Blog on Random thoughts

Symfony Debug to Error Handler Component

Fri, 29 Nov 2019 01:04:31 +0530

Since symfony 4.4 the symfony/debug component is deprecated.

The “\Symfony\Component\Debug\ErrorHandler” class is deprecated since Symfony 4.4, use “\Symfony\Component\ErrorHandler\ErrorHandler”

Running unit tests on Mascot, I noticed lots of warnings.

But it was not easy as changing Symfony\Component\Debug\ExceptionHandler to Symfony\Component\ErrorHandler\ErrorHandler.

Assume we have something as below

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<?php
$handler = new \Symfony\Component\Debug\ExceptionHandler($debug);
$exception = $event->getThrowable();
if (!$exception instanceof FlattenException) {
    $exception = FlattenException::create($exception);
}
$response = Response::create($handler->getHtml($exception), $exception->getStatusCode(), $exception->getHeaders())->setCharset(ini_get('default_charset'));
$event->setResponse($response);

The Symfony\Component\ErrorHandler\ErrorHandler has no getHtml method.

From the symfony docs, if you are in development mode we can use below code.

<?php
if ($_SERVER['APP_DEBUG']) {
    Debug::enable();
}

so I started with

<?php
ErrorHandler::register();

But it was throwing all details. I was struggling how to fix this. After many failed experiments, I asked Yonel Ceruto Gonzalez.

Sets the scope at 0 to tell the handler that it is in “non-debug” mode:

$errorHandler->scopeAt(0, true);

However, don't expect the real exception message in non-debug mode, it could reveal sensitive information.

— Yonel Ceruto Gonzalez¹

The above information was really helpful to do more experiments. I finally fixed the unit tests with the below code.

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<?php
$handler = new \Symfony\Component\ErrorHandler\ErrorHandler();
$handler->setExceptionHandler([$handler, 'renderException']);
if (! $this->debug) {
    $handler->scopeAt(0, true);
}
$exception = $event->getThrowable();
ob_start();
$handler->handleException($exception);
$response = ob_get_clean();
if (!$exception instanceof FlattenException) {
    $exception = FlattenException::create($exception);
}
$response = Response::create($response, $exception->getStatusCode(), $exception->getHeaders())->setCharset(ini_get('default_charset'));

I hope this information may help someone at somepoint of time.

Taken from twitter status Yonel Ceruto Gonzalez

building modular applications with psr 7

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

PSR-7, the HTTP message interfaces opened a new door of creating modular applications.

Sadly many of the PSR-7 implementations added many helper methods.

So if someone is creating a library that needs a PSR-7 implementations they tie the particular library with the PSR-7 implementation and use these convinient helper methods.

So was PSR-15: interfaces for HTTP Middleware and PSR-17: interfaces for HTTP Factories was proposed.

When creating a module one of the most challenging part is how to serve the javascript, css and images. We are going to use hkt/psr7-asset which is a fork of Aura.Asset_Bundle . What you want to do is only map the path to the assets folder.

We can discuss more on the features later and start writing our first module. The source code of the module is hosted at github.

mkdir -p {src/{Middleware},templates,public/{css,images,js}}

The command will create folder structure as below.

If you are not using *nix probably you want to create each folder separately.

├── public
│   ├── css
│   ├── images
│   └── js
├── src
│   └── Middleware
└── templates

Lets create our Welcome middleware.

<?php
namespace Hkt\Psr7AssetExample\Middleware;

use Interop\Http\Factory\ResponseFactoryInterface;
use Interop\Http\ServerMiddleware\MiddlewareInterface;
use Interop\Http\ServerMiddleware\DelegateInterface;
use Psr\Http\Message\ServerRequestInterface;
use Zend\Expressive\Template\TemplateRendererInterface;

class Welcome implements MiddlewareInterface
{
    private $template;

    private $responseFactory;

    public function __construct(
        TemplateRendererInterface $template,
        ResponseFactoryInterface $responseFactory
    ) {
        $this->template = $template;
        $this->responseFactory = $responseFactory;
    }

    public function process(
        ServerRequestInterface $request,
        DelegateInterface $delegate
    ) {
        $response = $this->responseFactory->createResponse();
        $response = $response->withHeader('Content-Type', 'text/html');
        $response->getBody()->write(
            $this->template->render('hkt-psr7-asset-example::welcome', [])
        );
        return $response;
    }
}

You can see we have not tied the Welcome class to any PSR-7 implementation. But instead to many interfaces. This helps us to use Welcome middleware with any PSR-7 based frameworks.

How can we serve the static files?

This can be solved with zf-asset-manager. What it does is copy the assets to the public folder and the files are served by webserver.

But what about if you need to alter the behaviour of the file?

Eg : You want to override the hello.js contents with something like

$(function () {
    alert("Hello World");
});

This is possible with the hkt/psr7-asset.

What you need is get the asset locator and set the path to vendor/package as

<?php
$assetLocator = $di->get('Hkt\Psr7Asset\AssetLocator');
$assetLocator->set('hkt/psr7-asset-example', dirname(dirname(__DIR__)) . '/public');

alternatievely you can set individual paths or files also.

<?php
$assetLocator = $di->get('Hkt\Psr7Asset\AssetLocator');
$assetLocator->set('vendor/package/images/someimage.png', '/path/to/different-image.png');

The full source code of the example module is at https://github.com/harikt/psr7-asset-example

How can we make use of this module in your application?

Any frameworks that supports psr-7, psr-15 and psr-17 interfaces should work. We will use zend expressive with Aura.Di as dependency injection container and Aura.Router.

composer create-project zendframework/zend-expressive-skeleton expressive

Below is selection process

Installing zendframework/zend-expressive-skeleton (2.0.1)
  - Installing zendframework/zend-expressive-skeleton (2.0.1) Loading from cache
Created project in expressive
> ExpressiveInstaller\OptionalPackages::install
Setting up optional packages
Setup data and cache dir
Removing installer development dependencies

  What type of installation would you like?
  [1] Minimal (no default middleware, templates, or assets; configuration only)
  [2] Flat (flat source code structure; default selection)
  [3] Modular (modular source code structure; recommended)
  Make your selection (2): 3
  - Adding package zendframework/zend-expressive-tooling (^0.3.2)
  - Copying src/App/src/ConfigProvider.php

  Which container do you want to use for dependency injection?
  [1] Aura.Di
  [2] Pimple
  [3] Zend ServiceManager
  Make your selection or type a composer package name and version (Zend ServiceManager): 1
  - Adding package aura/di (^3.2)
  - Copying config/container.php
  - Copying config/ExpressiveAuraConfig.php
  - Copying config/ExpressiveAuraDelegatorFactory.php

  Which router do you want to use?
  [1] Aura.Router
  [2] FastRoute
  [3] Zend Router
  Make your selection or type a composer package name and version (FastRoute): 1
  - Adding package zendframework/zend-expressive-aurarouter (^2.0)
  - Copying config/routes.php
  - Copying config/autoload/router.global.php

  Which template engine do you want to use?
  [1] Plates
  [2] Twig
  [3] Zend View installs Zend ServiceManager
  [n] None of the above
  Make your selection or type a composer package name and version (n): 2
  - Adding package zendframework/zend-expressive-twigrenderer (^1.4)
  - Copying config/autoload/templates.global.php
  - Copying src/App/templates/error/404.html.twig
  - Copying src/App/templates/error/error.html.twig
  - Copying src/App/templates/layout/default.html.twig
  - Copying src/App/templates/app/home-page.html.twig

  Which error handler do you want to use during development?
  [1] Whoops
  [n] None of the above
  Make your selection or type a composer package name and version (Whoops): 1
  - Adding package filp/whoops (^2.1.7)
  - Copying config/autoload/development.local.php.dist

Once the installation is finished we can start integrating the module.

cd expressive

Add to your composer.json the below configuration.

