Variable declaration in PHP

Today while playing around PHP and stuff I have been thinking of patterns of handling optionally existing variables.

The 2 most commonly used ones are:

if (isset($var) && $var != null) doSomething($var);
// or
if (isset($var) && $var != 0) doSomething($var);
// or
if (isset($var) && ($var != '') doSomething($var);

if (!isset($var)) $var = something();

However my experience points me that in the majority of the cases it’s enough to check the boolean value of the variable to proceed:

if ($var) doSomething($var);

if (!$var) $var = something();

Which reads very kosher. But then we have a problem of getting notice that the variable is undefined, which is not kosher.

So the way kosherize the snippet is to enforce variable definition before usage. Meaning we would like to either use its value if it’s defined, or to initialize it with null. But of course I don’t like to use isset() for that. So what to do? I found an answer!

$var = &$var;

As you can see in this way you declare further usage of the variable. If the variable exists – it does nothing. If it’s not it is silently initialized with null. No notices are yielded. Also it’s better than if(isset()) combination because of readability – the only alphanumeric tokens on the line are variable names.

Isn’t it nice?

SyntaxHighlighter

Shame on me! I’ve discovered that wordpress.com provides syntaxHighlighter functionality just today. So I hurry to report that the only 2 posts in this blog, which contain code snippets have been immediately converted:

<a href="http://sevalapsha.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/copy-nodes-xml-documents-java-dom/">
    Copying nodes between XML documents with Java DOM
</a>
&amp;
<a href="http://sevalapsha.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/prototype-google-analytics-javascript/">
    Prototype styled Google Analytics javascript snippet
</a>

BTW, isn’t it weird I don’t have one snipped in PHP yet?

Moving on

Today was the 1st day of me working in the new company (yes, my dear friend, I bid farewell to Nielsen Online) – EasyToBook GmbH – as Software Architect. Unfortunately I’ve got no chance to either design any architecture or to develop any software yet, but succeeded to meet nice and talented people and spent some sweet time reading the documentation.

Eclipse Committer Emeritus

Time passes and doesn’t wait, and some of the plans don’t be realized, you know. So due to last year inactivity my PDT committer rights were expired and I was appointed with the Eclipse Committer Emeritus status. How sad.

I will still try to not loose connections and relations with my good old friends and will do my best for the project’s success (even if it will be just mental support).

Iterators in PHP

Recently, while playing with Scala/Python/PHP comparative implementation of lazy algorithms (I will hopefully describe them some days later) with colleague and friend of mine Michael Fuks, I sorrowfully discovered that, despite there are several SPL units, which define basic Iterator interfaces and functionality, most of the functionality available for arrays is missing for Iterators.

So I decided to fill the gap and started to reimplement for Iterators the applicable non-trivial array functions and also started trying to simulate iterator comprehension (generator routines) in PHP which is missing there too. For this reason I opened a GoogleCode project of php-iterator-utils – please observe my first experiments here.

In addition I need to notice that latest NetBeans build (6.8) branch has great PHP 5.3 support and feels more stable, fast and functional than Eclipse PDT

Programming in Scala

Got the Programming in Scala eBook. I hope to get time and build an experimental Eclipse Plugin with it.

The Java Explorer

I’m happy to announce that Eyal Schneider, the collegue of mine, has been finally convinced to open a blog to share his knowledge and experience.

Eclipse Galileo RC1 Update Manager RT Equinox P2 is still not good enough for me yet

I’ve just failed to install JDT over clean Eclipse Platform RC1 (and this time a bug has been opened):

An error occurred while installing the items
session context was:(profile=PlatformProfile, phase=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.phases.Install, operand=null –> [R]org.eclipse.ant.ui 3.4.0.v20090504, action=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.InstallBundleAction).
Error while loading manipulator.
Error while loading manipulator.

Retrying causes the message immediately. Reverting to the previous installation stage does not help. Restarting does not help either.

