Tag: webdevelopment

PHP 7.3 is out

kyriakos

Can be downloaded here http://php.net/releases/7_3_0.php

I personally would stick to 7.2 for now at least until the first point releases of 7.3 are out just to be on the safe side.

To install on Ubuntu 18.04:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/php/ubuntu bionic main 
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/php/ubuntu bionic main

sudo apt-get install php7.3

Xdebug is also available but its currently under beta. Since you won’t be using that in production it doesn’t hurt to try.

JPHP – Compile PHP directly to JVM (Java) Bytecode

kyriakos

I stumbled upon the JPHP project today which adds yet another direction to the PHP world. JPHP is an one man project by Dmitriy Zayceff who’s been working on it for the past 2 years and I must admit he must have spent a lot of time on it. Here’s some key points:

  • Compile PHP code into Java Virtual Machine bytecode (into JAVa’s .class files)
  • Use the standard PHP function library including some extensions.
  • Can use any JAVA class through PHP code (you need to write a wrapper for it but it works)
  • Create cross platform GUI or CLI applications
  • Develop Android apps in PHP
  • It executes faster than the current PHP branch and even faster than PHP7.
  • Allows for both stateful and stateless execution when used as a Web scripting language (i.e. you can either choose to execute as a long-running process with shared memory or reset with every request like standard PHP.
  • Can do just in time compilation of PHP files.

Project’s Github page.

Benchmarks can be found here. Page is in Japanese but all you need to look at is the two tables. The first shows the time taken for the 1st run of the benchmarks and the next run where the code is already pre-compiled and JPHP wins.

Chrome DevTools – Quickly use currently selected element in console

kyriakos

I am sure like me, there’s been many times when using Chrome Developer Tools you selected an DOM element in the Elements panel and wished you could easily get a reference for it so you can use it in the console. It turns out it was possible and super-easy all along by using the $0 magic variable in Console. $0 automatically holds a reference to the currently selected element in the Elements panel. As a bonus the using $_ instead you get access to the last evaluated expression whether its an object or a scalar. Here’s how it looks:

$0 and $_ in Chrome Developer Tools

$0 and $_ in Chrome Developer Tools

 

 

Source: DevTips Daily

Recent & Worthwhile in Web Development

kyriakos

PHP

  • Remember Me – Safely Secure Long Term Authentication Strategies
    A detailed explanation on how to implement the Sign in ‘Remember Me’ functionality securely in PHP (the concepts are the same for every language). I must admit I never considered timing attacks for the authentication token until I read this.
  • Laravel 5.0 was released
    The 5th installment of one of the most popular PHP MVC and all-around frameworks was released. Wrote a summary of the changes in another post.
  • HHVM 3.5.0 Released
    The Facebook supported alternative PHP VM has a new version.
  • Cockpit
    A plug-n-play CMS for PHP sites. Targeted to developers, who built web apps and don’t want to re-invent the wheel every time for the content parts of their app. Uses SQLlite or MongoDB as data store.
  • Return Types Declarations approved for PHP7
    In PHP7 we’ll be able to declare the return type for functions and will be enforced causing a fatal error if a different type is returned.  Here’s an example of how it will look taken straight from the RFC:
    [pastacode lang=”php” message=”” highlight=”” provider=”manual”]

    function foo(): array {
  return [];
}

    [/pastacode]

JS /HTML / CSS

  • ReactJS for Stupid People
    A good introduction on what Facebook’s ReactJS is about and why you should use it.
  • Animated Bezier Curves
    Demonstration of how parametric Bezier curves are constructed. Uses D3, and the code is straight forward, just View Source.
  • Konva JS
    Object-oriented 2D HTML5 Canvas Framework. Event driven, layer support, drag and drop, shape nesting, animation and all the usual bells and whistles.
  • mProgress.js
    Material Design style animated progress bar. Uses CSS3, has no other library dependencies and has beyond the ordinary features such as indeterminate progress (7.7kb minified JS).
  • RubaXa Sortable
    Minimal & customizable Sortable with touch support and no dependencies.
  • fieldVal
    Programmatic Javascript Field Validation library (runs both on browser and server). Includes an optional UI library for presenting validation errors in forms.
  • TauCharts
    Javascript charting library which aims to be flexible rather than offering pre-packaged chart setups.

How to enable WordPress Debug Mode in 60 seconds

kyriakos

If you are a WordPress developer or if you just installed a misbehaving plugin you will need to enable WordPress’s debug mode in order to figure out what made your site get into the dreaded blank white page (unlike Windows WordPress has a White-Screen-Of-Death). So here’s the quick step-by-step guide to get you going:

Step by Step

  1. Connect via FTP to your site (use FileZilla which is free, if you don’t have an FTP client already installed) or just open your text editor if you are running local.  (15 seconds)
  2. Browse to WordPress home directory, and open wp-config.php for editing. (10 seconds)
  3. Hit Ctrl-Endor scroll to the bottom of the document, locate the line that says define(‘WP_DEBUG’, false);  – you can find it a few lines before the end of the file. (15 seconds)
  4. Change false to true and Save. (15 seconds)
  5. Refresh the page and you should be able to see the errors.  (5 seconds)

 

Total: 60 seconds.

 

Its recommended you don’t run this option on a live production site but if you really must, make sure you turn if back off when you are done. Alternatively you can enable the debug log to be sent to a file instead of the browser by also adding the following line in your config file:

define(‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true);

This will cause the error messages to be saved in a file called debug.log in the wp-content sub-folder of your installation. Again make sure this file is protected because by default anyone from the web can access it in the particular folder.

 

And if my instructions are not detailed enough you can look at the long version on the WordPress codex.

Typescript compiler got a re-write and is now 5 times faster

kyriakos

According to Typescript’s blog on MSDN, they’ve rewritten its compiler from scratch and surprisingly also moved the compiler’s repository to GitHub. The new version which from a feature point of view identical to the previous version, generates Javascript code 5 times faster. For those who don’t know what Typescript is, its an attempt by Microsoft to make Javascript better, especially for large scale projects. Technically you can write pure Javascript and the compiler will just let is pass through but it will enforce variable types and declarations. So if you are already familiar with Javascript, it just ads a safety net layer for data types and some utility syntax for writing human-readable object oriented Javascript.

I still haven’t tested the new version but I can assure you the original one is noticeably slow. Running the compiler automatically through PHPStorm I found myself many times saving the .ts file then switching to the browser to test only to realize that compilation is still not done and had to switch back to confirm its done before re-refreshing the page. Hopefully this is now a thing of the past.

The announcement can be found here.