Category Archives: PHP

Wrapping C++ Classes in a PHP Extension

I have a tutorial at the Zend Developer Zone called Wrapping C++ Classes in a PHP Extension. It walks you through writing a simple PHP extension that wraps a class written in C++. This is a useful thing to be able to do, especially when exposing an already existing library’s API to PHP userland scripts, [...]

Bad Signs – PHP’s “Shut Up” (@) Operator

Derick Rethans has a post about PHP’s “shut-up” operator (@) and why it should be avoided. He outlines a fairly common debugging scenario and gives some “under-the-hood” explanations on why that particular operator sucks. I couldn’t agree more (that it should be avoided) and I want to go further and talk about something that has [...]

PHP is Lazy

Last week I started reading Extending and Embedding PHP. I really like extending scripting languages for a number of reasons, most of all because it’s a great way to learn about the more esoteric features of a language. So far I’ve discovered two neat things about PHP that made me smile, so I thought I’d [...]

ZendCon 2008 – Day 2

Harold Goldberg, the CEO of Zend Technologies, started the day off with a talk called “Insights from the Experts: How PHP Leaders Are Transforming High-Impact PHP Applications”. The talk was basically a run-down of how PHP is doing out there. (Answer: Fairly well!). There were a few case studies of larger companies using PHP (and [...]

ZendCon 2008 – Day 1

Well yesterday was day one of ZendCon 2008. Actually, the conference proper started today, yesterday was just tutorials. So far I’m pretty impressed. I attended the PHP Developer Best Practices tutorial in the morning and the Quality Assurance in PHP Projects tutorial in the afternoon. The Best Practices tutorial was a little broad and most of [...]