

Configuration and Symfony Project Integration

Once Hudson is installed an running, head up to http://localhost:8080/ and start playing with the web based user interface of Hudson. The navigation and configuration forms are quite obvious, and therefore efficient. Creating a project following the provided guidelines is easy and can be achieved within minutes:

First, create a new Job, choosing the Build a free-style software project option.

Then, configure the subversion repository^[1] used by your project by entering its base URL in the Source Code Management field You can schedule builds, watch for SCM activity and even trigger builds from remote script using a neat XMLRPC interface^[2].

Configuring the building process is as easy as writing down some commands, like the one you’d execute to setup your project on a new box:

As of Symfony 1.3, test result logs can be exported in a jUnit XML file, so Hudson will be able to parse them and provide some useful reports, metrics and charts:

Of course, you can configure failure notifications: email, atom feed, there’s even a twitter plugin!

As a conclusion, Hudson is a very simple but efficient continous integration tool which can easily be configured to monitor the quality of your Symfony projects… at least if you write tests

Notes

[1] If you’re not using Subversion, lot of plugins are available for other SCM in the huge Hudson plugins repository

[2] Useful if you wish to use post-commit build hook

Ce billet intitulé Simple Continuous Integration of a Symfony Project using Hudson a été rédigé par Nicolas Perriault et publié sur le blog Prendre un Café sous licence Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

Optimize your Doctrine Workflow with Specialized Queries

2009-09-15T10:14:00-07:00

I’m currently working on a big Symfony project, with a lot of Doctrine models and complex queries to write. I found a way to organize all of them in an object-oriented and cleaner way than using the traditionnal addNamedQuery() and createNamedQuery() methods workflow^[1].

The idea is to create dedicated query classes for a given model ; this way, you can provide useful methods to build the business-related parts of your query.

As usual, the theory is more understandable with a concrete example. Let’s consider this simple Doctrine model^[2] :

Disclaimer: The provided examples have been written in a hurry, so mistakes might have been not detected by my attentive proof-reading

BlogAuthor:
  columns:
    id:
      type: integer(4)
      primary: true
      autoincrement: true  
    name:
      type: string(255)
  relations:
    Post:
      type: one
      class: BlogPost
      local: id
      foreign: author_id
 
BlogPost:
  columns:
    id:
      type: integer(4)
      primary: true
      autoincrement: true
    author_id:
      type: integer(4)
      notnull: true
    title:
      type: string(255)
    content:
      type: string(65535)
  relations:
    Author:
      type: one
      class: BlogAuthor
      local: author_id
      foreign: id
    Comments:
      type: many
      class: BlogComment
      local: id
      foreign: post_id
 
BlogComment:
  columns:
    id:
      type: integer(4)
      primary: true
      autoincrement: true
    post_id:
      type: integer(4)
      notnull: true
    author:
      type: string(255)
    content:
      type: string(5000)
  relations:
    Post:
      type: one
      class: BlogPost
      local: post_id
      foreign: id

Now let’s imagine a Query class dedicated to query the BlogPost table:

<?php 
class BlogPostQuery extends Doctrine_Query
{
  static public function create($conn = null, $class = null)
  {
    return parent::create($conn, 'BlogPostQuery')
      ->from('BlogPost p');
  }
  
  public function addPosts($fields = 'p.*')
  {
    return $this->addSelect('p.*');
  }
  
  public function addComments($fields = 'c.*')
  {
    return $this
      ->addSelect($fields)
      ->leftJoin('p.Comments c')
      ->addGroupBy('c.id');
  }
  
  public function addAuthors($fields = 'a.*')
  {
    return $this
      ->addSelect($fields)
      ->leftJoin('p.Author a')
      ->addGroupBy('a.id');
  }
  
  public function addCommentsCount($alias = 'nb_comments')
  {
    return $this
      ->addSelect(sprintf('COUNT(c.id) as %s', $alias))
      ->addGroupBy('c.id');
  }
  
  public function filterByAuthorName($authorName)
  {
    return $this
      ->andWhere('a.name = ?', $authorName);
  }
}

So how can we use this query object? Here are some sample uses:

// Retrieve all posts
$posts = BlogPostQuery::create()
  ->addPosts()
  ->fetchArray();
 
// Retrieve all posts with comments
$posts = BlogPostQuery::create()
  ->addPosts()
  ->addComments()
  ->fetchArray();
 
// Retrieve all posts with comments and their count per post
$posts = BlogPostQuery::create()
  ->addPosts()
  ->addComments()
  ->addCommentsCount('yataa')
  ->fetchArray();
 
// Retrieve all post with chuck as its author and related comments
$posts = BlogPostQuery::create()
  ->addAuthors()
  ->addPosts()
  ->addComments()
  ->filterByAuthorName('chuck')
  ->fetchArray();
 
// and so on...