    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "git",
            "url": "https://github.com/harikt/psr7-asset-example"
        }
    ],
    "require": {
        "http-interop/http-factory-diactoros": "^0.2.0",
        "hkt/psr7-asset-example":"1.*@dev",
        "hkt/psr7-asset":"1.*@dev",
        ...
    },

I think the dependencies are self explanatory. In case you need any help feel free to comment on the post.

We need a few things for the assets to be displayed.

Add the asset router. So that any request coming to /asset/* can be served by Hkt\Psr7Asset\AssetAction.
Configure the Interop\Http\Factory\ResponseFactoryInterface to return an instance of Http\Factory\Diactoros\ResponseFactory.
Add a route to serve the example welcome action ‘Hkt\Psr7AssetExample\Middleware\Welcome’

Below is what we can do with Aura.Di configuration.

<?php
// src/App/src/Config/Common.php
namespace App\Config;

use Aura\Di\Container;
use Aura\Di\ContainerConfigInterface;
use Zend\Expressive\Router\Route;

class Common implements ContainerConfigInterface
{
    public function define(Container $di)
    {
        $di->set('Interop\Http\Factory\ResponseFactoryInterface', $di->lazyNew('Http\Factory\Diactoros\ResponseFactory'));
    }

    public function modify(Container $di)
    {
        $router = $di->get('Zend\Expressive\Router\RouterInterface');

        // PSR-7 asset Router

        $route = new Route('/asset/{vendor}/{package}/{file}', 'Hkt\Psr7Asset\AssetAction', ['GET'], 'hkt/psr7-asset');
        $route->setOptions([
            'tokens' => [
                'file' => '(.*)'
            ]
        ]);
        $router->addRoute($route);
        $router->addRoute(new Route('/', 'Hkt\Psr7AssetExample\Middleware\Welcome', ['GET'], 'hkt/psr7-asset-example:welcome'));
        // Try modifying the below lines
        // $assetLocator = $di->get('Hkt\Psr7Asset\AssetLocator');
        // $rootPath = dirname(dirname(dirname(dirname(__DIR__))));
        // $assetLocator->set('hkt/psr7-asset-example/images/white-image.png', $rootPath . '/public/zf-logo.png');
    }
}

Now we can load the Aura.Di configuration in config/container.php .

<?php
.... more code.

return $builder->newConfiguredInstance([
    new ExpressiveAuraConfig(is_array($config) ? $config : []),
    Hkt\Psr7Asset\Container\AssetConfig::class,
    Hkt\Psr7AssetExample\Container\Common::class,
    App\Config\Common::class,
]);

What it does, is load different configurations of different modules.

If you run

php -S 0.0.0.0:8080 -t public public/index.php

and point to http://localhost:8080 you can see the welcome screen of example module.

Try modifying the hkt/psr7-asset-example/images/white-image.png path to a different image and browse http://localhost:8080/asset/hkt/psr7-asset-example/images/white-image.png

It will render that image.

All source code is accompanied at https://github.com/harikt/psr7-asset-example-zendexpressive

Caching

We can use psr7-asset-cache to cache all public files in production.

Hope this will be helpful to someone to begin writing modular applications.

using cakephp migration as standalone

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Cakephp version 3 have a nice ORM. When using the cakephp/orm, it may be nice to integrate cakephp/migration than any other migration libraries, even though it uses phinx under the hood.

Lets see how we can install and integrate cakephp/migration in our application.

composer require cakephp/migrations:dev-master

The dev-master is currently passed for we need the latest version of master branch. Before this pull request, it was having dependency on cakephp/cakephp, which is not needed.

Our migration console script

#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
use Cake\Cache\Cache;
use Cake\Core\Configure;
use Cake\Core\Configure\Engine\PhpConfig;
use Cake\Datasource\ConnectionManager;
use Migrations\MigrationsDispatcher;

$projectDirectory = dirname(__DIR__);
$file   = $projectDirectory . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'vendor' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'autoload.php';
$loader = null;

if (file_exists($file)) {

    $loader = require $file;

    if (!defined('CACHE')) {
        define('CACHE', $projectDirectory . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'tmp' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'cache' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
    }
}

if ( ! $loader) {
    throw new RuntimeException('vendor/autoload.php could not be found. Did you run `composer install`?');
}

if (!defined('PHINX_VERSION')) {
    define('PHINX_VERSION', (0 === strpos('@PHINX_VERSION@', '@PHINX_VERSION')) ? '0.6.6' : '@PHINX_VERSION@');
}

try {
    Configure::config('default', new PhpConfig($projectDirectory . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'config' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR) );
    Configure::load('app', 'default', false);
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    exit($e->getMessage() . "\n");
}

Cache::setConfig(Configure::consume('Cache'));
ConnectionManager::setConfig(Configure::consume('Datasources'));
$application = new MigrationsDispatcher(PHINX_VERSION);
$application->run();

You may notice the constant CACHE. We can get rid of constants if needed. Normally I copy portions of config/app.default.php and keep in /config/app.php file which uses some of these constants.

Once done, we can run the migration script as

bin/cake-phinx

You may probably want to allow necessary permission for the script to execute. You can do via chmod +x bin/cake-phinx

There is another PR 312 waiting for approval. If it is merged you will get all the functionalities of https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/console-and-shells/orm-cache.html

PS : If you came across some errors regarding migration plugin not loaded etc. You may want to add the below code before calling MigrationsDispatcher

<?php
Cake\Core\Plugin::load('Migrations', [
    'path' => $projectDirectory . '/vendor/cakephp/migrations/',
]);

aura dot di 2 dot x to 3 dot x upgrade guide

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

3.x has a very minimal BC break. But if you are not sure what are they, then you may feel the pain. I am trying to document most of them, incase I missed please edit and send a pull request.

I will try to eventually pushed to the main Aura.Di repo.

