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Installing PHPUnit via PEAR on XAMPP

XAMPP is my favorite *AMP stack. I love it for its ease of use and cross platform compatibility. Recently I had to do a fresh installation of an Apache/MySQL/PHP on my new workstation at my new company. As I entered the game a few years ago in my last company, the environment was set up, so I had nothing to worry about. This time around it was a fresh slate, so after installing XAMPP I had to install PHPUnit with PEAR, this is a quick markup on how to do it, step by step how-to for first timers and for myself. (Because I am forgetful )

1. After installing XAMPP, open a command prompt and cd toc:\xampp\php or on linux to the corresponding xampp/php dir.

2. The pear executable should be in this directory. (On windows it's pear.bat) We are going to now make sure you have the correct channels in pear in order to install PHPUnit. If you get the message "Channel <channel name> is already initialized" Don't worry about it, it just means you're ahead of the game

Issue the following commands:

• pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
• pear channel-discover components.ez.no
• pear channel-discover pear.symfony-project.com

[PHP WOTD]: 4 – sprintf

Today's PHP Word of the day, is sprintf. sprintf allows for string manipulation, which is really cool.

string sprintf ( string $format [, mixed $args [, mixed $...]] )

This function is very versatile. The first parameter, $format, allows you to specify a string, that may contain what PHP refers to as conversion specifications, a good way to understand this, is to take a look at an example:

 $number = 10;
 $animal = "chinchillas";

 echo  sprintf("Johnny McJohnnerson was attacked by %d %s.", $number, $animal);

This outputs the following to the screen:

Johnny McJohnnerson was attacked by 10 chinchillas.

That's interesting, take a second to see how that works. The sprintf function searches the first parameter ($format) for the conversion specifications, and replaces the occurances with the arguments passed to sprintf, formatting them based on what the conversion specification is inside the $format string.

You can also designate in the string what order you want the arguments to be in. This is useful if you are doing a multilingual application or if you are doing something that would change the value in the $format string parameter so that the variables are the same but the context is different, like this:

$number = 10;
$animal = "chinchillas";
$johnny_has_been_attacked = 1;

if (!$johnny_has_been_attacked)
{
   $format = "Johnny McJohnnerson was attacked by %1\$d %2\$s.";
}
else
{
   $format = "Johnny has not been attacked by the %2\$s, and there are %1\$d of them.";
}

echo sprintf($format, $number, $animal);

Careful about using the order identifier when you are using smart quotes (the double quotes) as the PHP interpreter will try and read %1$d as the variable $d which won't exist in this scope. The above output will be:

Johnny has not been attacked by the chinchillas, and there are 10 of them.

So you can see, sprintf is pretty neat. Hopefully you used this PHP WOTD to sharpen your brain a little. I'm going to do my best to make them more regular!

[PHP WOTD]:2 – filter_var

The second word of the day, is one of my favorites. It's one of my favorites because of the versatility of it. It's also very fun to use!

mixed filter_var ( mixed $variable [, int $filter = FILTER_DEFAULT [, mixed $options ]])

Looks interesting, what does it do? Well it applies filters to the variable passed in the first argument slot (seen above as $variable). These filters can do different things, and there are a bunch of them! There are 2 main 'types' of filters we have here, then there is one special one.

• Validation Filters - Primarily used for form validation, these return based on if the variable being tested meets certain criteria, usually what will happen is, if you pass the filter, the value of $variable will be returned.
• Sanitization Filters - Sanitizing filters clean things and return the portion of the $variable after being cleaned.
• and special FILTER_CALLBACK - With this, you can actually provide a User Created function or class method that will do the filtering, that's handy.

So lets take a look at some examples of usages. We'll start with Validation Filters since we listed them first.

echo filter_var(123, FILTER_VALIDATE_INT);

Here, the output to the screen would be 123.

echo filter_var("one two three!", FILTER_VALIDATE_INT);

Here, there would be no output to the screen.. Now I'm about to get tricky on you. Pay attention:

echo filter_var("123", FILTER_VALIDATE_INT);

That... outputs 123! Yes, because the filter_var applies the similar logic as the '==' so if you did this:

echo (123 === "123") ? "true!" : "false  ";

You'd get false. But on the other hand, if you did this:

echo (123 == "123") ? "true!" : "false  ";

You'd get true, every single time.

You can take a look at all the Validation filters you can apply here on the manual.

