basketweaving for the mind : php

PHP: Of Eyes, Ears and Clouds

nhodge — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:27:18 GMT

SOme quick notes on Microsoft and PHP things that are in motion. Things is such a great Anglo-Saxon word.

July CTP of PHP SDK for Windows Azure. If you are more visual, Rob Bagby has an excellent post and more excellent screencast overview:

Also, pop over to the online webcasts CodeWorks, which is hosted and run by PHP|Architect. These are sponsored by Microsoft.

If you prefer to read magazine style, the May issues of PHP Architect Magazine is a free download. Compliments of Microsoft.

PHP on Windows

nhodge — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:19:35 GMT

Do you use PHP on Windows?

Love to hear your stories. Comment here or email me at nhodge@microsoft.com and I will send you a special postcard from Australia!

Open Source Developer Conference, Sydney, 2008

nhodge — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:52:26 GMT

During the 30 minutes of presentation, I demonstrated the following bits and pieces of open source and or free Microsoft bits.

Demo set 1: Open source licensing and giving back

ASP.NET MVC on Stackoverflow.com: licensed via MS-PL
Codeplex.com; the main, but not only, Microsoft repository of our open source bits and source
Oomph: Microformats toolkit (source on codeplex.com) incorporating:
- LiveWriter; hCard plugin; publish; show IE plugin, same site with Firefox Tail for that other browser.

Demo set 2: PHP, SQLServer 2008 & Frameworks

Demo set 3: Dynamic Language Runtime, IronPython, IronRuby

IronPython; ipy hello world winforms and as 'code behind' in ASP.NET
Photoviewer; using local Chiron, browser, ruby in browser doing HTML/DOM
Silverlight Toolkit: MS-PL controls and data visualisation tools. MS-PL
Mono team's Moonlight. Silverlight for Linux

Demos and Links from Edge of the Web, Nov’08 Perth

nhodge — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:08:11 GMT

During the 50 minutes of presentation (including at least 9 ICHC images), I demonstrated the following bits and pieces of open source and or free Microsoft bits.

Demo set 1: Web Standards

Live Mesh Mobile : take photo to mesh on laptop

MacOS X 10.5 client available too [not demo’d]

DataModelBrowser to apis.mesh.com; showing REST/JSON/APP [part of Live Framework SDK]
Oomph: Microformats toolkit (source on codeplex.com) incorporating:

LiveWriter; hCard plugin; publish; show IE plugin, same site with Firefox Tail

Demo set 2: PHP, SQLServer 2008 & IIS7

Demo set 3: IronPython

IronPython; ipy hello world winforms
using as aspx as "code behind" and ASP.NET
F# integration with via .NET compiled .dll (calling from IronPython)

Demo set 4: IronRuby

IronRuby; flickr.net example from John Lam’s PDC2008 session
Photoviewer; using local Chiron, browser, ruby in browser doing HTML/DOM

Demo set 5: Silverlight

Silverlight 2 tools for Visual Studio now support Visual Studio Express

Silverlight 2 also supporting Eclipse (see, competition is a good thing)

Silverlight Toolkit, run from chrome-less Google Chrome (contains Microsoft Windows Template Lib)

October 2008 Update: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Driver for PHP

nhodge — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:44:10 GMT

Now available, prebuilt is available for download

Source is also available from Codeplex: CodePlex

Hidden in the Mists of the Forest

nhodge — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:01:27 GMT

Hidden in the mists of the autumnal forests (northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere it is springtime!) Microsoft opened a new door to interesting Opensource-web things:

http://www.microsoft.com/web/content.aspx?id=microsoft-introduces-installers-for-open-source-apps

http://www.microsoft.com/web is bookmark worthy.

The world has dramatically changed, and Microsoft moves along with the times.

Seasons change.

SQL Server Driver for PHP: Last Inserted Row ID

nhodge — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:56:00 GMT

After a mysql_query with an INSERT statement, a quick call to mysql_insert_id provides the ID of the last inserted row.

$lastRow = mysql_insert_id($link);

How do you accomplish the same with the SQL Server Driver for PHP?

In this extended example, it’s a simple matter of adding some extra SQL to the INSERT statement, and popping the result from the query.