BC Breaks

Instantiation

The way di container is instantiated has been changed from

<?php
use Aura\Di\Container;
use Aura\Di\Factory;
use Aura\Di\ContainerBuilder;

$di = new Container(new Factory);

// or 

$container_builder = new ContainerBuilder();
$di = $container_builder->newInstance(
    array(),
    array(),
    $auto_resolve = false
);

<?php
use Aura\Di\ContainerBuilder;

$container_builder = new ContainerBuilder();

// use the builder to create and configure a container
// using an array of ContainerConfig classes
$di = $container_builder->newConfiguredInstance([
    'Aura\Cli\_Config\Common',
    'Aura\Router\_Config\Common',
    'Aura\Web\_Config\Common',
]);

setter vs setters

$di->setter is now $di->setters. Please note there is an additional s in the end. https://github.com/auraphp/Aura.Di/issues/115.

Automatic locking

Automatic locking of container once an object is created by container. So make sure everything is lazy call, else you will run something like Cannot modify container when locked.

Config vs ContainerConfig

Version 2 Aura\Di\Config is now Aura\Di\ContainerConfig

Features

lazyGetCall

Example taken from Radar

$di->params['Radar\Adr\Handler\RoutingHandler']['matcher'] = $di->lazyGetCall('radar/adr:router', 'getMatcher');

Here the matcher assigned is taken from the RouterContainer getMatcher method.

Instance Factories

Create multiple instances of the class. You can read the docs

cakephp orm and logging queries

Sat, 16 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Working with cakephp/orm library, I needed to log all the queries. Cakephp provides a way to do it via cakephp/log.

<?php
use Cake\Log\Log;

Log::config('queries', [
	'className' => 'File',
	'path' => '/my/log/path/',
	'file' => 'app',
	'scopes' => ['queriesLog']
]);

But you are not limited, if you need to configure it to a PSR-3 logger like monolog/monolog

<?php
use Cake\Log\Log;
use Monolog\Logger;
use Monolog\Handler\StreamHandler;

Log::config('default', function () {
    $log = new Logger('cli');
    $log->pushHandler(new StreamHandler('php://stdout'));
    return $log;
});

That was pretty simple and it logs to cli.

Thank you José Lorenzo Rodríguez for providing the necessary information.

How about logging the queries to a debugbar?

Install fabfuel/prophiler

composer require fabfuel/prophiler

Configuring debugbar

<?php
use Cake\Log\Log;
use Fabfuel\Prophiler\Profiler;
use Fabfuel\Prophiler\Toolbar;
use Fabfuel\Prophiler\DataCollector\Request;
use Fabfuel\Prophiler\Adapter\Psr\Log\Logger;

$profiler = new Profiler();
$toolbar = new Toolbar($profiler);
// add your data collectors
// $toolbar->addDataCollector(new Request());

Log::config('db', function () use ($profiler) {
	$log = new Logger($profiler);
	return $log;
});

Using a PSR-7 framework like zend-expressive, bitExpert/prophiler-psr7-middleware is your friend.

cakephp orm and illuminate pagination

Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Do you know CakePHP version 3 has a lovely ORM which can be used as standalone?

Thank you José Lorenzo Rodríguez and every contributor, for your hard work.

composer require cakephp/orm

That's it.

Working on I noticed I need to do some pagination. Oh, remember we have illuminate/pagination. Why not use it?

Problem, there seems no one have implemented it. How could we achieve it? Lets do it.

composer require illuminate/pagination

If you are using a psr-7 request / response here is the middleware for you.

<?php
use Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface;
use Psr\Http\Message\ServerRequestInterface;
use Illuminate\Pagination\Paginator as IlluminatePaginator;
class PaginatorMiddleware
{
    public function __invoke( ServerRequestInterface $request, ResponseInterface $response, callable $next = null )
    {
        IlluminatePaginator::currentPageResolver(function ( $pageName = 'page' ) use($request )
        {
            $params = $request->getQueryParams();
            return empty($params[$pageName]) ? 1 : $params[$pageName];
        });

        IlluminatePaginator::currentPathResolver(function () use($request )
        {
            return $request->getUri()->getPath();
        });

        return $next($request, $response);
    }
}

What we did above are a few things for Illuminate to give the url path when it is doing the pagination. So for example /article?page=<page-number> will come instead of just ?page=<page-number>.

<?php
use Cake\ORM\TableRegistry;
use Illuminate\Pagination\Paginator;
use Illuminate\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator;

$table = TableRegistry::get('Articles');
$currentPage = 1;
$perPage = 20;
$query = $table->find('all');
$total = $query->count();
$items = $query->page($currentPage, $perPage);
$paginator = new LengthAwarePaginator($items, $total, $perPage, $currentPage, [
	'path' => Paginator::resolveCurrentPath(),
]);
echo $paginator->render();

The above code is querying the articles and rendering the pagination with the returned results.

By default the Presenter is Illuminate\Pagination\BootstrapThreePresenter, but you can create your own.

I hope you will love the integration.

Thank you everyone for your support and hard work on components to make PHP better every day.

eloquent and pagination inside zend expressive

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Recently working with eloquent (Laravel's orm), zend expressive and zend view, I wanted to integrate pagination.

It was simple as registering a Paginator middleware.

<?php
use Illuminate\Pagination\Paginator;
use Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface;
use Psr\Http\Message\ServerRequestInterface;

IlluminatePaginator::currentPageResolver(function ($pageName) use ($request) {
    $params = $request->getQueryParams();
    return empty($params[$pageName]) ? 1 : $params[$pageName];
});
IlluminatePaginator::currentPathResolver(function () use ($request) {
    return $request->getUri()->getPath();
});

and you can call paginate on the Model.

Eg : Consider you have a Post model.

<?php
$posts = Post::paginate(20);

and in view you can iterate through the $posts and render the pagination. The $posts is an object of LengthAwarePaginator.

You can also modify the presenter accordingly. Default comes with BootstrapThreePresenter

<?php
foreach ($this->posts as $post) {
?>
    <?= $post->title . "<br />" ?>
<?php
}
?>
<?= $this->posts->render() ?>

Note : Please be aware of the issues/10909.

integrating zend form in zend expressive and view

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Example is based using Aura.Di. But the functionality will be same for any containers. First register the service Zend\View\HelperPluginManager, so that we can access the same object.

To register the form helpers, create the object of Zend\Form\View\HelperConfig and pass the Zend\View\HelperPluginManager service.

Example code with Aura.Di version 3 configuration.

<?php
use Aura\Di\ContainerConfig;
use Aura\Di\Container;
use Zend\Form\View\HelperConfig;

class ViewHelper extends ContainerConfig
{
    public function define(Container $di)
    {
        $di->set('Zend\View\HelperPluginManager', $di->lazyNew('Zend\View\HelperPluginManager'));
    }

    public function modify(Container $di)
    {
        $serviceManager = $di->get('Zend\View\HelperPluginManager');
        $helper = new HelperConfig();
        $helper->configureServiceManager($servicemanager);
    }
}

Creating your own zend-view helper

Create your helper class

<?php
namespace App\View\Helper;

use Zend\View\Helper\AbstractHelper;

class HasError extends AbstractHelper
{
    // add as many parameters you want to pass from the view
    public function __invoke()
    {
        // some code
    }
}

Registering your helper class.

First get the Zend\View\HelperPluginManager service.

