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I think AC is correct:

PHP 5 introduces the "final" keyword to declare final members and methods. Methods and members declared final cannot be overridden by sub-classes.

overload has a specific meaning.

I think AC is correct:

PHP 5 introduces the "final" keyword to declare final members and methods. Methods and members declared final cannot be overridden by sub-classes.

overload has a specific meaning.

I'd like to introduce you to PHP, a rich environment, released as free software. It includes a programming language, an interactive shell(if you type code and then EOL), and extensive graphing capability. What's more, PHP comes with a spectacular collection of functions for mathematical and statistical manipulations, and everything in the whole world you could wnat to do -- with still more capabilities available in optional packages.

PHP can do anything you want to do, and for free, and it's extremely fast with zend optimizer. I use it for all my shell scripts as well.

#!/usr/bin/php -q
oh yeah

Chris

I'd like to introduce you to PHP, a rich environment, released as free software. It includes a programming language, an interactive shell(if you type code and then EOL), and extensive graphing capability. What's more, PHP comes with a spectacular collection of functions for mathematical and statistical manipulations, and everything in the whole world you could wnat to do -- with still more capabilities available in optional packages.

PHP can do anything you want to do, and for free, and it's extremely fast with zend optimizer. I use it for all my shell scripts as well.

#!/usr/bin/php -q
oh yeah

Chris

I'd like to introduce you to PHP, a rich environment, released as free software. It includes a programming language, an interactive shell(if you type code and then EOL), and extensive graphing capability. What's more, PHP comes with a spectacular collection of functions for mathematical and statistical manipulations, and everything in the whole world you could wnat to do -- with still more capabilities available in optional packages.

PHP can do anything you want to do, and for free, and it's extremely fast with zend optimizer. I use it for all my shell scripts as well.

#!/usr/bin/php -q
oh yeah

Chris

Here: CVSROOT/avail

S

PHP was written in C!

Maybe technically true; I don't recall whether Rasmus called PHP/FI PHP. Still, the original project that eventually became modern PHP was a set of Perl scripts. See History of PHP and Related Projects for more information.

To easily generate web forms from any database, we are using PHP with the help of some powerful framework like Smarty and the ones coming from PEAR.

In particular, have a look to QuickForm or to DB_DataObject_FormBuilder .

You can find nice tutorials on these technologies :
http://www.thelinuxconsultancy.co.uk/quickform.htm l
http://www.sklar.com/talks/quickform-oscon2004
http://www.21st.de/downloads/rapidprototyping.pdf

With these frameworks, you begin to reach the productivity of RAD tools "à la" MS-Access PowerBuilder, FrameBuilder, and co . But still keeping the advantages of a web deploiement and the avantage of OSS.

Hope this helps.

To easily generate web forms from any database, we are using PHP with the help of some powerful framework like Smarty and the ones coming from PEAR.

In particular, have a look to QuickForm or to DB_DataObject_FormBuilder .

You can find nice tutorials on these technologies :
http://www.thelinuxconsultancy.co.uk/quickform.htm l
http://www.sklar.com/talks/quickform-oscon2004
http://www.21st.de/downloads/rapidprototyping.pdf

With these frameworks, you begin to reach the productivity of RAD tools "à la" MS-Access PowerBuilder, FrameBuilder, and co . But still keeping the advantages of a web deploiement and the avantage of OSS.

Hope this helps.

To easily generate web forms from any database, we are using PHP with the help of some powerful framework like Smarty and the ones coming from PEAR.

In particular, have a look to QuickForm or to DB_DataObject_FormBuilder .

You can find nice tutorials on these technologies :
http://www.thelinuxconsultancy.co.uk/quickform.htm l
http://www.sklar.com/talks/quickform-oscon2004
http://www.21st.de/downloads/rapidprototyping.pdf

With these frameworks, you begin to reach the productivity of RAD tools "à la" MS-Access PowerBuilder, FrameBuilder, and co . But still keeping the advantages of a web deploiement and the avantage of OSS.