It’s very sad that what they call Release Candidate is still rare. Waiting for the release…

PHP Frameworks popularity estimation

About 2.5 years passed since I posted the development activity comparison of major PHP frameworks. Since then I’ve got about 4.5k hits from search engines, which IMHO is not such a bad sample to summarize people’s interest in each of them.

Again, no conclusions – just pure numbers

http://tr.im/lnXq:

Query	Hits	Zend	CakePHP	Symfony	CodeIgniter	Prado	Seagull	eZ
zend framework vs cakephp	573	573	573	0	0	0	0	0
zend vs cakephp	319	319	319	0	0	0	0	0
cakephp symfony	258	0	258	258	0	0	0	0
zend vs symfony	254	254	0	254	0	0	0	0
cakephp vs zend framework	217	217	217	0	0	0	0	0
symfony vs zend	210	210	0	210	0	0	0	0
zend framework vs symfony	187	187	0	187	0	0	0	0
symfony vs cakephp	185	0	185	185	0	0	0	0
zend framework vs	176	176	0	0	0	0	0	0
codeigniter vs zend framework	143	143	0	0	143	0	0	0
prado framework	139	0	0	0	0	139	0	0
cakephp vs zend	139	139	139	0	0	0	0	0
symfony vs zend framework	138	138	0	138	0	0	0	0
zend framework cakephp	131	131	131	0	0	0	0	0
prado vs zend	103	103	0	0	0	103	0	0
zend framework vs codeigniter	84	84	0	0	84	0	0	0
cakephp vs symfony	82	0	82	82	0	0	0	0
prado vs cakephp	81	0	81	0	0	81	0	0
prado vs symfony	80	0	0	80	0	80	0	0
zend vs codeigniter	76	76	0	0	76	0	0	0
zend or cakephp	69	69	69	0	0	0	0	0
codeigniter vs cakephp	68	0	68	0	68	0	0	0
codeigniter vs zend	62	62	0	0	62	0	0	0
zend vs code igniter	60	60	0	0	60	0	0	0
cakephp zend framework	59	59	59	0	0	0	0	0
codeigniter vs symfony	55	0	0	55	55	0	0	0
cakephp symfony zend	52	52	52	52	0	0	0	0
cakephp vs prado	50	0	50	0	0	50	0	0
symfony zend framework	48	48	0	48	0	0	0	0
cakephp vs codeigniter	48	0	48	0	48	0	0	0
zend framework vs code igniter	46	46	0	0	46	0	0	0
zend framework vs. cakephp	46	46	46	0	0	0	0	0
symfony vs codeigniter	45	0	0	45	45	0	0	0
symfony vs prado	39	0	0	39	0	39	0	0
zend vs prado	37	37	0	0	0	37	0	0
zend cakephp	37	37	37	0	0	0	0	0
zend framework symfony	36	36	0	36	0	0	0	0
zend framework or cakephp	35	35	35	0	0	0	0	0
prado symfony	35	0	0	35	0	35	0	0
seagull vs cakephp	34	0	34	0	0	0	34	0
zend framework versus cakephp	32	32	32	0	0	0	0	0
Total	4568	3369	2515	1704	687	564	34	0
Interest Ratio		73.75%	55.06%	37.30%	15.04%	12.35%	0.74%	0.00%

Windows XP x64, Cisco VPN Client, VirtualBox and Windows 7

As you can easily guess from the subject, I had compatibility issue with installing Cisco VPN Client over my Windows XP x64 installation – the bastards refuse to release 64-bit version drivers. That was not a big deal for me, since I used to connect to the office from my ThinkPad T42 anyway.

But just these days Windows 7 has been pre-released, so to play with it a bit I installed the x86 version of it over VirtualBox.

Hence, in this very moment I’m tunneled through 6 network interfaces:

1. Some neighbor’s wireless router
2. Wireless adapter
3. VirtualBox’s adapter
4. Cisco’s virtual adapter
5. Cisco’s VPN server
6. Office workstation’s adapter