2.a ) Registering as a factory

<?php
$serviceManager->setFactory('hasError', function () {
    return new \App\View\Helper\HasError();
});

2.b ) As an invokable

<?php
$serviceManager->setInvokableClass('hasError', 'App\View\Helper\HasError');

Now you can access inside zend-view as $this->hasError(). If your view helper need dependencies don't use the setInvokableClass method. Use factory and get the object from the container.

<?php
$serviceManager->setFactory('hasError', function () use ($di) {
     return $di->get('App\View\Helper\HasError');
});

I wished if $serviceManager can understand the aura's lazyNew functionality so that we don't need to register it as a service.

Eg : Below will not work.

<?php
$serviceManager->setFactory('hasError', $di->lazyNew('App\View\Helper\HasError'));

This is what I love to see it working for this a closure, but with namespaced.

custom events in symfony2 bundle

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In this tutorial we will create a custom event for symfony2 bundle.

Assuming you have downloaded the symfony-standard distribution to play.

Create HktEventBundle via sensio generator bundle.

<?php
php app/console generate:bundle --namespace=Hkt/EventBundle --dir src --no-interaction

Create the event class.

<?php
// src/Hkt/EventBundle/Event/PageViewed.php
namespace Hkt\EventBundle\Event;

use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\Event;

class PageViewed extends Event
{
    protected $name;

    public function __construct($name)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
    }

    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }
}

Add as many methods/properties which are needed from the listener. Instead of creating an event class we can make use of generic event also.

Dispatching Event

<?php
//src/Hkt/EventBundle/Controller/DefaultController.php
namespace Hkt\EventBundle\Controller;

use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\Controller;
use Sensio\Bundle\FrameworkExtraBundle\Configuration\Route;
use Sensio\Bundle\FrameworkExtraBundle\Configuration\Template;
use Hkt\EventBundle\Event\PageViewed;

class DefaultController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * @Route("/hello/{name}")
     * @Template()
     */
    public function indexAction($name)
    {
        $event = new PageViewed($name);
        $this->get('event_dispatcher')->dispatch('hkt.event.page_viewed', $event);
        return array('name' => $name);
    }
}

Listener

Create the listener to do what you want to do with the dispatched/triggered event.

<?php
<?php
// src/Hkt/EventBundle/EventListener/PageViewedListener.php
namespace Hkt\EventBundle\EventListener;

use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventSubscriberInterface;
use Hkt\EventBundle\Event\PageViewed;

class PageViewedListener implements EventSubscriberInterface
{
    public static function getSubscribedEvents()
    {
        return array(
            'hkt.event.page_viewed' => 'handler',
        );
    }

    public function handler(PageViewed $event)
    {
        // $event->getName();
        // do what you want with the event
    }
}

In order to get the PageViewedListener to be called, we need to register the listener to the event_dispatcher.

Add the below lines in services.yml or services.xml accordingly.

# src/Hkt/EventBundle/Resources/config/services.yml
hkt.event.page_viewed:
    class: Hkt\EventBundle\EventListener\PageViewedListener
Tags = [

20 years of php

Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

First my apologies being late! I hope you all know PHP is celebrating its 20th years of existence in the web.

There is something that makes PHP unique that helps to standout with other languages.

In this opporchunity I would like to thank the creator, the contributors, the maintainers, and all the users (past/present) to make this memorable.

My Story

I got an exposure to learn and use internet in my college days. In those period I look html as a very complex language. I wasn’t aware there exists editors which help you.

Around 2006, iirc Ganesh sir was the one who introduced me to PHP, and then with the guidance and help of Jose Antony.

College life ended in 2007. The search begins to find a job, and I managed to get one.

In 2009, I wrote a blog post A simple Blog using Zend framework 1.9 which got lots of attraction.

I wasn't aware phpdeveloper.org and devzone.zend.com was changing my life and getting more closer to the people in the PHP community.

Some people praised, some disagreed which I came across a tool called phpunit.

In 2010, I attended my first conference osidays and met some of the awesome people like David Coallier, Fabien Potencier, Jacob Vrana, Dave Hall and many more.

Into the world of open-source

I would like to thank Paul M Jones the man behind auraphp.com for all the help, support and mentoring.

Started with stupid questions, and slowly as a small contributor.

Contributing to open-source gave me some confidence and it opened some help from the community.

Thank you Beau D Simensen, CalEvans.

Start a habit of learning, you will not regret joining NomadPHP it is awesome!.

Thank you all, and thanks for all the help and support you guys are showing.

Happy PhPing!

zend feed and guzzle

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

You may have worked with Zend Feed as a standalone component. I don't know whether you have integrated Zend framework Feed with Guzzle as Http Client.

This post is inspired by Matthew Weier O'Phinney, who have mentioned the same on github.

Our composer.json looks

{
    "require": {
        "guzzlehttp/guzzle": "~5.2",
        "zendframework/zend-feed": "~2.3",
        "zendframework/zend-servicemanager": "~2.3"
    },
    "autoload": {
        "psr-0": {
            "": "src/"
        }
    }
}

Zen\Feed\Reader\Reader have a method importRemoteFeed which accepts an instance of Zend\Feed\Reader\Http\ClientInterface.

The Zend\Feed\Reader\Http\ClientInterface have only one method get which returns Zend\Feed\Reader\Http\ResponseInterface.

So any http client that satisfy the interface will work. Let's create them.

<?php
// src/GuzzleClient.php
use GuzzleHttp\Client;
use Zend\Feed\Reader\Http\ClientInterface;

class GuzzleClient implements ClientInterface
{
    protected $guzzle;

    public function __construct(Client $guzzle)
    {
        $this->guzzle = $guzzle;
    }

    public function get($uri)
    {
        $response  = $this->guzzle->get($uri);
        return new GuzzleResponse($response);
    }
}

<?php
// src/GuzzleResponse.php
use GuzzleHttp\Client;
use GuzzleHttp\Message\Response;
use Zend\Feed\Reader\Http\ClientInterface;
use Zend\Feed\Reader\Http\ResponseInterface;
use Zend\Feed\Reader\Reader;

class GuzzleResponse implements ResponseInterface
{
    protected $response;

    public function __construct(Response $response)
    {
        $this->response = $response;
    }

    public function getStatusCode()
    {
        return $this->response->getStatusCode();
    }

    public function getBody()
    {
        return (string) $this->response->getBody();
    }
}

Wiring up,

<?php
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use GuzzleHttp\Client;
use Zend\Feed\Reader\Reader as FeedReader;

$client = new GuzzleClient(new Client());
$feed = FeedReader::importRemoteFeed('http://feeds.feedburner.com/harikt/YKAJ', $client);

echo 'The feed contains ' . $feed->count() . ' entries.' . "\n\n";
foreach ($feed as $entry) {
    echo 'Title: ' . $entry->getTitle() . "\n";
    // echo 'Description: ' . $entry->getDescription() . "\n";
    echo 'URL: ' . $entry->getLink() . "\n\n";
}

You can run from the command line.