Hope this helps.

To easily generate web forms from any database, we are using PHP with the help of some powerful framework like Smarty and the ones coming from PEAR.

In particular, have a look to QuickForm or to DB_DataObject_FormBuilder .

You can find nice tutorials on these technologies :
http://www.thelinuxconsultancy.co.uk/quickform.htm l
http://www.sklar.com/talks/quickform-oscon2004
http://www.21st.de/downloads/rapidprototyping.pdf

With these frameworks, you begin to reach the productivity of RAD tools "à la" MS-Access PowerBuilder, FrameBuilder, and co . But still keeping the advantages of a web deploiement and the avantage of OSS.

Hope this helps.

Oh, sure it's got an explicit full-on syntax, but I'm comfortable with that. What I was most impressed with was there was a vast amount of standard data types and APIs available to accomplish a very huge amount of stuff. Looking at C++ and the like, the APIs are anything but cross-platform. (Any helpful links to a good C++ API (not GUI toolkits) which is both POSIX and Windows might make me use that some more.)

Try Qt. In its current version (v3.x), the GUI and non-GUI APIs are somewhat merged, but v4 (currently in progress, due out soon) is supposed to have full separation between the two. Even now, it still works. It's write-once, compile-anywhere (Linux, Windows, Mac), GPLed if you're writing GPLed code for Linux or Mac, and has an OO library and design that is simply gorgeous. It's like C++ done by people who worship Java but hate Swing. :-)

KDE, Opera, and various others use Qt, so you HAVE seen it in action.

For the type of code I was writing at the time (oddly enough, server side stuff behind a web front-end, no GUI) I found I could always find a standard routine to do what in the past I've had to implement from scratch.

If you're doing web apps, definitely look at PHP. I use it for all of my web work, and love it. The new PHP5 has a reworked object model that is very Java-ish, but also has a lot of other features that make life simpler. I've also started using their Smarty template engine, which is a godsend (a web front end IS a GUI, just a different kind of GUI), and there's a huge online archive of code you can use in the PEAR archive.

Oh, sure it's got an explicit full-on syntax, but I'm comfortable with that. What I was most impressed with was there was a vast amount of standard data types and APIs available to accomplish a very huge amount of stuff. Looking at C++ and the like, the APIs are anything but cross-platform. (Any helpful links to a good C++ API (not GUI toolkits) which is both POSIX and Windows might make me use that some more.)

Try Qt. In its current version (v3.x), the GUI and non-GUI APIs are somewhat merged, but v4 (currently in progress, due out soon) is supposed to have full separation between the two. Even now, it still works. It's write-once, compile-anywhere (Linux, Windows, Mac), GPLed if you're writing GPLed code for Linux or Mac, and has an OO library and design that is simply gorgeous. It's like C++ done by people who worship Java but hate Swing. :-)

KDE, Opera, and various others use Qt, so you HAVE seen it in action.

For the type of code I was writing at the time (oddly enough, server side stuff behind a web front-end, no GUI) I found I could always find a standard routine to do what in the past I've had to implement from scratch.

If you're doing web apps, definitely look at PHP. I use it for all of my web work, and love it. The new PHP5 has a reworked object model that is very Java-ish, but also has a lot of other features that make life simpler. I've also started using their Smarty template engine, which is a godsend (a web front end IS a GUI, just a different kind of GUI), and there's a huge online archive of code you can use in the PEAR archive.

Oh, sure it's got an explicit full-on syntax, but I'm comfortable with that. What I was most impressed with was there was a vast amount of standard data types and APIs available to accomplish a very huge amount of stuff. Looking at C++ and the like, the APIs are anything but cross-platform. (Any helpful links to a good C++ API (not GUI toolkits) which is both POSIX and Windows might make me use that some more.)