Of course, this example of use is not really relevant as our model is really simple, but when you’re dealing with dozens of internationalized objects, it can help cleaning your model classes, controllers and improving the organization of your work.

Update and important precisions

Some people are having negative feedback regarding this technique, claiming it will encourage people using the custom query object directly in the controllers; that’s absolutely not the case as the queries are to be used only within the model layer, for example in the BlogPostTable class:

<?php
class BlogPostTable extends Doctrine_Table
{
  static public function getPostsWithCommentsByAuthor($authorName)
  {
    return BlogPostQuery::create()
      ->addPosts()
      ->addComments()
      ->filterByAuthorName($authorName)
      ->fetchArray()
    ;
  }
}

And in a controller:

class blogActions extends sfActions
{
  public function executeListByAuthor(sfWebRequest $request)
  {
    $this->posts = BlogPostTable::getPostsWithCommentsByAuthor($request->getParameter('author'));
  }
}

Notes

[1] … or raw queries written directly within controllers, but you may know that this is really bad

[2] I’m using Doctrine 1.2 beta (bundled with upcoming symfony 1.3) in the provided example.

Ce billet intitulé Optimize your Doctrine Workflow with Specialized Queries a été rédigé par Nicolas Perriault et publié sur le blog Prendre un Café sous licence Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

30 Symfony Best Practices, the slides from my talk at SymfonyDay Cologne '09

2009-09-04T11:50:00-07:00

Hey there, it’s been a while, huh?

Today I gave a talk about Symfony best practices at the Symfony Day event in Cologne, Germany; you can get the slides on slideshare or directly browse them below:

The Symfony Day event has been purely awesomely incredibly well organized, many kudos and thanks to Interlutions and to all the attendees. You’re all great people. Thanks.

Ce billet intitulé 30 Symfony Best Practices, the slides from my talk at SymfonyDay Cologne '09 a été rédigé par Nicolas Perriault et publié sur le blog Prendre un Café sous licence Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

YAML Brush for the SyntaxHighlighter Javascript Library

2009-07-26T04:48:00-07:00

During a trip back to Paris by train, I quickly coded for a project of mine a new brush for SyntaxHighlighter, a client-side syntax coloring library powered by Javascript, in order to highlight YAML code snippets.

You can get the code here and provide feedback in a dedicated thread on the official forum.

Edit: Oops, didn’t find this already existing brush (I hadn’t wifi access in the train). I think my version support more specific aspects of the syntax, though.

Ce billet intitulé YAML Brush for the SyntaxHighlighter Javascript Library a été rédigé par Nicolas Perriault et publié sur le blog Prendre un Café sous licence Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

Installing php 5.3, apache2 and MySQL 5 on OS X using Macports

2009-07-17T05:40:00-07:00

I wanted to test latest php 5.3 on my OSX box. So here’s a quick reminder on how to proceed to a full setup of apache2, mysql5 and php 5.3 using Macports.

First, get a fresh copy of the Macports installer for OSX. Install macports, then in a shell prompt, type:

$ sudo port install mysql5 +server
$ sudo port install php5 +apache2 +debug +pear +sqlite +mysql5

You have now the time to have lunch, dinner, sex or to watch an episode of Derrick^[1].

To enable the php module for apache:

$ cd /opt/local/apache2/modules
$ sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apxs -a -e -n "php5" libphp5.so

Then, add this line in the /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf file:

Include conf/extras-conf/*.conf

Copy one of the standard php.ini files proposed by the default installation:

$ sudo cp /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini-development /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini

To start apache automatically at system startup:

$ sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.apache2.plist

Or manually:

$ sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

To initialize, configure and start MySQL automatically:

$ sudo -u mysql mysql_install_db5
$ sudo /opt/local/bin/mysql_secure_installation5
$ sudo /opt/local/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql5/mysql5.wrapper start
$ sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql5.plist

Now launch your browser at http://localhost/: you’re done. Have some rest.

Notes

[1] Don’t try to do all that stuff at the same time, result cannot be guaranteed

Ce billet intitulé Installing php 5.3, apache2 and MySQL 5 on OS X using Macports a été rédigé par Nicolas Perriault et publié sur le blog Prendre un Café sous licence Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.