Latest PHP articles...

Browsers - false ENTER - TAB key behaviour

-- Published 23.09.2012 --

While working on iPDF formulars I received a lot of responses from internet users. Many of them were common inexperienced users with only basic knowledge of how to fill out online HTML forms. Surprisingly, many responses were complaints about difficulties on filling out my online HTML forms - which is essential building block of my iPDF application. After investigation I realized, that the root of the problem is not within my application but lies within wrong implementation of browser behaviour on HTML forms. The problem: While being focused on input field - by pressing ENTER, one would expect that.. Read more »

Protect your corporate website against automated robot attack

-- Published 31.07.2012 --

Automated robot (or web spider) attacks are commonly used for sophisticated attacks at targetted websites. In a typical scenario malicious attacker will hire a virtual hosting with dynamic IP address for a short period of time and periodically executes programmed application performing consequent HTTP requests with the goal to explore and/or cause potential portal failures. Our company runs online portal ranking amongst top 3 online insurance calculators. Perhaps due to tightened competition, we have noted few unusual symptoms in portal's behavior - such as unexpected database crashes during weekends (overpooling), or unusually high number of insurance calculations via google analytics (cca 8-10.. Read more »

Barcode scanners in PHP applications

-- Published 27.02.2012 --

PHP can be easily utilized for reading bar codes printed on paper documents. Connecting manual barcode reader to the computer via USB significantly extends usability of PHP (or any other web programming language) into tasks involving document and product management, like finding a book records in the database or listing all bills for a particular customer. Following sections briefly describe process of connecting and using manual bar code reader with PHP. The usage of bar code scanners described in this article are in the same way applicable to any web programming language, such as ASP, Python or Perl. This article.. Read more »

Writing database portable PHP applications

-- Published 12.12.2011 --

Writing database cross-compatible SQL queries for portable web applications is difficult. In fact, each modern relational database system (RDBMS) introduces its own "specialties" and proprietary SQL syntax that aims to provide the best perfomance and functionalities for its own database engine. Unfortunatelly this also means loss of the portability of the application, once one starts implementing such a particular syntax. In this article I will point out basic differences for defining a simple SQL table named "im_inventory" - differences in definitions of indexes, primary keys, autoincremental columns and column quotation. Table definition -.. Read more »

Show Skype Status

-- Published 04.11.2011 --

This is a small utility to display current status of a skype user. You can download zip files here: http://download.synet.sk/skype_status.zip » Skype status - demo If the skype user is online, displayed icon will show "I am online". If user is offline or the skype user does not exist then the "I am offline" icon will be displayed. Please note, that in order to see your status ONLINE you should be logged into your skype account before you click button "Check status". Since all fetched results are cached for 1 hour,.. Read more »

TortoiseHg - How to export changed files

-- Published 02.11.2011 --

TortoiseHg is excellent windows client for Mercurial Hg distributed source control management tool (SCM). It is a standalone installer that installs both Mercurial client and Mercurial Server in one shot. It has excellent performance on mainstream filesystems (Windows NTFS and linux EXT3), extensibility, and heap of features and settings. The only thing I truly missed was the ability to export changed files between two arbitrary commits. Not patches, but whole files. This feature was only supported by SVN and I found it irreplacible while working on many projects. Luckily, it is pretty easy to add this feature to a TortoiseHg client via.. Read more »

Zend Certified Engineer (ZCE) - yes or no?

-- Published 30.10.2011 --

For a professional PHP developer, it is not quite easy to prove his programming capabilities. Programming requires not only a/ technical knowledge, but mainly b/ programmatical visualization - which is hardly measurable quality phenomenon definable as an ability to find the most resources saving solution from long run. Putting both abilities a/ & b/ together one can determine what shapes a "good programmer". Technical abilities (a/) are quantifiable and thus testable. However, vizualization (b/) can be assessed only indirectly after a time since solution implemented. Holder of the Zend certificate is at least 50% guarantee, that one has good technical skills. On the.. Read more »