Try Qt. In its current version (v3.x), the GUI and non-GUI APIs are somewhat merged, but v4 (currently in progress, due out soon) is supposed to have full separation between the two. Even now, it still works. It's write-once, compile-anywhere (Linux, Windows, Mac), GPLed if you're writing GPLed code for Linux or Mac, and has an OO library and design that is simply gorgeous. It's like C++ done by people who worship Java but hate Swing. :-)

KDE, Opera, and various others use Qt, so you HAVE seen it in action.

For the type of code I was writing at the time (oddly enough, server side stuff behind a web front-end, no GUI) I found I could always find a standard routine to do what in the past I've had to implement from scratch.

If you're doing web apps, definitely look at PHP. I use it for all of my web work, and love it. The new PHP5 has a reworked object model that is very Java-ish, but also has a lot of other features that make life simpler. I've also started using their Smarty template engine, which is a godsend (a web front end IS a GUI, just a different kind of GUI), and there's a huge online archive of code you can use in the PEAR archive.

media wiki is built on PHP, served from a webserver and keeps its data in a database. Currently I am running Apache and mysql. I believe their are windows ports of both available, as well php. Here are a few links.

http://us4.php.net/manual/en/install.windows.php
http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.0.html
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia/
http://www.cygwin.com/

I have not heard of anyone installing it on windows, so if you do get it running you may want to consider documenting your results and post it somewhere for others who want to follow in your footsteps. If you decide that it is to much effort, Linux generally installs very well on older hardware that can be had for virtually pennies.

Oh, and I feel safe enough from a slashdotting now that the thread activity has decreased, here is my website http://butsuri.homelinux.net/. It is on a dynamic IP but freely hosted through dyndns.

But I thought that it was only MS Access DBs running on Windows 2000 that crashed

Ummm...I saw reference to ADODB in your parent post--is that not Active Data Objects (A Microsoft-only technology)? Also, there is nothing in the reported error suggesting MySQL was the database either. Remember, PHP is available on Windows and supports connectivity to many different database backends, so as far as we know the site is running PHP on Win2K with an MS Access database connecting via ADO/ODBC (yes it is a possible combination).

Seems to me, however, that the above configuration would be like building a sturdy brick house on a pile of wet sand--it's bound to sink when loaded to any degree...

Until you actually visit FreeBSD.
Or visit Ximian
Or PERL.
Or PHP.

Why not bitch about WINE, Transmeta or any of the others that are just the corporate/official logo?

$arr[index] will give an error something like:

undefined index 'index' at line $line_number_of_error

in any version of PHP from about 4.1 upwards and is shown in error messages. It's not a mistake it's a syntax error as shown in the manuals arrays page :)

Remember: there is always BabySQL, which plays nicely with Toy Languages.

I still wonder why most provider have not long ago switched to SQLite, which serves the purpose MySQL is usually used for much better.

PHP has had a database abstraction library as a loadable/compilable extension for years (dbx). It has a very small function list, which I consider a strength rather than a weakness, since it allows everything actually needed to interact with an SQL DBMS. I personally really like DBX, and wish it was always enabled by default.

Also, PHP 5 has a new abstraction library which is available in PECL, called PDO.

Yes, I know these are not enabled "by default", but given that Perl's largest DB abstraction library is also a module, rather than a core component, any complaint vis-a-vis Perl/PHP DB abstraction is moot.

PHP has had a database abstraction library as a loadable/compilable extension for years (dbx). It has a very small function list, which I consider a strength rather than a weakness, since it allows everything actually needed to interact with an SQL DBMS. I personally really like DBX, and wish it was always enabled by default.

Also, PHP 5 has a new abstraction library which is available in PECL, called PDO.

Yes, I know these are not enabled "by default", but given that Perl's largest DB abstraction library is also a module, rather than a core component, any complaint vis-a-vis Perl/PHP DB abstraction is moot.

--Thott

This only works in PHP 4.1.0 and later. $HTTP_GET_VARS and $HTTP_POST_VARS will work in all(?) PHP4 versions.