Once PSR-7 is accepted, and if both guzzle and zend framework (zf3) is built on top of it, we may not need to do the same.

Happy PhPing.

conduit middleware for php

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Long back, I happened to talk with Beau Simensen about stackphp on #auraphp channel. It was hard for me to digest when I noticed it need symfony/http-kernel and its dependencies.

After a few months, I started to like the middleware approach of slim framework and wanted to push it to aura. But nothing happened there.

Conduit to rescue

Conduit is a Middleware for PHP built by Matthew Weier O'Phinney lead of Zend framework. Conduit supports the current PSR-7 proposal. I believe like the many PSR's, PSR-7 will be a revolution in the PHP world. Conduit is really a micro framework and can grow with your project.

Starting your project

I hope you know about the tool composer and know about PHP 5.3 to follow the tutorial.

mkdir sample-project
cd sample-project
composer require "phly/conduit:0.10.*"
mkdir web

We have created an extra web folder, so it acts as the document root. Create an index.php file in the web folder and lets start serving our first Hello conduit! message.

<?php
require dirname(__DIR__) . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use Phly\Conduit\Middleware;
use Phly\Http\Server;

$app = new Middleware();
$app->pipe('/', function ($request, $response, $next) {
    return $response->write('Hello conduit!')->end();
});
$server = Server::createServer($app,
  $_SERVER,
  $_GET,
  $_POST,
  $_COOKIE,
  $_FILES
);
$server->listen();

Start your web server, or fire your built in PHP server.

php -S localhost:8000 web/index.php -t web

Point your browser to http://localhost:8000 and you can see Hello conduit!.

Middlewares

Conduit route is very limited and will not handle dynamic routing. So we need a router middleware to resuce. Let us build our first router middleware. If you check the docs middleware can be a closure, invokable objects, array callback etc. We will stick with closure in the examples.

The idea is same even if you are using a different library.

Get the path via $request->getUri()->getPath()
Check router if the path is matching
If
- no call the next middleware in stack. ie return $next()
- yes execute the controller and return back the response

Be sure that if you change something you need to return the response. Because Request and Response are immutable.

In-order to build something like the above, we need a router library which can handle routing, and a dispatcher library which can handle the necessary operation when a route is found.

Install the dependencies.

composer require "aura/router:~2.0" "aura/dispatcher:~2.0"

The router middleware will look like as below.

<?php
$router = new \Aura\Router\Router(
    new \Aura\Router\RouteCollection(new \Aura\Router\RouteFactory),
    new \Aura\Router\Generator
);
$dispatcher = new \Aura\Dispatcher\Dispatcher(array(), 'controller', 'action');

$app->pipe(function ($request, $response, $next) use ($router, $dispatcher) {
    $path = $request->getUri()->getPath();
    $route = $router->match($path, $request->getServerParams());
    if (! $route) {
        return $next();
    }
    $params = $route->params;
    $params['request'] = $request;
    $params['response'] = $response;
    $result = $dispatcher->__invoke($params);
    if ($result instanceof \Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface) {
        $response = $result;
    } else {
        $response = $response->write($result)->end();
    }
    return $response;
});

Now your router middleware can handle dynamic things. You can see the full example over gist.

You may need an authentication middleware to check whether the user is authenticated, or a content negotiation middleware to set the corresponding Content-Type header in the response.

I have created a skelton project which have a router middleware, authentication middleware and negotiation middleware with the help of a few libraries. Less libraray means less code to maintain, easy to understand and debug the code behind the scenes.

Today, I noticed one question over reddit Moving to a real framework.. need help with the migration wrote my suggestion how conduit + aura can help.

Play and enjoy!

experimenting on different framework

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Whenever I get some time, I try to learn and experiment on different frameworks. I would like to stay away from pin pointing to the frameworks I have looked, so they don't feel bad.

Long live components

Components are awesome!. You can plug your favourite components to any system. Thank you composer. One strong preference choosing a framework was

It should be built from components

Advantage

I could use those components on a different project without spending long time learning a different API.

Choosing Symfony as a framework

Symfony framework have been used in production for long, big community, and backed by Sensio Labs.
Many of the libraries, cms and frameowrks that exists on packagist rely on symfony components.

Look at phinx a db migration tool, drupal 8 etc. These makes use of components like symfony/console, symfony/http-foundation, symfony/router etc.

Some of the good things I like in symfony console component are its helpers.

Table

<?php
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\Table;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput;

$output = new ConsoleOutput();
$table = new Table($output);
$table
    ->setHeaders(array('ISBN', 'Title', 'Author'))
    ->setRows(array(
        array('99921-58-10-7', 'Divine Comedy', 'Dante Alighieri'),
        array('9971-5-0210-0', 'A Tale of Two Cities', 'Charles Dickens'),
        array('960-425-059-0', 'The Lord of the Rings', 'J. R. R. Tolkien'),
        array('80-902734-1-6', 'And Then There Were None', 'Agatha Christie'),
    ))
;
$table->render();

Progress bar

<?php
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\ProgressBar;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput;

$output = new ConsoleOutput();

// create a new progress bar (50 units)
$progress = new ProgressBar($output, 50);

// start and displays the progress bar
$progress->start();

$i = 0;
while ($i++ < 50) {
    // ... do some work

    // advance the progress bar 1 unit
    $progress->advance();

    // you can also advance the progress bar by more than 1 unit
    // $progress->advance(3);
}

// ensure that the progress bar is at 100%
$progress->finish();

Question

<?php
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\QuestionHelper;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\StringInput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Question\ConfirmationQuestion;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Question\ChoiceQuestion;

$output = new ConsoleOutput();
$helper = new QuestionHelper();
$input = new StringInput('action');
$question = new ConfirmationQuestion('Continue with this action?', false);

if ($helper->ask($input, $output, $question)) {
    $question = new ChoiceQuestion(
        'Please select your favorite color (defaults to red)',
        array('red', 'blue', 'yellow'),
        0
    );
    $question->setErrorMessage('Color %s is invalid.');

    $color = $helper->ask($input, $output, $question);
    $output->writeln('You have just selected: '.$color);
} else {
    $output->writeln('Exiting !');
}

Hidden Passwords

<?php
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\QuestionHelper;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\StringInput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Question\Question;

$output = new ConsoleOutput();
$helper = new QuestionHelper();
$input = new StringInput('action');
$question = new Question('What is the database password?');
$question->setHidden(true);
$question->setHiddenFallback(false);

$password = $helper->ask($input, $output, $question);
$output->writeln('Entered password : ' . $password);

and more.. I hope you will also add symfony/console into your list.

Http Foundation

The symfony/http-foundation is another extensively used component. It is actually Aura.Web + Aura.Session with more session handlers. Used by drupal, laravel etc in core. When working on mixed projects like drupal, laravel etc, it is good to be in your list.

<?php
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;

$request = Request::createFromGlobals();
$response = new Response(
    'Hello symfony',
    Response::HTTP_OK,
    array('content-type' => 'text/html')
);
$response->send();

Finder

Another wonderful component is the finder.

