If you’ve ever built a web application that wanted access to the visitor’s camera you know what a painful experience that can be. If used to involve flash or silverlight plugins or clunky java. Thankfully, browsers have started providing new API’s which are collectively referred to as WebRTC or Web Real Time Chat.
PHP5.5 has support for generators which are a powerful language feature available in other languages like Ruby and Python. While generators in PHP are very much like their Python counterparts, I wanted to give them a spin and try a few simple but useful examples of generators in action.
I recently had the opportunity to speak at PHP Conference Argentina . I’d like to thank Mariano and the other organizers for having me at the event. It was a fantastic opportunity for me to visit Buenos Aires, connect with some friends old and new, and give a new talk about my experiences working on CakePHP.
In a previous post, I outlined some changes that would be coming for configuration in CakePHP 3.0. I’ve recently been thinking a great deal about configuration as well as building some prototype applications. I’ve come to the conclusion that configuration needed to change. Coupling all the classes to Configure while convenient and simple, had a big drawback.
The events system has become an integral part of CakePHP since its introduction in 2.1. When originally introduced, we needed to make a number of compromises in the implementation to facilitate compatibility with the code it was replacing. For 3.0, I wanted to revisit the event subsystem and try to make things more efficient and streamline the API a bit.
I try to keep fairly busy. Between work, being a dad, and working on existing open source projects, I found time to work on two new ones.
Profiling is a very interesting topic for me. I love spending time sifting through results trying to find ways to make code run faster or use less memory. XHProf is a C-extension created by Facebook.
I recently moved hosting for this blog and my wife’s site to a shiny new linode. I did this because I wanted to have control over the versions of PHP, and other server software I ran. I had some issues with email blacklists at my previous host. I chose linode as I’ve heard nothing but good things from friends and my operations folks at work recommended them.
I really like how composer simplifies dependency management & installation. It can make applications more portable, and simpler to deploy when compared to the pear installer. Another really nice feature of composer is that you can easily install any pear package, making it perfect for installing CakePHP. While installation was simple, some extra work was required to get things up and running smoothly.