So then for the Sanitation Filters. The FILTER_SANITIZEE_STRING filter will remove things such as HTML or Script tags, it's really great for cleaning input. Check it out:

echo filter_var("<br /><u>test</u><br/>", FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

Outputs just test, no fancy line breaks or deprecated underlined tags. A great way to prevent XSS, watching for those <script>'s.

Other Sanitize filters can be seen in the manual, just check them out here!

I was going to show you the magic of using the callback filter, but I can't due to time constraints. Enjoy this PHP WOTD and find out more about filter's you can use with your new filter_var function here! I'll do a post on the callback filter var soon, just have to cut due to work in the morning. Happy coding!

[PHP WOTD]:1 – is_a

The first word of the day function!

bool is_a( object $object , string $class_name [, bool $allow_autoload = FALSE ] )

This is a useful PHP built in function that allows you to perform checks on objects to make sure they are what you are expecting, and will return a bool result if it matches the suggested class name.

class Application {}

$app = new Application();

echo is_a($app, "Application");

Evaluates to true, so 1 will get rendered to the screen.

class Application {}

class WebApplication{}

$app = new WebApplication();

echo is_a($app, "Application");

1 also gets rendered to the screen in this scenario!

Pretty neat, can be used for some polymorphic goodness.

Autoloading PHP with DirectoryIterators

I have a project directory on one of the websites I'm working on that looks like this:

In order for me to get stuff done and actually LEARN some PHP, I need an autoloader! I can't have my time be waylaid by having to write a bunch of requires and include statements! What do?

Create a master autoloader!!!!!

I did that. That worked out well for.. maybe the one or two directories that I added, then I got bored of modifying the autoloader for each new directory that I added to the project. I was bored of it preventing me from learning PHP. So I made this:

Function:

function iterateDirectoriesForAutoload($directory_in_question = __DIR__){

    foreach (new DirectoryIterator($directory_in_question) as $file){

        if ($file->isDot() || strstr($file->getFilename(), ".")) continue;

            if ($file->isDir()){

                echo "dir: <strong>".$file->getFilename()."</strong> ".
                      $file->getPath()."/".$file->getFilename()."/ <br />";
                iterateDirectoriesForAutoload($file->getPath()."/".$file->getFilename());

        }
    }
}

Note to fellow programmers: The $file->isDot checks to make sure the directory we are iterating is Not '.' or '..' and as a safeguard, I added the strstr to ensure that it doesn't pick up my .idea folder (PHPStorm settings.. or any other '.foo' directories) from within my project directory. 

Implement it by putting it in the root directory of your project, like so:

iterateDirectoriesForAutoload();

The output should say the following:

dir: inventory /var/www/console/inventory/
dir: cases /var/www/console/cases/
dir: financial /var/www/console/financial/
dir: reporting /var/www/console/reporting/
dir: util /var/www/console/util/
dir: abstracts /var/www/console/util/abstracts/
dir: objects /var/www/console/util/objects/
dir: interfaces /var/www/console/util/interfaces/

Alright... great. It shows all the directories, but what does that do for me as far as my autoloader goes?

We'll take the original function and modify it slightly to make a Plug and Play style autoloader. We will then do a require_once at the top of every file that points to the location of our bootstrap.php file, and our bootstrap file will look something like this:

function __autoload($class_name){
    findAndRequireClass($class_name);

}

function findAndRequireClass($class_name, $directory_in_question = __DIR__){

    foreach (new DirectoryIterator($directory_in_question) as $file){

        if ($file->isDot() || strstr($file->getFilename(), ".")) continue;

        if ($file->isDir()){

            if(file_exists($file->getPath()."/".$file->getFilename()."/$class_name.php")){

                require_once $file->getPath()."/".$file->getFilename()."/$class_name.php";
                return;
            }

            findAndRequireClass($class_name, $file->getPath()."/".$file->getFilename());

        }
    }
}

And Finally! We can start to learn some PHP!

Where one ends, a new journey begins!

I spent all weekend getting my development environment set up on my laptop so we can start learning PHP! Today will be the first day that I'll get some hardcore PHP action, and start my journey towards the ZCE. I've set a date to take the test for the first time, on my 22nd Birthday. I should be ready by then to at least see what it's all about.

Some things to look forward to coming very soon from the hack tavern:

• PHP functions of the day!
• Class autoloading
• much more!

This is going to be fun!