markdown.me

It’s pretty basic, but you can throw in your Markdown and you end up with a unique url you can share with the generated HTML. I was too lazy to add a full-blown account registration layer to organize and manage your documents, but did add Facebook login so you can do that if desired. Perhaps I’ll add other forms of login if anyone else ends up using it. Anything you put on there is public as well, for now. Here’s the permalink to some notes I took at this year’s Velocity Conference – http://markdown.me/4dfcfc5ec4fee0367a000000

class UserTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase{
	public function testGetAge() {
		$user = $this->getMock('User', array('getAge'))
			->expects($this->any())
			->method('getAge')
			->will($this->returnValue(18));
		$this->assertTrue($user->getAge(), 18);
	}
}

This is a pretty straight forward example of Mocks, but what happens when the value you want to return is dependent on the value it is called with, and there is some logic required to process this? This is where closures come in handy. Let’s say you have a dynamic array you’ve built up, and you want to return true if a particular function, hasValue is called with a value that exists in that array. Here’s how you can do it with Mocks and closures, using the returnCallback functionality of PHPUnit:

<?php
class UserTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase{
	public function testInArray() {
		$values = array(1,10,78,30);
		$user = $this->getMock('User', array('hasValue'))
			->expects($this->any())
			->method('hasValue')
			->with($this->anything())
			->will($this->returnCallback(function($value) use ($values){
				return in_array($value, $values);
			}));
		$this->assertTrue($user->hasValue(10));
		$this->assertTrue($user->hasValue(99) == false);
	}
}

When I call hasValue, passing in 10, we’ll get true, and with 99 it’s false. This is checked at runtime when the closure is executed, checking against the $values array. Also, stay away from Canvas Ride, it’s dangerously addictive.

Let me explain by example. Here’s my first pass at a simple abstract singleton class that I could theoretically extend from other classes, and just pick up “singleton” behavior. Disclaimer!!! Don’t use this class, it doesn’t work!

abstract class Singleton {
	private static $instance = null;
	final public static function getInstance() {
		if(static::$instance === null) {
			static::$instance = new static();
		}
		return static::$instance;
	}
	protected function __construct() { }
}

This worked, initially, until I created two classes that extended Singleton and found the second one I called behaved remarkably like the first one.

class FirstSingleton extends Singleton {
...
}
class SecondSingleton extends Singleton {
...
}

Any calls to SecondSingleton::getInstace() were really just returning the FirstSingleton instance. Since the private static $instance property is delcared on the abstract Singleton class, there was really just one $instance being stored across calls to getInstance() from various subclasses. PHP doesn’t bind the $instance property to the called class, it is bound to the class where it is declared, Singleton in this case. You could declare the $instance property on all classes that extend Singleton, but that is defeating the point of the abstract class. Here’s round two, which does work, but I have mixed feelings about:

abstract class Singleton {
	private static $instances;
	final public static function getInstance() {
		$className = get_called_class();
		if(isset(self::$instances[$className]) == false) {
			self::$instances[$className] = new static();
		}
		return self::$instances[$className];
	}
	protected function  __construct() { }
}

The change here is that instead of storing a single $instance property on the abstract Singleton class, we’re storing an array of instances, indexed by the class name of the called class. It behaves as expected, but the code isn’t as clear or clean as I would have hoped it would be.

That’s one example of how I found the book to be helpful in practice. If you want a solid picture of how you will work with YUI, this book is great.

It’s been out for awhile now, but I’ve got a copy of “Yahoo! User Interface Library 2.x Cookbook” by Matt Snider on it’s way. I’m excited to give it a read, Matt definitely knows the YUI Library from his work on Mint.

While I don’t think the majority of my blog’s reader-base would be interested in using the site itself, I wanted to make a quick post to point out how the development of it has gone, which will hopefully be of more interest to those reading.

I built the site in about 4 or 5 months of actual heads-down, after-hours work. I have a day job, so this is just something I’ve spent nights and weekends putting time into. It’s built on Zend Framework MVC, which I absolutely love. The UI is enhanced through YUI, which is another favorite library of mine. The database is MySQL, and I’m also using Doctrine ORM.

Zend Framework and Doctrine, in my mind, are a great marriage of libraries. Zend handles everything I’ve needed from an MVC, with the additional benefits of providing out-of-the-box API’s for things like ACL, Auth, Caching, Emails and Logging. Doctrine does a great job at providing a stable and solid ORM, and a great means of managing updates through a simple migration strategy. The best part about finding a solid framework you enjoy working with, is you eventually end up with a great set of features you’ve built that can be dropped in to any project, giving you quite the head-start. When I started ( which was actually over a year ago, my motivation comes in spurts), Doctrine 2 was in development, but wasn’t where it is now. I like the concept they’ve taken with the new version, but currently I’m using their 1.x version.

YUI is being used pretty sparingly right now. I think the only modules being used currently are containers for the dialogs, buttons, and menu. I need to give a shout out to the Minify library as well, which is handling the JS/CSS minification quite nicely.

I have some follow-up posts I plan on writing to go into more detail on some of the items and techniques I used in regards to things like Caching, but until I’ve had more of a chance to put the site through a ringer, I’ll hold off. Anyways, if you’re building a new site, looking for frameworks, I highly recommend everything I mentioned above.

var myValue = someOtherValue || true;

I just found out in PHP 5.3 they added an operator to do just that. ?:

$myValue = $someOtherValue ?: true;

That’s all, carry on.

http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.3.0

If you read through this book in it’s entirety, you’ll come to understand the main reason I love YUI, that it’s not just a collection of widgets and utilities. This book explains the full feature set of the YUI library, and you’ll realize that it’s the perfect foundation to build on top of. The author’s do a really great job of showing in depth examples that teach you how the components work. I particularly liked reading the chapter on DataSource and DataTable.

If the online examples provided by YAHOO! leave you wondering how things are working, this book fills in those gaps. Most of the book is targeted to beginners and intermediate developers.