Tinsology

For a while now I’ve been working on a web-based PHP interpreter; an interface I can use to quickly test or develop code from my browser. Ultimately this resulted in Apparatus, an in-browser PHP read-evaulate-print loop. Give it a try: http://tinsology.net/scripts/apparatus/.

Note that this is currently a beta version. Any help with identifying bugs will be greatly appreciated.

P.S. Happy New Year!… Read More

If you’ve spent any significant amount of time coding in PHP you’re most likely familiar with PHP’s foreach loop syntax. In simple terms, a foreach loop is an easy way to iterate over the elements of an array. Chances are if you’re reading this you already know that. What you may not know, however, is that it is possible to iterate objects with a foreach loop. Assuming you have some collection class (an object that stores some number of elements in an organized manner) you can iterate over its elements just like you can the elements of an array… Read More

I’ve just added a section about session management to Creating a Secure Login System the Right Way.

Check it out… Read More

Anyone who has ever had an email account is probably very familiar with the “Do not reply” email. They can take the form of notifications from your bank, reminders to pay a bill, a newsletter, or just plain spam. Generally the read a little something like:

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not
receive a response.

Usually this is followed by some instructions to follow if you have a question or concern. I imagine at some point in the history of automated emailers someone decided that they did not… Read More

If you use Opera you’re probably aware that it supports shortcuts in the address bar that allow you to run a search on various search engines and websites. For example, if I type g tinsology in the address bar, you’ll get the Google search results for the keyword tinsology. You can do similar things with yahoo, amazon, ask and other sites that come preconfigured in Opera.

Personally, I find myself frequently using this shortcut to Google PHP documentation. For example if I’m looking up documentation for the implode function, I’ll type g PHP implode. More often than not the… Read More | 3 Comments

I suddenly recall something interesting a professor of mine pointed out a couple years ago while on a tangent during lecture. It has to do with the nature of infinity and how accepting something perfectly reasonable as true leads to less intuitive, but equally true conclusions.

The following expression is true and most people would not argue otherwise:

1/3 = .3333333333 . . .

Assume, of course, that there is an infinite number of 3s trailing the decimal point. The following expression is also true, and even fewer people would argue otherwise:

1/3 +… Read More | 2 Comments

If you’ve ever used PHP’s library functions you’ve most likely noticed that several function such as array() can take an indeterminate number of arguments. Normally when defining a function you specify each argument in the function declaration. Obviously it would be impossible to define an infinite number of arguments in such a way. PHP does, however, allow you to accomplish this through the function func_get_args(). Read More

The other day I needed to populate a database with some placeholder content. Doing this manually was out of the question so I decided I’d find a text generator, specifically a Lorem Ipsum generator. For anyone unaware, Lorem Ipsum is non-sense, placeholder text used in publishing and design. It allows the developer to see their work completely populated with text, without having to actually create the text. Obviously, for this purpose, any kind of text generator would work to some extent, but traditionally Lorem Ipsum is used. Read More | 1 Comment

Even if you are new to programming, you probably have an understanding of functions and their purpose. What may be less clear, however, is what is happening underneath the hood when you pass a value to a function. In some languages, such as Java, when you pass a value (such as an integer or a char, this only applies to primitive types) the function receives a copy of that value. In this instance you are guaranteed that the original version of the value will remain unchanged after the function call. In other languages, such as C/C++ and PHP, a copy… Read More

Throughout the life of a database there may come times when it needs to be updated to incorporate changes or new features. This may involve adding new attributes to existing entities; adding new columns to tables. The problem with this is that in a populated database, modifying the database schema can be very expensive with regard to performance. This is not something you want to do frequently on a live site. One method which not only makes your database more resilient to future change, but also improves modularity is the use of metadata.

You don’t have to look very… Read More