APC, or Alternative PHP Cache, not only allows for faster pages through opcode caching, but also since v3.0.0, allows for users to store any kind of data in memory for access between and across all requests. See my example below for a better idea on how to use it.

/* The first argument is the unique key which
 you will use to store some data later.
For globally cached data, the URL could make a good key,
and you could append the user id for user specific data.
The second argument is set to true or false depending
on whether APC finds data at the location,
if we don't find it, we know we need
to (re)generate it. */

$html = apc_fetch("unique_key_url", $success);
if(!$success)
{
	$html = big_and_slow_function();

	/*here the first argument is the key again,
	followed by the data to store and
	finally the time to live period in seconds */

	apc_add("unique_key_url", $html, 180);
}
echo $html;

Using a mechanism like this, you can see massive decreases in page load times. The friend I mentioned earlier brought his front page load time down from a number of seconds to low milliseconds.

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<?php
$obj = (object) array("foo" => "bar")
echo $obj->foo; // outputs "bar"
?>


One place you might get caught out here is trying to directly access numerically indexed values on the object, this breaks PHP’s naming convention and does not work correctly even with escaping.

<?php
$obj = (object) array("foo"=>"bar","foobar");
echo $obj->foo; //outputs "bar"
echo $obj->{0}; //$x->0 would cause a syntax error, this simply causes a notice for being unable to find the variable.


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1. PHP Tips #1: foreach

<?php
if (!isset($_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER'])) {
    header('WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="My Realm"');
    header('HTTP/1.0 401 Unauthorized');
    echo 'Text to send if user hits Cancel button';
    exit;
} else {
    echo "<p>Hello {$_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER']}.</p>";
    echo "<p>You entered {$_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW']} as your password.</p>";
}
?>

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Being a Mac user, the quickest way to make this happen was through the dashboard. It’s terribly basic right now, with only two hours or so put into it so far, but it’s very usable.

You can get it from my releases directory.

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1. AIB and Three Webtext PHP5 APIs

Update: I’ve ported the Three API to Perl and added it to the three releases directory

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1. Three Web Text Widget

The following are functionally the same:

<?php
$arr = array("one", "two", "three");
reset($arr);
while (list($key, $value) = each($arr)) {
    echo "Key: $key; Value: $value
\n";
}
foreach ($arr as $key => $value) {
    echo "Key: $key; Value: $value
\n";
}
?>


Ever want to drive straight into a foreach without checking that the array has elements?

<?php
$non_array = null;
foreach ((array) $non_array as $key => $value) {
    echo "Key: $key; Value: $value
\n";
}
?>


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1. PHP and stdClass

The file named above contains the source code for “Crackulous”. It seems Mr. Shahar AKA SaladFork is ok with his app being used to breach the copyrights of others. The source code is available all over file hosting sites and he’s probably now sending out DMCAs en masse because a public beta of the app has just been released.

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1. iPhone 3G

These features are my favourite benefits of using Kohana over Codeigniter:

1. Seperation of system files and static content by default. No extra work is needed to seperate your application files from the framework system files
2. Static classes for helpers instead of functions, allowing logical grouping of utility functions.
3. Does not break $_GET variables. I don’t care what the CI proponents say, breaking $_GET is unacceptable.
4. The session driver can optionally use native sessions. An application on it’s own secure enviroment doesn’t need to worry about native session security like you do on shared servers.
5. Supports only PHP5+; PHP4 is dead, and PHP6 is not too far off, it’s time to cast off the dead weight.

There’s plenty more things I like better in Kohana, but the 5 above will have to do for now.

Codeigniter does have one advantage, better documentation, but as Kohana matures so should its documentation.

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1. localhostr update

Open a terminal and replacing {sharename} with the name of the share you set up in Preferences, type:
sudo nano /var/samba/shares/{sharename}

Now append the following line to the end of the file and hit ctrl-o to save.
read only = yes

Finally, reload the Samba config files using this:
sudo /usr/sbin/smbd reload

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1. Reloading Apache from within PHP