<?php
use Symfony\Component\Finder\Finder;

$finder = new Finder();

$iterator = $finder
  ->files()
  ->depth(0)
  ->in(__DIR__);

foreach ($iterator as $file) {
    print $file->getRealpath()."\n";
}

Filesystem

Filesystem is another nice component which helps you to copy, rename, create directories.

Complex components

So far, the above components are easy to use. One of the complex component is the security component. It tries to do authentication and authorization.

As a person who have worked with zend framework, I love how authentication and authorization is done. I do love the latest Aura.Auth library.

If you are using symfony as a framework, there is a bundle to rescue. Yes, FOSUserBundle. I believe most of them who use symfony will be using it.

Part of the complexity may be because symfony security was based on Spring security from Java. I am not sure why Fabien choose Spring when there were good ones in the PHP world, but I hope there is a reason behind it.

Conclusion : Symfony as a framework is nice!.

improving environment value in aura v2

Fri, 12 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Aura v2 framework probably have missed a better way to handle environment variables. But that doesn't make you stall. Things can be improved ;-).

Assume you are already using aura framework and is at root of the project.

We are going to make use of vlucas/phpdotenv , alternatives are there if you are interested to experiment.

composer require vlucas/phpdotenv

Edit the file config/_env.php and add Dotenv::load(/path/to/.env); to the first line. If you have not modified anything it will look as below

<?php
// {PROJECT_PATH}/config/_env.php
Dotenv::load(__DIR__);
// set the mode here only if it is not already set.
// this allows for setting via web server, shell script, etc.
if (! isset($_ENV['AURA_CONFIG_MODE'])) {
    $_ENV['AURA_CONFIG_MODE'] = 'dev';
}

Don't forget to create the .env file.

You are done!

Now you can easily make use of environment variables easily from the configuration files.

Below is an example.

<?php
namespace Aura\Framework_Project\_Config;
// config/Common.php

use Aura\Di\Config;
use Aura\Di\Container;

class Common extends Config
{
    public function define(Container $di)
    {
        $di->params['Aura\Sql\ExtendedPdo'] = array(
            'dsn' => getenv('dsn'),
            'username' => getenv('username'),
            'password' => getenv('password'),
        );
    }

    // more code

speedup configuration aura v2

Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Aura v2 added auto resolution in-order to help lazy people writing configuration manually. Even though it was introduced to help, it introduced a few issues.

So auto resolution will be disabled in the future. Some of the complains/suggestions are how to easily write the di configuration.

So introducing you FOA.DiConfig

Installation

composer require foa/di-config

Usage

vendor/bin/di-config-dump
Usage : vendor/bin/di-config-dump /real/path/to/file.php
Usage : vendor/bin/di-config-dump /real/path/to/directory

Example 1

Let's assume you have

<?php
// src/Vendor/World.php
namespace Vendor;

class World
{
    public function __construct(Baz $baz)
    {
    }
}

<?php
// src/Vendor/Baz.php
namespace Vendor;

class Baz
{
}

Now you can make use of

vendor/bin/di-config-dump src/Vendor/World.php

will output

<?php
$di->params['Vendor\World']['baz'] = $di->lazyNew('Vendor\Baz');

You can also pass directory path instead of file. It will read the files and display the configuration.

Example 2

Let us look into another example

<?php
// src/Vendor/Hello.php
namespace Vendor;

class Hello
{
    public function __construct(
        \Aura\Web\Response $response,
        \Aura\Web\Request $request,
        \Aura\Router\Router $router,
        World $word
    ) {
    }
}

vendor/bin/di-config-dump src/Vendor/Hello.php

will output

$di->params['Vendor\Hello']['response'] = $di->lazyGet('aura/web-kernel:response');
$di->params['Vendor\Hello']['request'] = $di->lazyGet('aura/web-kernel:request');
$di->params['Vendor\Hello']['router'] = $di->lazyGet('aura/web-kernel:router');
$di->params['Vendor\Hello']['word'] = $di->lazyNew('Vendor\World');

If you look carefully the Aura\Web\Response, Aura\Web\Request and Aura\Router\Router are making use of lazyGet which gets the shared instance of the Aura.Web_Kernel .

If you are not using inside the framework just pass something as 2nd argument.

vendor/bin/di-config-dump src/Vendor/Hello.php h
$di->params['Vendor\Hello']['response'] = $di->lazyNew('Aura\Web\Response');
$di->params['Vendor\Hello']['request'] = $di->lazyNew('Aura\Web\Request');
$di->params['Vendor\Hello']['router'] = $di->lazyNew('Aura\Router\Router');
$di->params['Vendor\Hello']['word'] = $di->lazyNew('Vendor\World');

Please make sure all the files need to be autoloadable in-order to generate this.

If you like to improve something fork and contribute.

I have purposefully left not to make use of Aura.Cli in this library. Not sure if we need to integrate or not.

getting started with aura v2

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday aura framework v2 stable released.

Lots of complains about documentation or missing documentation. So this is a quick start. Probably a five minutes walk through. Learn and change to make it better.

Creating your project

Create the project using composer.

composer create-project aura/web-project quick-start
cd quick-start

The minimal framework don't come with any sort of view integrated. Let us use aura/view, the two step templating with the help of foa/html-view-bundle.

composer require "foa/html-view-bundle:~2.0"

We will be keeping all the templates in templates folder where views in templates/views and layout in templates/layouts.

mkdir -p templates/{views,layouts}

Edit config/Common.php and define service for view.

<?php
public function define(Container $di)
{
    $di->set('view', $di->lazyNew('Aura\View\View'));
}

add a way to set the path to templates. Assuming you have templates folder in the root. There is no finder in aura/view to increase the performance of loading and rendering templates. For a quick hack let us iterate through the directory and set all the views and layouts to its registry.

<?php
public function modify(Container $di)
{
    // more code
    $this->defineTemplates($di);
}

public function defineTemplates($di)
{
    $view = $di->get('view');
    $view_registry = $view->getViewRegistry();
    $view_directory = dirname(__DIR__) . '/templates/views/';
    $iterator = new \DirectoryIterator($view_directory);
    foreach ($iterator as $fileinfo) {
        if ($fileinfo->isFile()) {
            $view_registry->set($fileinfo->getBasename('.php'), $fileinfo->getPathname());
        }
    }

    $layout_registry = $view->getLayoutRegistry();
    $layout_directory = dirname(__DIR__) . '/templates/layouts/';
    $iterator = new \DirectoryIterator($layout_directory);
    foreach ($iterator as $fileinfo) {
        if ($fileinfo->isFile()) {
            $layout_registry->set($fileinfo->getBasename('.php'), $fileinfo->getPathname());
        }
    }
}

Edit modifyDispatcher method to

<?php
public function modifyWebDispatcher($di)
{
    $dispatcher = $di->get('aura/web-kernel:dispatcher');

    $view = $di->get('view');
    $response = $di->get('aura/web-kernel:response');
    $request = $di->get('aura/web-kernel:request');
    $dispatcher->setObject('hello', function () use ($view, $response, $request) {
        $name = $request->query->get('name', 'Aura');
        $view->setView('hello');
        $view->setLayout('default');
        $view->setData(array('name' => $name));
        $response->content->set($view->__invoke());
    });
}

Create your basic template templates/views/hello.php

<?php // templates/views/hello.php ?>
<?php $this->title()->set("Hello from aura"); ?>
<p>Hello <?= $this->name; ?></p>

and a very basic layout

<?php // templates/layouts/default.php ?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en-us">
  <head>
    <?php echo $this->title(); ?>
  </head>
  <body>
    <?php echo $this->getContent(); ?>
  </body>
</html>

Let us fire the php server

php -S localhost:8000 web/index.php

and point your browser to http://localhost:8000 .

