Blog

Being this "Turkey" is not being a "Developer"

James — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:36:00 +0000

They sit in the corner, take the spec sheet from their manager, check over the items and hang their head or beat it against the table. It is all too impossible.

They seek solace in the discussions with fellow developers who are in the same position, talking about their terrible colleagues and the mess that keeps befalling them.

They are not a developers. They are not someone who I would trust to code an xml document with two nodes. They are a turkeys.

Table Inheritance with Symfony2

James — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:54:42 +0000

Setting up Doctrine2 Table Inheritance with Symfony2 Entities with the annotation method.

Installing phing on OS X

James — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:40:21 +0000

Install phing on Mac OS X

Estimating: or how to explain your time before spending any at all

James — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:39:55 +0000

Putting a value on a task before you start is something that fails more times that it succeeds. Learning how to do this is important for great project management, and a skill that should be acquired.

Fixing Quarantined Files on OSX

James — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:50:48 +0000

Apple quarantine on local files appeared to be returning a 403 error when browsing the site.

Easing Launch Stress

James — Thu, 26 May 2011 22:00:36 +0000

Talking about making change is easiest. Investing money in a large project is easy. Putting the wheels in motion to change business practices is more difficult. All these require no actual change to established practices. The system change-over is where the doubts all get to the surface and all your hard work is brought into the spotlight. The client panicked and is now look at putting all the old system bugs back into your brilliant new software. Is there anything you can do to remove or ease this stress?

Extending Prototype for Aborting Ajax Requests

James — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:02:28 +0000

An Ajax.Request is made to the server and the information that triggered the request is no longer valid. You wish to stop the Request to commence another.

Steven has a solution from a long time ago :: Aborting Ajax requests (for prototype.js). Here it is extending the Ajax.Request object so you can call .abort on the handle.

PHPUnit Installed on Mac OSX

James — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:36:24 +0000

I think I failed in every possible way setting this up, at least this guide should be exhaustive, it is how I felt making all these changes.

Configure Pear

Discover the channels for the pear install to run. The main channel and it also requires files from other repositories.

[bash]sudo pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de[/bash]

[bash]sudo pear channel-discover pear.symfony-project.com
sudo pear channel-discover components.ez.no[/bash]

Run the install::

[bash]sudo pear install phpunit/PHPUnit[/bash]

Command Line

Command line needs a reference on where to look when the command phpunit is called. This is configured in the .bash_profile:

[bash]sudo nano ~/.bash_profile[/bash]

Add the line below, save and exit. Quit Terminal and reopen the window again.

[bash]export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH[/bash]

This is telling the command line, when a command is called, it will look for the function to run in one of the directories.

Include Path

Finally, you will need to update the include_path in your php.ini file. I have seen some tutorials where a symbolic link is used to fake-configure the include path. This is not a great idea, because all the require_once calls in the Pear library need to reference the include files.

It is best to update the php.ini file - once change configures everything. Look in the php.ini file to find the lines ::

[bash]; UNIX: "/path1:/path2"
include_path = "php/includes"[/bash]

And add the directory which points to your PEAR library ::

[bash]include_path = "/usr/local/PEAR:php/includes"[/bash]

You may need to include a .: at the start, like this ::

[bash]include_path = ".:/usr/local/PEAR:php/includes"[/bash]

Caution

Watch out here. If you are like me, and for some stupid reason you have XAMPP running on a Mac, there is a fair chance that you will have more than one php.ini file. This causes confusion and delay.

[bash]PHP Warning: require_once(PHP/CodeCoverage/Filter.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /usr/local/bin/phpunit on line 38
PHP Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required 'PHP/CodeCoverage/Filter.php' (include_path='php/includes') in /usr/local/bin/phpunit on line 38[/bash]

If you get an error like this, it is saying that the function 'phpunit' cannot find the correct file to require. This caused me hours of trouble.

To find which php.ini the computer is running the include_path from just type:

[bash]php --ini[/bash]

This will result in something like ::
[bash]Configuration File (php.ini) Path: /etc
Loaded Configuration File: /private/etc/php.ini
Scan for additional .ini files in: (none)
Additional .ini files parsed: (none)[/bash]

Edit this php.ini and it should correct the require_once functions.

Command Not Found

[bash]phpunit: command not found[/bash]
phpunit needs to be in a bin folder to run on the command line. This usually happens on pear install of phpunit, but if you're a numpty, like me, who has deleted it then the best way to correct it is force an install.

[bash]sudo pear install --force --alldeps phpunit/PHPUnit[/bash]

~End

[bash]PHPUnit 3.5.13 by Sebastian Bergmann.[/bash]

Bonus

For those playing at home... You will notice I am using 'nano' as the editor ~ Not hardcore enough to use vim yet. The commands below are for my future reference, so feel free to ignore them.

ctrl + w = Search the file. So hit the keys and type ;include_path in the ini file.
ctrl + x = Save and Quit.

The Production Server has Bad Code, and The Bad Code is Yours

James — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:20:58 +0000

I broke something today and I asked myself "What Would Rands Do?". Five minutes before knocking off there is obviously a problem. That sinking feeling struck as soon as the words drifted across the partition. "A problem? But there can't be, I don't code in #Fail."

Test your Apache Configuration

James — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:15:20 +0000

We have all done it before. Changed the vhosts configuration, left a spelling mistake and restarted the server only to have everything die. Then I spend too much time trying to find my error, which doesn't look like an error. So I don't forget, here is how to test.