I spent a fair amount of time this morning debubbing a simple script that worked on my test server (PHP 4.3.4), but failed on the production server (at a client's hosting company). After a while, I found out that it was PHP 4.0.x... ug

<Directory /home/me/public_html/oldphp>
php_admin_flag register_globals 1
</Directory>

Maybe I'm just tired, but to find PEAR::HTML_Table you should try this link instead. ;)

Amen.

Also useful would be a "script and config file snippets" catalog with short examples of how to config software to do specific tasks.

[E.G.: You wanna add another IP address to an apache web server so it can respond with site #1 on IP #1 and site #2 on IP #2? Here are the config files you need to modify, here are the lines you need to add/modify and where to put them, here's what else you need to look at to make sure this doesn't open any vulnerabilities, and here's where you are likely to have problems with this change screwing up the rest of your server. This sort of thing would also be most useful as a wiki.]

In fact, Wiki may be the best way to do **all** OSS docs - if the software is user-contributed, why not the docs, too? Besides, you wouldn't need to become a maintainer to contribute, just add the "cheat sheets" and notes for the tiny little part you figgered out so everyone can benefit. The online documentation for PHP used to have something VERY similar to this where they allowed users to add comments (with questions, answers or snippets) to the bottom of doc pages. The comment sections are still there, but they are empty and it looks like they were removed when PHP5 released a few weeks ago.

Someone call the LDP and ask them when they are going to get their boo-tays in gear on this.

The major feature that draws people to Apache2 is threading. On Windows where most basic libraries are, and must be, threadsafe, Apache2 does actually make sense and it would be good to work out the kinks on that platform.

Just a FYI, barring any setbacks the PHP 5.0.1 image extension will again have GIF write support and it's always had GIF read support. Also, keep in mind that PHP bundles its own modified version of the GD library (from boutell), it's even recommended/preferred. Minor versions of PHP don't add new features but this is seen as a worthy exception.

As for the code submitted in this thread, just use function_exists() on a GD2 specific function, such as imagecreatetruecolor(), much more efficient ;)

/**
* Get which version of GD is installed, if any.
*
* Returns the version (1 or 2) of the GD extension.
*/
function gdVersion() {
if (! extension_loaded('gd')) { return; }
ob_start();
phpinfo(8);
$info=ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
$info=stristr($info, 'gd version');
preg_match('/\d/', $info, $gd);
return $gd[0];
} // end function gdVersion()

// The function is easy to use.

if ($gdv = gdVersion()) {
if ($gdv >=2) {
echo 'imageCreateTruecolor() and imageCopyResampled() functions may be used.';
} else {
echo 'imageCreate() and imageCopyResized() functions must be used.';
}
} else {
echo "The GD extension isn't loaded.";
}

I don't really see how this is possibly funny. This is how it's done for *huge* projects in the real world, have templates for the different browsers and let that browser detection sort out which template to display. Hell, use smarty and do it for your private stuff as well even if you don't use different templates for different browsers. Separating code from presentation is a Good Thing(TM). You can fiddle with the look as much as you want, without even touching that PHP stuff.

Arghh.....

That argument is SO old and so wrong. It would be true -IF- Zend were the only one able/allowed to make an optimizer, but... They aren't! So what then?

Rewrite your first sentence:
"The thing that bothers me about PHP is that it is Free... unless you want it to run fast."
And add a few more links because in addition to what Zend have we have:
ionCube A commercial, closed source but free php accelerator.
APC Free and open-source compiler cache.

There are SEVERAL ways to run php code -fast- and an optimizer is just one of the things you can use. But a compiler would most probably be A LOT better than just an optimizer. Seem to be that you are just fooled by some (Zend's) marketing department.

Why someone have given you +2 Insightful is a question tho?....

Zend isn't needed. There's APC if plain PHP isn't fast enough for you - which should only be the case on really busy sites.

But yeah, as has been pointed out, Rasmus founded PHP/FI by himself. Zend is just a group in Israel that's contributed some code to the project and that also markets the Zend add-on. If you're a fan of the OO stuff that's been shoveled into PHP you owe a lot to Zend; if you prefer the procedural style that's always been well-handled by PHP, Rasmus is your man.

