Great success!

Even though I didn’t like the Borat movie very much, I still like to use his line, Great success!. But on to more important things! ;-) Last weekend, we — the Berlin PHP UserGroup (and Christian Weiske from Leipzig) — took part in what some people labeled the European PHP TestFest 2009. In a nutshell, we were writing tests to cover different PHP extensions. Here’s the outcome (numbers courtesy of Falko Menge):...

May 11, 2009 · 1 min

MySQL: Using indices correctly

The objective was to select sessions from a table, that are older than two days. Table setup This is the definition: CREATE TABLE `session` ( `id` varchar(32) NOT NULL DEFAULT '', `data` text NOT NULL, `user` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `created` datetime NOT NULL DEFAULT '0000-00-00 00:00:00', `updated` datetime NOT NULL DEFAULT '0000-00-00 00:00:00', PRIMARY KEY (`id`), KEY `user_id` (`user`), KEY `rec_datemod` (`updated`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8; Right and wrong Wrong query:...

May 5, 2009 · 2 min

Avoiding common pitfalls with Zend_Test

Sometimes I think I’m particularly stupid when it comes to learning new things. Well, that, or maybe I’m just the only one complaining enough. ;-) I feel like I’ve wasted a great deal of time last week with basics that were nowhere to be found or required debugging to no end. The following is the outcome, a rather random list of things to watch out for when you’re starting on Zend_Test....

March 28, 2009 · 4 min

We are TestFest'ing!

English: Berlin’s PHP usergroup is taking part in PHP’s TestFest 2009, on the 9th and 10th May, 2009! The location will be Boxhagener Str. 119, Berlin (Friedrichshain), if you want to attend, please RSVP on our wiki! Starting it off, I’ll give an intro to PHPT-style testing at the monthly meeting of the usergroup in May! Deutsch: Die PHP Usergroup Berlin nimmt am PHP TestFest 2009 teil. Wir treffen uns dazu am 9....

March 25, 2009 · 1 min

Managing software deployments of your PHP applications I

Disclaimer: I’ve been doing mostly PHP and Zend Framework based projects in the past two years, but the information from this article is general and should be applicable to most setups — even to non PHP-based projects (to a certain extent). Inspired by Padraic’s posting spree the other week, here’s another attempt to provide you with some hands-on usefulness. I’m all open for all feedback, and sorry for the length!...

January 31, 2009 · 2 min