Reading Access Databases with PHP and PECL
by vvaswani |
0 comments | Tuesday, November 25, 2008
You’ve already seen, in previous articles, just how easy it is to read and write Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with PHP and PEAR. But spreadsheets are just one way of representing structured data – the other, of course, is to use a database. Well, guess what? If your database happens to be Microsoft Access, PHP has you covered there as well! In this article, I’ll introduce you to PHP’s MDBTools extension, which provides an API to programmatically read data from Microsoft Access database files. If your project involves working with such files, extracting database records either for calculations or for conversion to other formats, you’ll find this extension invaluable. Come on in, and see how it works!
Dynamically Generating PDF Files with PHP and Haru
by vvaswani |
5 comments | Monday, November 17, 2008
When it comes to working with different file formats, PHP is like a Swiss Army knife: it has a tool to handle almost anything you can throw at it. JPEG images, XML files, Word documents, ZIP archives…you name it, and there’s a PHP extension to handle it! This incredible versatility also applies to the topic of today’s article: the PDF, or Portable Document Format. Not content with just one, PHP actually comes with two different extensions that allow developers to dynamically generate PDF documents: the PDFlib extension, and the libHaru extension. Over the next few pages, I’m going to take a quick look at the Haru extension, providing you with a brief overview of its functions and demonstrating how you can use it in your PHP development. So come on it, and let’s get going!
Reading and Writing MP3 and Photo Metadata with PECL
by vvaswani |
2 comments | Monday, November 10, 2008
Let’s take a look at two extensions can help you organize and catalog your digital media collection so that it’s easier to navigate and search.
Working with RAR, LZF and BZ2 Compression Formats in PHP
by vvaswani |
0 comments | Monday, November 3, 2008
When it comes to dealing with different file formats, it’s hard to faze PHP. XML documents, PDF files, JPEG images, MP3 media…you name it and, chances are, there’s a PHP extension to handle it. And so it is with compression formats like RAR, LZF and Bzip2 – although these archive formats are far less common today than the ubiquitous TAR and ZIP formats, they are still actively used by many applications and projects, and continue to be supported in PHP via PECL extensions.
Using Data Objects with PHP and DB_OO2
by vvaswani |
2 comments | Friday, October 24, 2008
If you’re building a Web-based administration tool to interact with a database, there are some routine tasks that you quickly get used to coding: listing records, adding records, and updating or deleting records. Frameworks like the Zend Framework and CakePHP come with various built-in methods to help with this, and even if you’re not using one of these frameworks, there are a number of tools that can make coding these functions a breeze.
Implementing a Stemming Analyzer for Zend_Search_Lucene
by katzgrau |
0 comments | Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Zend implementation of Lucene provides a powerful tool set for those looking to implement a Google-like search for their PHP web application. One of the requirements in creating a Google-like search with Zend is the creation of a stemming, stop word filtering, lower-casing analyzer. This article will briefly discuss the basic role of an analyzer in the Lucene API, my implementation of a new “StandardAnalyzer” for the Zend_Search_Lucene component of the Zend Framework, the inner workings of this analyzer, and its basic usage.
Using Zend_Tool to start up your ZF Project
by ralphschindler |
22 comments | Wednesday, September 3, 2008
This tutorial will set you through using Zend_Tool to jump-start development on your next ZF MVC application. Zend_Tool is both RAD tools as well as a framework for exposing your own set of tooling needs to the Zend_Tool user interface. While the areas in which extending Zend_Tool are exhaustive, we will focus merely on obtaining and using the current Zend_Tool toolset.
Create your own widget with PHP-GTK
by linde002 |
0 comments | Monday, August 18, 2008
With PHP’s younger cousin PHP-GTK’s recent step to maturity with the 2.0 stable release it is a good time to give this project some more attention. In this article I will show you how to create a re-usable IPv4 Entry widget using PHP-GTK’s excellent OO structure.
Dynamically Creating Graphs and Charts with PHP and GDChart
by vvaswani |
4 comments | Thursday, August 14, 2008
If you’ve been working with PHP for a while, you already know that the language makes dynamic image generation very simple: the GD extension and a few lines of PHP code are all you need to create a JPEG, GIF or PNG image from scratch. However, while this works remarkably well for simple tasks, it can become tedious and complicated if you need to generate more complex images, such as graphs and charts, at run-time.
Using GnuPG with PHP
by vvaswani |
0 comments | Monday, August 4, 2008
GnuPG is open-source software that makes it possible to encrypt your email and other messages so that they can only be read by the intended recipient (not unlike Jim Phelps and his briefing book). Unlike cleartext messages, which are unprotected and can be read by anyone who intercepts them, GnuPG-encrypted messages are “locked” through cryptographic techniques and may be viewed only by a person with the correct “key”; everyone else will merely see gibberish. In today’s day and age, when hacking and phishing is common, such encryption plays an important role in protecting sensitive data like user names, passwords or credit-card information.