Wow... that's two of you who have conclusively demonstrated that you've never bothered to read the license. That's not a couple hours of reading, nor is it hard to understand. As far as licenses go, that's practically "See Spot Run". Read it, both of you, before asking any further questions.

I mean, who the fuck actually uses PHP?
I mean, apart from php.net ???
And I've heard rumours they might be moving to asp.net...

Oh I see what you are saying. In that case, I would point you to something like the GTK bindings for PHP. Ther are some example DB apps here. For a GUI builder you can use Glade, the PHP-GTK site has some tools to allow PHP to use Glade files.

Oh I see what you are saying. In that case, I would point you to something like the GTK bindings for PHP. Ther are some example DB apps here. For a GUI builder you can use Glade, the PHP-GTK site has some tools to allow PHP to use Glade files.

PEAR has done a great job in keeping many different packages updated for PHP developers. Their Database Abstration Layer provides great multply database support while still including features a good database needs.

PEAR has done a great job in keeping many different packages updated for PHP developers. Their Database Abstration Layer provides great multply database support while still including features a good database needs.

I personally wouldn't have a problem with someone coming into my house and copying everything in it.

Let me guess... You are either a kid, or a wage slave. You *might* be in college. You've never produced your own intellectual property, and you've certainly never tried to make a living at it.

I have, and I do. I'm a big advocate for Open Source software. I use Linux. I give away lots of source code and documentation entries, mostly in the area of PHP programming. I'm a heavy user of php-gtk and love the community.

I also make my living writing software. Much of what I write I'll never give away without a price tag attached.

Distributing some of my software with DRM enabled allows me to *afford* my other contributions to the community. It pays my bills, provides food for myself and my 5 children, and lets me live comfortably.

Would you *really* want to take that away? Would you *really* want to take away my ability to help the hundreds of teachers in California that my software assists?

DRM technology is available, and I should have the right to use it. You certainly have the right to not buy it.

But, if you were to, in some way, crack my certificate-protected software and distribute it, I'd most definitely have a problem with that.

(damn I hate having to write callback functions out seperately when they're one liners!)

You don't have to explicitly define functions for callbacks.
When you're using a function that requires a callback function, instead of defining the function elsewhere, use create_function() like so:

eg: the function array_filter(input, callback) uses a callback as its second parameter.

$myArray = array(123, 456, 789, 'abcd', 'defg');
$numerics = array_filter($myArray, 'mycallback');

function mycallback($value) {
if(is_numeric($value))
return $value*2;
else return NULL;
}

using create_function(), you could replace the above with:

$myArray = array(123, 456, 789, 'abcd', 'defg');
$numerics = array_filter($myArray, create_function('$value', ' if(is_numeric($value)) return $value*2 else return FALSE'));

PHP does have an equivalent to CPAN: PEAR.

For us, it was great until PHP 4.3.7 and PHP RC3 introduced this bug for all Win/PHP/IIS/MySQL installations. This is a very annoying bug that has been marked bogus by the developers and still exists in the 5.0 Final. I can't move forward at all ( even to 4.3.8 to which has security updates ) until then. We're sticking at 4.3.6 for now; I can't have Access Violation error at the bottom of every page.

ASP includes database connection pooling, something that costs many thousands of dollars on Unix

Oh yeah? Or, perhaps you meant this one?

Perhaps you forgot to mention persistent, shared memory objects, which ASP cannot do, but PHP CAN? Get a clue, dude.

PHP is aweseome. It's powerful, reasonably fast, allows for incredibly rapid development, lets you get alot done FAST, and it's free.

What's to argue with? I use PHP for

1) client application development with PHP-GTK

2) Exensive server based development a la LAMP .

3) Shell/other scripting with its CLI interface.

I've written daemons with PHP. It's clean, simple, and powerful. My best is a large, 50,000+ line application in it. Write a clean codebase with consistent error-handling, and it's a breeze.

