This was a bit annoying – basically I did some updates and so on to Eclipse PDT a month or so ago and after I found the comparison editor (e.g. right click two files > Compare With > Each Other, or comparing Git history) had stopped working. It just showed a blank grey screen and nothing worked (e.g. Checking for software updates). I hate fiddling with Eclipse to make it work (I hate Java) so I didn’t bother doing it. But today I really needed it. Thankfully it’s actually a reported bug that has a solution. So you don’t have to trawl through the whole bug report, basically the steps I took to fix it (from the bug) are:
- Go to Help > Install New Software
- Enter http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios into the “Work with” address
- Wait for it to download the packages list
- Type PHP into the filter text box
- Three packages should appear, incidentally they are all the same at time of writing.
- Check PHP Development Tools (PDT) SDK Feature 2.2.1.v20101001-2300-… (snip)
- Click next and follow the normal installation procedure for packages
This worked for me gladly, and hopefully it’ll work for you if you have the issue, but as I’m no expert with Eclipse-wrangling, I’m afraid I can’t offer any more support on this if it doesn’t work, but good luck, hey?
So tonight I released the start of some useful PHP libraries I use when I’m doing Zend Framework coding. Right now there’s hardly anything there (an eBay Trading API client, and a DbTable Mapper tool) but I’m planning on adding more stuff as I find it useful. It’s released under the GNU GPLv3, although to be frank I have no idea what is good and what’s not…
What’s quite special for me is that this is the first time I’ve actually released my own source code under an open source license. I’ve done plenty of development in my time, but for such a long time I’ve wanted to give back to the community. I know it’s not a huge amount at the moment, but it’s a start and I hope to build on it, and hopefully someone, somewhere, will find it useful and perhaps even contribute back one day.
I’ve called my libraries “MAL” which (hat-tip to @robertbasic here!) stands for Mighty Asgrim’s Libraries… which will do just fine I guess. I didn’t come up with anything better, and “MAL” is quite catch anyway.
Anyway, if you’d like to check it out, take a peek on github at: https://github.com/Asgrim/MAL
Hi folks. Not sure if you’ve seen my recent behemoth posts (part 1 and part 2), and if you haven’t please check them out. had intended to do a full on series of these posts but before writing a load more I wanted to gauge whether anyone will actually find them useful or not.
So – my questions are:
- Did you find the posts useful? Interesting?
- If I continued doing the posts, what topics would you like to see me cover?
Databases are normally an integral part of your website. Whenever you see dynamic content (e.g. news posts, event listings, calendars etc.), you can almost guarantee it’s driven by a database. Due to the open source nature of PHP, the number one choice when it comes to databases is MySQL. As I use MySQL day in, day out, I’ll be focusing on this, but don’t forget there are other options available. These include PostgreSQL, SQLite, and Microsoft SQL Server (commonly just called “MSSQL”) which are all worth checking out. Your choices aren’t just limited to these though as there are plenty of enterprise level database servers (which include MySQL and others by the way!) available.
So what is a database?
In summary, a database is somewhere you can store data. All the databases I mentioned in the preamble are based on SQL which stands for Structured Query Language. They are all based on a common language (I say based because they extend the SQL language and add their own features) which attempts to give pre-defined structure to storing and retrieving data. Not only do you have a huge choice of different SQL servers, you have a choice of different database storage, such as Amazon S3, MongoDB, CouchDB and many others. CouchDB for example is what’s known as a document-orientated database, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish.
SQL and database storage in general is a mammoth topic, so before you go any further into this article, I suggest you read up on some MySQL introductory tutorials first. I’ll continue this PHP tutorial with the assumption you know basic MySQL.
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PHP is my favourite programming language of all time. It’s simple when you need it to be, and advanced when you need that extra power. I’m what many people would call an evangelist of PHP. Since starting work at Netbasic, I’ve really gone all out in using object-orientated programming (OOP) with PHP, and nearly everything I do is object-orientated now.
Let’s step back a moment to the title of this article, “PHP Basics”. Isn’t that an indication that this is a guide for beginners? You’d be right in thinking that, and I’m going to go from nearly the beginning. For the purposes of the tutorial, I will assume you know how to set up your own LAMP or WAMP server (and if you don’t there are countless great tutorials on that), and that you know how the internet works and some basic HTML/CSS. I will also assume that you have little-to-no experience of object orientated programming (although understanding OOP in C++ or Java for example would be a bonus!), little-to-no experience of general programming, and no experience of PHP.
The next question you’re probably asking is why am I writing a “PHP introduction” tutorial when there are countless already out there? The answer to that is that I’m trying a different approach that I’ve not seen before. I’m going to start at the object orientated level so that procedural PHP scripting doesn’t even factor into the equation. I’ve done quite a long preamble now with not much in the way of teaching PHP, so we’re going to start now.
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