MSSQL Compat is a small and simple drop-in library that allows your pre-7 PHP project, that uses MSSQL via mssql_* functions ( eg mssql_connect() et al ), to work transparently with PDO DBLib by providing the missing functions as wrappers around the equivalent PDO syntax - and all that with a single line!
Currently PHP developers face a great problem with PHP version - most OS repos already have outdated versions (CentOS has 5.4 which has passed its end of life!), but just swapping out versions is just not an option - especially with the version requirements of different frameworks / libraries. Furthermore, usually to have more than one version meant recompiling, and keeping up with updates - and no one wants that. Here's how to setup a server (virtual of physical), with ISPConfig3 hosting panel, multiple PHP versions, latest Apache and Mariadb in less than a half hour, with zero compiling. You can then manage your virtual hosts and their PHP version from a nice UI.
With most languages, when you develop you get the (wonderfully helpful) option of setting breakpoints, stepping through your code, adding watches and inspecting the overall state at any specific point in time. PHP differs in that, being a scripted language hosted in another process (eg Apache) it normally doesn't offer that. Here's how to enable your IDE to do get all the nifty features.
I've been in the process of automating the creation of Apache VirtualHosts from the command line for some time now. What always annoyed me, was that after the vHost was generated, I had to manually add the DNS entry on our Windows server. Well…. No more!
Had some performance issues with a client, recently. The server is an absolute beast, and should be able to easily handle the single website hosted on it. Alas, pages took forever to load (D7). A simple top showed that load was at about 60, and CPU utilization was at 10% for user and ... 95% for system. Wait what?
I spent the past few days in the VERY unpleasant situation where I had to remove tons of spam-sending scripts from a couple of websites I host. These were in relation to unsecured, unmaintained Joomla! installations, and exploited the cache folder. I won't bother you with the why or how, just know that the vulnerability existed, and has been fixed for versions 2.x and up -- NOT 1.x. Here's the simple way to secure yourself without changing the Joomla site code.
Sometimes you need to save data from your webpage to an excel file. Though there are many libraries that can accomplish that the "proper" way, it is much faster (and easier!) to just output an HTML table to a file with the "xls" extension. However, there are a couple of things to note to make theming look as it should!
Today I came to work. It being Monday and all, seeing that PHP stopped talking to Oracle (which it was doing wonderfully until Friday), and that all reports are hence broken (which were not until Friday) is not a good start of the week. Add the cryptic Oracle errors, and you're set for nerve wrecking debugging.
There are times, when you need to make your app(s) work in a corporate environment. And when you combine corporate with databases, you usually end up with Oracle. In my case, I need to make a connection from PHP 5.3 ( CentOS default ) to Oracle 11g (on a different host). With some luck, this will help others trying the same.
