Tech Chorus

A few months back, our friend Ben Scholzen wrote about setting up the environment variable in your Zend Framework powered application.

With the advent of Zend Framework 1.8 and the Zend_Application component the Zend Framework Quick Start guide recommends this setting.

While developing applications creating test data can be a tedious process to the developers. You don't have to do the same things like creating a user for testing over and over again.

Use a data generator. There are numerous tools freely available online that can provide the test data for you.

Have you fallen in love with the command line? Do you use a graphical browser to visit dictionary sites like wiktionary.org?

Use dictd.

What does dictd do?

[sudheer@localhost ~]$ yum info dictd
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, refresh-packagekit
Installed Packages
Name       : dictd
Arch       : i386
Version    : 1.10.11
Release    : 3
Size       : 728 k
Repo       : installed
Summary    : DICT protocol (RFC 2229) command-line client
URL        : <a href="http://www.dict.org/<br />
License" title="http://www.dict.org/<br />
License">http://www.dict.org/<br />
License</a>    : GPL+ and zlib and MIT

Many of us have suffered from failing package repository mirrors. Some are slow, some won't have updated content, etc. You might want to remove/blacklist a particular mirror in your yum configuration.

Before trying to remove a mirror, install the fastest mirror plugin.

yum install yum-fastestmirror -y

The fastest mirror plugin is capable of determining mirror speeds and cache it. If that works for you well and good.

Problem: You are trying to use the command svn propedit svn:externals and you are receiving the error:

svn: None of the environment variables SVN_EDITOR, VISUAL or EDITOR are set, and no 'editor-cmd' run-time configuration option was found

Solution: Set vim as your SVN_EDITOR

Command:

export SVN_EDITOR=vim

To permanently set this environment variable put the below line in your ~/.bash_profile file.

export SVN_EDITOR=vim

We are all familiar with variables. As the name suggests the value of the given variable tends to vary.

The above script illustrates the usage of variables. Variables in PHP are represented by a dollar sign followed by the name.

Just like variables, PHP offers constants. As the name suggests the value of the constant does not change throught the lifetime of the script.

How do you use constants?

For example, you can access the redirector helper from within your front controller plugin:

Somebody recently asked me how to print the PHP version from within the PHP script. The answer is very simple and requires only two words to print the PHP version. Here is the script

PHP_VERSION is a predefined constant. It contains the value of the PHP version.

A sample output is as follows.

[sudheer@localhost cli]$ php php_version.php 
5.2.6
[sudheer@localhost cli]$ 

We all know about the URL shortening service offered by many websites. Most notable among them is tinyurl.com. There are also other free URL shortening services available on the Internet.

In this post, I will show you how to generate a short URL link to any URL from a PHP script using the short.ie URL shortening service. The actual code is only about ten lines. We will make use of the Zend_Http_Client component of the Zend Framework.

What is include_path?

To include a file in your PHP script you use the include statement. Hard coding the complete file system path in all your include statements is unmaintainable. You cannot expect your application to be installed in the exact same location everywhere. Including the files from a relative path is so much more easier.

Let us write few simple scripts for demonstration purpose.

Create the file mymainfile.php and paste the below code in it.