Probably very simple way how to use aura as a micro framework!.

You can see the example over github.

What is next?

Read Aura Framework v2 : The missing Manual and report/contribute to the book.

aura input form inside slim framework

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Rob Allen wrote about Integrating ZF2 forms into Slim. I did write how you can use Aura.Input and Aura.Html to create standalone form for PHP. This time I felt I should write about integrating aura input inside Slim.

Let us install a few dependencies aura/input for building the form and aura/html for the html helpers. You of-course can skip not to use aura/html and build your own helper. I also purposefully left not integrating the powerful Aura.Filter , but you are not limited to integrate any validator you love inside Aura.Input .

The full composer.json is as below.

{
    "require": {
        "slim/slim": "2.*",
        "aura/html": "2.0.0",
        "aura/input": "1.*"
    },
    "autoload":{
        "psr-0":{
            "": "src/"
        }
    }
}

We will keep ContactForm.php under src folder. ie why you see the autoload in composer.json. The form looks as below.

<?php
// src/ContactForm.php

use Aura\Input\Form;

class ContactForm extends Form
{
    public function init()
    {
        $this->setField('name')
            ->setAttribs([
                'id' => 'contact[name]',
                'name' => 'contact[name]',
                'size' => 20,
                'maxlength' => 20,
            ]);
        $this->setField('email')
            ->setAttribs([
                'id' => 'contact[email]',
                'name' => 'contact[email]',
                'size' => 20,
                'maxlength' => 20,
            ]);
        $this->setField('url')
            ->setAttribs([
                'id' => 'contact[url]',
                'name' => 'contact[url]',
                'size' => 20,
                'maxlength' => 20,
            ]);
        $this->setField('message', 'textarea')
            ->setAttribs([
                'id' => 'contact[message]',
                'name' => 'contact[message]',
                'cols' => 40,
                'rows' => 5,
            ]);
        $this->setField('submit', 'submit')
            ->setAttribs(['value' => 'send']);

        $filter = $this->getFilter();

        $filter->setRule(
            'name',
            'Name must be alphabetic only.',
            function ($value) {
                return ctype_alpha($value);
            }
        );

        $filter->setRule(
            'email',
            'Enter a valid email address',
            function ($value) {
                return filter_var($value, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);
            }
        );

        $filter->setRule(
            'url',
            'Enter a valid url',
            function ($value) {
                return filter_var($value, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL);
            }
        );

        $filter->setRule(
            'message',
            'Message should be more than 7 characters',
            function ($value) {
                if (strlen($value) > 7) {
                    return true;
                }
                return false;
            }
        );
    }
}

The entry point web/index.php looks as below.

<?php
// web/index.php

use Aura\Input\Builder;
use Aura\Input\Filter;

require dirname(__DIR__) . '/vendor/autoload.php';
$app = new \Slim\Slim(array(
    'templates' => dirname(__DIR__) . '/templates'
));
$app->map('/contact', function () use ($app) {
    $form = new ContactForm(new Builder(), new Filter());
    if ($app->request->isPost()) {
        $form->fill($app->request->post('contact'));
        if ($form->filter()) {
            echo "Yes successfully validated and filtered";
            var_dump($data);
            $app->halt();
        }
    }
    $app->render('contact.php', array('form' => $form));
})->via('GET', 'POST')
->name('contact');

$app->run();

The template contact.php resides under templates folder.

<?php
// templates/contact.php

use Aura\Html\HelperLocatorFactory;

$factory = new HelperLocatorFactory();
$helper = $factory->newInstance();

function showFieldErrors($form, $name) {
    $errors = $form->getMessages($name);
    $str = '';
    if ($errors) {
        $str .= '<ul>';
        foreach ($errors as $error) {
            $str .= '<li>' . $error . '</li>';
        }
        $str .= '</ul>';
    }
    return $str;
}
?>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Aura input form, inside slim framework</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form method="post" action="<?php echo $app->urlFor('contact'); ?>" enctype="multipart/form-data" >
        <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
            <tr>
                <td>Name : </td>
                <td>
                <?php
                    echo $helper->input($form->get('name'));
                    echo showFieldErrors($form, 'name');
                ?>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Email : </td>
                <td>
                <?php
                    echo $helper->input($form->get('email'));
                    echo showFieldErrors($form, 'email');
                ?>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Url : </td>
                <td>
                <?php
                    echo $helper->input($form->get('url'));
                    echo showFieldErrors($form, 'url');
                ?>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Message : </td>
                <td>
                <?php
                    echo $helper->input($form->get('message'));
                    echo showFieldErrors($form, 'message');
                ?>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td colspan="2">
                <?php
                echo $helper->input($form->get('submit'));
                ?>
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

NB: If you need to reuse the functionality of showFieldErrors keep it on a separate file and require it.

Thank you Andrew Smith, Christian Schorn for the proof reading and tips provided.

I hope you will find something interesting in the integration!.

Download and play with code from github

aura framework v2 the missing manual

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Aura has an awesome collection of libraries for different purpose.

It has components for authentication, cli, request and response, router, dependency injection container, dispatcher, html, view, event handlers, validation, extended pdo, query builders, sql schema, marshal, build and modify uri, http, internationalization, session, forms, includer.

If you are new to aura, there is probably something you may want to figure out yourself.

Some of the components have version 1 and version 2 releases. There is a question of which branch corresponds to which version.

The v1 packages are in develop branch and v2 over develop-2 branch.

There are a few changes in v1 to v2. It is easy to understand when you look into the composer.json or if you know aura v2 follows psr-4 directory structure than the v1 that followed psr-0.

If you see a package "aura/installer-default": "1.0.0" in the require of composer.json it is for sure v1.

Composer installs every package in the vendor folder. The name of the package installed will be the package name. So basically it installs vendor/aura/<package-name> .

In aura framework v1 we have some specific folder structure and it was before composer becomes a standard. So when composer became a standard we added a way to install the framework specific installations in package folder and the rest of the library installation (other than aura framework) in the same way as composer did.

So was the existence of aura/installer-default in v1 package. In v2 we moved to composer assisted two stage configuration.

v2 Framework

There exists a micro framework/full stack framework for v2. But things are hard to find when you are new to aura and when github organization have more than 30 repositories.

