So, often I have to show a masked credit card on the screen. However, I really want to go the extra mile and show the user a secure, fully masked credit card number that still reflects their original card. For example, if their credit card number is only 15 numbers long, I shouldn’t show a 16 character long string. So, I’ve developed this code snippet: $cc='1234123412341234'; $masked = str_pad(substr($cc, -4), strlen($cc), '*', STR_PAD_LEFT); (more…)

If I need to run PHPUnit on a remote system against a code suite, I will write a simple shell script like the following to do it for me. (Bonus points, you can even include this as an External Tool in eclipse to do it right from your project). ```bash #!/bin/bash (more…)

How many of you have written this before (or something very much like it): RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L] RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L] (more…)

One of the under-utilized features of PHPUnit probably is the listeners interface. You can see the configuration options here: php.net/appendixes.configuration.html. So, I decided that I want to use this to know if a Unit Test takes longer than 2 seconds to run. That’s super over-kill in my opinion, but that’s my hard limit. If it takes longer than 2 seconds to run, something is wrong! So, I added the following to my configuration: (more…)

I’m not entirely certain why this escaped me for so long, but it’s remarkably easy to set terminal colors with PHP. Simply echo the escape/color character \033, followed by the bash color definition and your output. For reference, here is a listing of bash colors. So, for example, if we want to make something blue text, do the following: (more…)

I’ve always found it annoying when programmers create systems where you create your account and then you’re not logged in. Maybe I’m lazy? I decided to do a poll on a popular social networking site. The poll went like this: (more…)

One of the things that is irritating is logging into a website with credentials that you know are right, only to have it fail. Then, later, you find that the site was malfunctioning. By then, maybe you requested a new password, or had to at least waste time looking up your old password. With Zend_Auth, however, we can prevent user’s from having that issue. (more…)

Hello all. It’s been quite the long time since I updated my blog. I know, I know, this is a huge problem, considering this is a cardinal sin according to my talk at MKEPUG about getting job offers. That was wrong, I know. However, things have been pretty busy. Let’s see… (more…)

First, I just want to say up front that this is not a discussion of “is 100% test coverage necessary” or a discussion about testing private methods. This is simply how you may do it if you wanted to. (more…)

There has been a lot of discussion on forums and throughout the object oriented PHP programming community about service classes. This is just intensified by the Zend Framework model of development coupled with the changes in their design/architecture and vocal spokespeople. I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring for this. (more…)