It's downright fun to take the contents of a file, turn it into an array with a single line, loop thru it with 1 more line, do a few if statements, and process a 500 MB file in 5 minutes flat.

I *love* replacing a large, complex mini-applet with 12 lines of PHP code - I've done it time and time again.

And, to write in it all day long?! Pure heaven.

I'll be watching PHP5 - I've not deployed it anywhere, and probably won't even start until PHP-GTK 2 (with PHP5, GTK2.X) is out.

BTW, I'm also using Apache 1.3...

ASP includes database connection pooling, something that costs many thousands of dollars on Unix

Oh yeah? Or, perhaps you meant this one?

Perhaps you forgot to mention persistent, shared memory objects, which ASP cannot do, but PHP CAN? Get a clue, dude.

PHP is aweseome. It's powerful, reasonably fast, allows for incredibly rapid development, lets you get alot done FAST, and it's free.

What's to argue with? I use PHP for

1) client application development with PHP-GTK

2) Exensive server based development a la LAMP .

3) Shell/other scripting with its CLI interface.

I've written daemons with PHP. It's clean, simple, and powerful. My best is a large, 50,000+ line application in it. Write a clean codebase with consistent error-handling, and it's a breeze.

It's downright fun to take the contents of a file, turn it into an array with a single line, loop thru it with 1 more line, do a few if statements, and process a 500 MB file in 5 minutes flat.

I *love* replacing a large, complex mini-applet with 12 lines of PHP code - I've done it time and time again.

And, to write in it all day long?! Pure heaven.

I'll be watching PHP5 - I've not deployed it anywhere, and probably won't even start until PHP-GTK 2 (with PHP5, GTK2.X) is out.

BTW, I'm also using Apache 1.3...

Performance wise, the compiled version advantages are fairly insubstantial, and 99.9% of the new stuff they've added could have been done in other ways using the existing language.

You'll have to discuss the performance advantages with the Roadsend folks. They're not the ones that make PHP, just this compiler. And no, the new stuff the PHP Group has added could not have been done in other ways, that's why it was added.

The whole thing seems pretty stagnant, and I'm guessing there's a small chance that the PHP guys are stuggling to find their own space between the land of true pre-compiled OO languages and the interperated world that lay behind it.

PHP is a web solution. They're not trying to take on general purpose languages at all. Heck, it's not even the "PHP guys" that made this compiler, it's a third-party product. PHP is also very obviously not stagnant.

Download the source
tar -zxf php-5.0.0.tar.gz
cd php-5.0.0
./configure
make all install

No site should require compiled PHP code. If you need speed, get a cache extension like APC, Turck MMCache which are free, or Zend Accelerator or ionCube's accelerator if you require a commercial product with support.

If you need even faster code, write a PHP extension (in C, compiled) to handle your resource-intensive functions.

Both of those solutions are much more versatile than a compiler that doesn't support the full language.

As a long-time PHP developer, I have to agree with you somewhat. PHP5--Woohoo!! Ohh, wait... No namespace support? (Arggh... of all features to leave out...)

All the new features are sort of the stuff you would call a 'given' for object-oriented programming. Nice to have, but nothing to get really excited about.

Really the things that I found more interesting about PHP were all the system-oriented capabilities developed from version 4.3 onward, such as streams, sockets, direct I/O, etc... Of course, all these are givens in some languages too ;), but at least PHP puts them all together easily at your fingertips.

The other cool things about PHP are the really dynamic things you can't do in Java, such as variable variables ($$varname), variable function calls ($function_name()), and the extended features for variable interpolation in strings. Also, features like array_map, create_function, and the overload extension are quite cool.

But yes, it looks like Perl 6 is going to up the ante big-time. Interesting to see where PHP goes in the interim, though.

PHP heredoc

While I use PHP quite a bit, I think I'll wait a few months / versions befor deploying this...

And for good reasons.. I have been using the latest version of php5 now and there are a few nasty bugs, especially with serialization. I still prefer perl for just about everything (minus small webscripts).