Zend Framework has a few hooks with the Firebug browser plugin (with the FirePHP add-on). The two that I use are writing logs to the console and profiling of database connections. (more…)

Through reading a few blog posts over the last year and my own trial and error, I’ve developed a way of using the flashMessenger Helper in ZF that works out really well for me. (Note: if anyone knows the original blog post that I got some of the view helper from, please comment!). (more…)

One of the steps to install PHPUnit is to execute the following pear commands: pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de pear install phpunit/PHPUnit (more…)

Google Charts has a QR code generation service (here are the details). I decided that I wanted to create my own ZF View Helper to display these on my pages. This version that I am going to show just returns the properly formatted URL for the charts API. The view must create the img tag around it. (more…)

I will be presenting at the WAIMM Email Marketing Software meetup today. I plan to cover the basics of Mailchimp for comparison to other services like Constant Contact. (more…)

Running a test, I ran into this error: Zend_Session_Exception: Session must be started before any output has been sent to the browser; output started in /usr/share/php/PHPUnit/Util/Printer.php/173 (more…)

Today I was reviewing some old code I wrote in Zend Framework. One of the things I was doing in the Bootstrap.php file was creating an function called _initViewSettings(). In here I set a bunch of values for the xhtml version, the css files to include, etc. Now I realize my mistake: (more…)

Theme systems are very common in projects written on Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress. I didn’t see much out of the box support for themes in Zend Framework at first. However, I was wrong. It’s pretty easy. The only real decision I had to make is if I want to make themes that extend a default theme - or themes that are simple and on their own / totally encapsulated. I will do the encapsulated version... (more…)

The last time I created a char(1) for a flag field, I remembered the MySQL BIT field - so I did a bit of investigation. I thought, well if I can make a bit field of one bit that is either 0/1, I can save data space in my db. (more…)

The javascript function setTimeout can be used to execute a function after a specified amount of delay. It uses the javascript callback pattern. Its important to use the callback pattern correctly, however, or you may get different results than you expect. One example of this is the immediate execution of a function versus the callback execution. Note this example: (more…)