Posts Tagged ‘php’

PHP Profilers – A Quick summary

December 29th, 2009

More an aid to memory then anything, here’s the PHP profilers I’ve recently heard about:

XDebug by Derick Rethans
The oldest and most well known profiler. Needs modification of the server’s PHP file to run. Compatible with KCachegrind/WinCacheGrind, MacCallGrind and Webgrind and remote debugging tools. Produces quite large debug files (typically 900Kb to 10Mb compare to XHProf’s 110Kb).
XHProf by Facebook Inc (available via PECL)
Large amount of information provided and allows you to “drill down” by various sections – allows comparison of “diffs” between runs to check performance enhancements. Needs modification of the server’s PHP file to run. Also compatible with the *Grind systems. Used by Facebook and Manga High’s online maths games website, but only currently runs on Linux/FreeBSD. Seems to be preferred by iBuildings (see Profiling with XHProf) which is how I originally heard about it.
PHP Quick Profiler (PQP) by Particle tree
Needs modifications to your PHP code, but does not need the server’s PHP modifying (so it can be used on shared hosting easily). Nice and bright. Used by ParticleTree on their Wufoo product.

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Posted in Net: Techy: PHP

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PHP: Getting individual packages on Zend Framework

February 22nd, 2009

@binarykitten (on Twitter) had the question I officially give up.. how the hell do you download only 1 component of the Zend Framework? I’ve been looking all over the site and I told her that I wasn’t aware of a method, that there were potential dependencies and to maybe try asking @calevans. He responded with the link http://epic.codeutopia.net/pack/ which appears to be a packager for the PHP Zend Framework versions 1.6 and 1.7 developed by Jani Hartikainen (@jhartikainen).

So, yes, it is possible to (unofficially) download parts of the Zend Framework and not have to worry about dependences.

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Posted in Net: Techy: PHP

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Snippet: Parallel Processing in PHP

February 20th, 2009

*snippet* This is just a quick “bookmark” style post to remind me to look at the potential for utilising Parallel Processing in PHP using the “divide and conquer” method which may help in compiling/comparing stats in an application I’m working on.

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Posted in Net: Techy: PHP, Snippet

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Paypal Express Checkout and Recurring Payments

February 4th, 2009

Are you, like me, using Paypal Express Checkout for integration into your shopping cart/ecommerce site?
Are you, like me, utilising the Paypal Subscriptions (Recurring Payments) options to set up future payments?
Are you, like me, getting a blank page when you are trying to setup a Recurring payment (maybe using the PHP NVP kit) after clicking “Agree and Pay” on the “Review your payment” page of the Paypal sandbox or live site)?

If so, the problem may be because you are sending an “AMT” (Amount) of 0 to Paypal: I did this because I didn’t want to actually take any money now…

It appears this is a long standing issue with the SetExpressCheckout section and RecurringPayments on Paypal and to avoid the blank white page, you’ll need to just send a nominal amount (such as 0.01) for Paypal to process “now”. However, Paypal does charge you a 20p transaction fee on the live system, so you may need to adjust your entire Paypal Express Checkout integration.

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Posted in Life: Work and Techy, Net: Techy: PHP

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PHP: Zend Session: don’t set it up in the Initalizer

January 9th, 2009

I’ve just wasted a few hours trying to get Zend_Session (part of the PHP Zend Framework) working correctly – previously, on this codebase, I had “rolled my own” cookie and session management system, but I thought I’d do it properly and utilise the Zend_Session system and store it all in a database…

It didn’t work.

Short answer as to why my sessions weren’t saving into the database (even after I switched to using the “default” Zend_Session_SaveHandler_DbTable ) was that I was setting up the session within the “routeStartup” section of Initalizer.php (which is loaded, in MVC fashion, via the bootstrap.php file). Changing bootstrap.php to:

// Prepare the front controller.
$frontController = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();
// Change to 'production' parameter under production environemtn
$frontController->registerPlugin(new Initializer('development'));
$maxSessionTime=60*60*24*30*6; // six months
Zend_Session::setSaveHandler(new My_Session_DbTable($maxSessionTime));
Zend_Session::rememberMe($maxSessionTime);

(i.e. take move the session savehandler out of the Initializer, but keep all the $thingy=new Zend_Session_Namespace whereever they are needed) means it started to work.

Most annoying thing: that there was no reason it didn’t work (no warnings, no errors, no documentation hints and no ‘out of place feeling’). Meh.

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Posted in Net: Techy: PHP

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