[Aura framework]((https://github.com/auraphp/Aura.Framework_Project) is built on top of aura libraries, and the library docs applies to the framework also. But people new to aura may be having hard time to find the specific documentation or may be stuck sometime. I don’t know whether my thoughts are right or wrong.

Documentation is one of the hardest problem when newer versions are released. Say 1.0.0 released, 1.1.0 … although the documentation is there in the installed repo, it is probably hard to make things online.

I was talking with Paul M Jones regarding the documentation lately, and he too shared some concerns. Talking with him gave me some inspiration to start the missing manual for the aura framework.

Goal

let people read and learn
promote aura with good documentation
at the sametime, to make a living

Yes, I am independent freelance php developer. It was a sad story that I don’t want to recall how I became a freelancer by chance.

Before my freelancing, I was down for a few months, not physically but mentally which has impacted my life with some ups and downs. But now I really love working as an independent contractor.

About the book

You can find the book over github licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

The book is available free to read online. If you find a typo, or feel something can be improved open an issue or send a pull request .

If you find it interesting you should consider buying a copy from leanpub to show your support to the project.

Thank you.

hidden gems of composer

Thu, 29 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I hope everyone in the PHP world is aware of composer the dependency management tool that gives an end to Pear.

We can look into some of the hidden gems of composer. Some of them are already documented in the composer docs.

Bug Fixing :

Documented over Loading a package from a VCS repository

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "vcs",
            "url": "https://github.com/igorw/monolog"
        }
    ],
    "require": {
        "monolog/monolog": "dev-bugfix"
    }
}

The above example assume you have pushed your code to github. But you can also make use of the local directory.

Assume you are organizing your code something like

home
└── github.com
    └── harikt
        ├── Aura.Router
        ├── Aura.Web
        └── monolog

Now on your project you could make use of the patches you are working on the local directory without pushing it to github.

Note : You should commit the changes though.

{
    "minimum-stability":"dev",
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "vcs",
            "url": "/home/github.com/harikt/monolog"            
        }
    ],
    "require": {
        "monolog/monolog": "dev-bugfix"
    }
}

And you can also disable packagist for fast look up.

Experimenting your own packages

I did add packages in packagist for testing. This is really a wrong way to do, you are adding more packages that makes other people's life hard to find a useful package.

What I learned is, you can do in a different way. See docs under Package

So your composer.json will look something like this.

{
    "minimum-stability":"dev",
    "repositories": [        
        {
            "type": "package",
            "package": {
                "name": "harikt/experiments",
                "version": "3.1.7",               
                "source": {
                    "type": "git",
                    "url": "/home/github.com/harikt/experiments",
                    "reference": "master"
                },
                "autoload": {
                    "classmap": ["libs/"]
                }
            }
        }
    ],
    "require": {        
        "harikt/experiments": "3.1.*"
    }
}

That's for now.

Happy PhPing!

extending plates with aura html helpers

Tue, 13 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Aura.Html provides HTML escapers and helpers, including form input helpers, that can be used in any template, view, or presentation system.

In this post I would like to give you a short introduction to Aura.Html and how you could use with Plates a native php templating system like Aura.View.

Aura.Html was extracted from Aura.View helper functions of version 1, when we at aura noticed that people who uses Aura.Input may need some html helper functions and they may not be using a templating like Aura.View, but some other templating system.

You can see an example of a simple contact form with Aura.Input.

Installation

The easiest way to install Aura.Html is via composer. Let us create our composer.json

{
    "require": {
        "aura/html": "2.*@dev",
        "league/plates": "2.*"
    }
}

One of the good thing about Plates is you can create extensions.

Let us create an extension that can make use of Aura.Html helpers inside Plates. Any Plates extension should implement League\Plates\Extension\ExtensionInterface which contains a getFunctions method which returns the functions available within your templates.

We are going to name it as AuraHtmlExtension and call functions as aurahtml() or html() via the template.

<?php
use League\Plates\Extension\ExtensionInterface;
use Aura\Html\HelperLocator;

class AuraHtmlExtension implements ExtensionInterface
{
    public $engine;

    public $template;

    protected $helper;

    public function __construct(HelperLocator $helper)
    {
        $this->helper = $helper;
    }

    public function getFunctions()
    {
        return array(
            'aurahtml' => 'callHelper',
            'html' => 'callHelper'
        );
    }

    public function callHelper()
    {
        return $this->helper;
    }
}

But you are not limited to name it as the same html tag helpers and form helpers.

So that will make the helpers look native Plates helpers. Thank you for this functionality to plugin the helpers.

<?php
use League\Plates\Extension\ExtensionInterface;
use Aura\Html\HelperLocator;

class AuraHtmlExtension implements ExtensionInterface
{
    public $engine;

    public $template;

    protected $helper;

    public function __construct(HelperLocator $helper)
    {
        $this->helper = $helper;
    }

    public function getFunctions()
    {
        return array(
            'anchor' => 'anchor'
            // ... more functions same as aura
        );
    }
    
    public function anchor($href, $text, array $attr = array())
    {
        return $this->helper->anchor($href, $text, array $attr);
    }
}

Let us use the basic example in plates and use aura html helper to show the system works as expected.

Create the templates in a templates folder or change the path in Plates Engine.

Profile Template

<?php
<!-- profile.php -->

<?php $this->layout('template') ?>

<?php $this->title = 'User Profile' ?>

<h1>User Profile</h1>
<p>Hello, <?=$this->e($this->name)?></p>
<div>
<?php
echo $this->aurahtml()->input(array(
    'type'    => 'color',
    'name'    => 'name',
    'value'   => 'value',
    'attribs' => array(),
    'options' => array(),
));

// <input type="color" name="name" value="value" />
echo $this->html()->input(array(
    'type'    => 'date',
    'name'    => 'name',
    'value'   => 'value',
    'attribs' => array(),
    'options' => array(),
));

// <input type="date" name="name" value="value" />
?>
</div>

Layout Template

<?php
<!-- template.php -->

<html>
<head>
    <title><?=$this->title?></title>
</head>

<body>

<?=$this->content()?>

</body>
</html>

Autoload Extension

Make sure AuraHtmlExtension can be autoloaded. We can add in composer.json

    // rest of the code    
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "": "path/to/aura/html/extension/"
        }
    }

Bootstrapping and Rendering

<?php
// test.php file
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';
$engine = new \League\Plates\Engine( __DIR__ . '/templates');

// Create a new template
$template = new \League\Plates\Template($engine);
$factory = new \Aura\Html\HelperLocatorFactory();
$helper = $factory->newInstance();
$engine->loadExtension(new AuraHtmlExtension($helper));

// Assign a variable to the template
$template->name = 'Jonathan';

// Render the template
echo $template->render('profile');

If you run php test.php you will see something like this rendered.

<html>
<head>
    <title>User Profile</title>
</head>

<body>


<h1>User Profile</h1>
<p>
Hello, Jonathan
</p>
<div>
<input type="color" name="name" value="value" />
<input type="date" name="name" value="value" />
</div>

</body>
</html>
</body></title>

Thank you and Happy PhPing!