fidzu : PHP

Many of you probably scratched your heads reading this title. "Bitwhat?"

In this article, we'll look at what bitwise operators are, and whether or not their use is still relevant in this modern age of computing.

Setting permissions for a user would then look something like this:

UPDATE `users` SET `editProfile` = 1, `deleteProfile` = 0, `createDraft` = 1, `publishDraft` = 0 ... WHERE `id` = 5

This approach adds no extra tables, but needlessly expands the table into gargantuan width, and requires a modification of the database every time a new permission is added. It's a fine approach for when you know you'll have at most two or three permissions for the foreseeable future, but shouldn't be used for anything more than that.

However, because the list of columns, when looked at from afar, resembles a binary number (1010), this approach is an excellent segway into another...

The Bitwise Approach

Before we dive deeper into this approach, let's have a crash course in binary.

Binary Numbers

All computers store data as binary: 0 or 1. So, the number 14 is actually stored as: 1110. How so?

Binary numbers are evaluated from right to left when calculating their value, just like real numbers. So the number 1337 means:

• 1 x 7
• • 3 x 10
• • 3 x 100
• • 1 x 1000

Because each digit in the decimal system (base 10) gets multiplied by 10. The first one is 1, the next one is 10, the next after that 100, the next 1000, etc.

Continue reading %Are Bitwise Operators Still Relevant in Modern PHP?%

21 Aug 2017 4:00pm GMT

21 Aug 2017 11:01am GMT

[MVC is] a particular way to break up the responsibilities of parts of a graphical user interface application. One of the prototypical examples is a CAD application: models are the objects being drawn, in the abstract: models of mechanical parts, architectural elevations, whatever the subject of the particular application and use is. The "Views" are […]

18 Aug 2017 2:49pm GMT

The post Refactoring Done Right appeared first on Nomad PHP.

18 Aug 2017 4:01am GMT

The post API Tips From the Frontline appeared first on Nomad PHP.

18 Aug 2017 4:01am GMT

Building good APIs is hard, and anyone who had the chance to do so can relate to this. A project can easily grow to become a mess. One can keep trying to adopt an approach to make it more enjoyable, like trying a documentation-first workflow, but something always feels clumsy.

I was trying out Postman lately, a tool we've briefly covered before, and I discovered that they're doing a great job by providing an integrated environment for different components of an API, like authorization, testing, documentation, versioning, etc.

In this article, we're going to walk through the different features that Postman provides and how we can organize them to make our API workflow less painful.

Making Requests

The first step to discovering Postman is making a simple API request and seeing the response.

From the screenshot above we can see that the view incorporates different elements. The top bar contains the request method (in this case GET), and right next to it we specify the endpoint to make the request to. If the request has some params we can specify them by clicking the Params button, which will open a table for entering them. When ready, we can click the send button to initiate the request.

The next section contains five tabs:

• Authorization: Specifies how to authorize the request. Like Basic Auth, OAuth2, etc.
• Headers: Any header that should be sent with the request. Like content-type, Authorization, etc.
• Body: Request body for request types like Post, PUT, etc.
• Pre-request Script: JS code to be executed before performing the request. (More about this later)
• Tests: JS code to validate the response payload.

The bottom section contains all the details about the response (status, time and size). The four tabs are self explanatory, except for Tests which contains the tests result if we have any (more about this later).

Authorization

Postman supports all types of authorization, as we saw above. We're going to focus on token authorization set via header. You can read more about authorization here.

The header format that Postman will use is:

Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>

Now, we'll go ahead and get a token we can use for our future requests. I'm testing on an in-development application of mine, but you can use any application you have lying around, or set one up quickly with Laravel as described here.

Not familiar with Laravel? Try our premium course - it's a comprehensive introduction, and you'll get the upcoming newer version of it automatically if you grab it in its current iteration!

At this point, we have a token to be used for querying data from the API as an authenticated user. However, copying and pasting the token for every request is tedious!

Environment Variables

This nice feature alleviates the pain of copy/paste and groups our variables in one place. An environment is an execution context: we may have a local environment, testing, staging, etc.

Postman has different scopes for variables:

• Global
• Environment
• Local
• Data

The global variables are available everywhere, separately from the selected environment. You can read more in the documentation.

We need at least three variables for now:

• domain: current active subdomain company1, company2, etc.
• url: our app URL.
• token: Token for future authentication.

Truncated by Planet PHP, read more at the original (another 932 bytes)

17 Aug 2017 4:00pm GMT

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.2.0 Beta 3. This release is the third and final beta for 7.2.0. All users of PHP are encouraged to test this version carefully, and report any bugs and incompatibilities in the bug tracking system. THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT PREVIEW - DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION! For more information on the new features and other changes, you can read the NEWS file, or the UPGRADING file for a complete list of upgrading notes. These files can also be found in the release archive. For source downloads of PHP 7.2.0 Beta 3 please visit the download page, Windows sources and binaries can be found at windows.php.net/qa/. The first Relase Candidate will be released on the 31th of August. You can also read the full list of planned releases on our wiki. Thank you for helping us make PHP better.

17 Aug 2017 12:00am GMT

16 Aug 2017 2:35pm GMT

(The following is more exploratory than prescriptive. My thoughts on this topic are incomplete and in-progress. Please try to treat it accordingly.) tl;dr: "Micro" frameworks are better described as "user interface" frameworks; perhaps there should be corollary "infrastructure" frameworks; consider using two frameworks and/or two containers, one for the user interface and a separate one […]

15 Aug 2017 6:38pm GMT

I came across PHPBot the other day (not to be confused with Botman or Fondbot) - a "chatbot" which helps you look up PHP manual entries and generates example code for them.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I don't believe in chatbots being chatbots - as someone who's built some for both commercial purposes and personal ones, and as someone who was around in the age of IRC auto-responding scripts, I see chatbots as a little more than a marketing fad designed to impress today's Snapchat generation. However, every now and then one will appear that's actually useful. Could this be the one? Let's take a look.

Concept

The idea is that you use the text input on the page to enter a PHP related term (like "ksort") and the application will reply with an explanation and some example code, like so:

Different queries will produce different responses. So, if you ask it for echo:

Continue reading %PHPBot - Can a PHP Bot Help You Look up Documentation Faster?%

15 Aug 2017 4:00pm GMT