<?php 

    function lastInsertId($queryID) {
        sqlsrv_next_result($queryID);
        sqlsrv_fetch($queryID);
        return sqlsrv_get_field($queryID, 0);
    } 

    $serverName = '.\SQLEXPRESS';
    $connectionInfo = array( "Database"=>"database" ); 

    /* Connect using Windows Authentication. */
    $conn = sqlsrv_connect( $serverName, $connectionInfo );
    if( $conn === false )
    {
        echo "Unable to connect.</br>";
        die( print_r( sqlsrv_errors(), true));
    } 

    /* Define the Transact-SQL query. Use question marks as parameter placeholders. */
    $insertSQL = "INSERT INTO table
              (message, fromuser) 
              VALUES (? , ?) "; 

    /* Initialize $message and $from */
    $message = "Please call me"; 
    $fromuser = "Nick Hodge"; 

    /* special Transact-SQL addition to the SQL insert statement. It will return the last insert ID */
    $insertSQL .= "; SELECT SCOPE_IDENTITY() AS IDENTITY_COLUMN_NAME"; 

    /* Execute the statement with the specified parameter values. */
    $stmt1 = sqlsrv_query( $conn, $insertSQL, array($message, $fromuser));
    if( $stmt1 === false )
    {
        echo "Could not retrieve last inserted row ID.</br>";
        die( print_r( sqlsrv_errors(), true));
    } 

    echo "The last inserted row ID is ".lastInsertId($stmt1); 

?>

The magic happens in the addition of $insertSQL .= "; SELECT SCOPE_IDENTITY() AS IDENTITY_COLUMN_NAME"; appended to the INSERT query.

Also note the use of a parameterized query. To reduce the risk of SQL injection nastiness, this nifty query does all the heavy lifting.

SQL Server Driver PHP commands compared with MySQL PHP commands

nhodge — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:20:01 GMT

Over the years I have used the inbuilt PHP drivers for MySQL. The best mechanism for mapping the two methods is a simple table laying out a comparison between the two systems.

Note this is not a SQLServer vs. MySQL argument, just for information and reference.

As the SQLServer drivers change, I will update this page.

Note:

sqlsrv_client_info( )

DriverDllName: SQLNCLI.DLL DriverODBCVer: 03.52 DriverVer: 09.00.3042 ExtensionVer: 1.0.1015.0

Description	SQLServer Driver for PHP	MySQL Functions
Begins a transaction	sqlsrv_begin_transaction( resource $conn )	START TRANSACTION, BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK can be executed as statements in mysql_query
Cancels a statement; discards any pending results for the statement	sqlsrv_cancel( resource $stmt )	-
Provides information about the client	sqlsrv_client_info( resource $conn )	mysql_get_client_info ( void )
Closes a connection. Frees all resources associated with the connection	sqlsrv_close( resource $conn )	mysql_close ([ resource $link_identifier ] )
Commits a transaction	sqlsrv_commit( resource $conn )	START TRANSACTION, BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK can be executed as statements in mysql_query
Changes error handling and logging configurations	sqlsrv_configure( string $setting, int $value )	-
Creates and opens a connection	sqlsrv_connect( string $serverName [, array $connectionInfo )	mysql_connect ([ string $server [, string $username [, string $password [, bool $new_link [, int $client_flags ]]]]] )
Returns error and/or warning information about the last operation	sqlsrv_errors( [int $errosAndOrWarnings] )	mysql_errno ([ resource $link_identifier ] ) mysql_error ([ resource $link_identifier ] )
Executes a prepared statement with sqlsrv_prepare	sqlsrv_execute( resource $stmt )	-
Makes the next row of data available for reading	sqlsrv_fetch( resource $stmt )	-
Retrieves the next row of data as a numerically indexed array, an associative array, or both	sqlsrv_fetch_array( resource $stmt [, int $fetchType] )	mysql_fetch_array ( resource $result [, int $result_type ] )
Retrieves the next row of data as an object	sqlsrv_fetch_object( resource $stmt [, string $className] )	mysql_fetch_object ( resource $result [, string $class_name [, array $params ]] )
Returns field metadata	sqlsrv_field_metadata( resource $stmt )	See mysql_field_type ( resource $result , int $field_offset ) specifically the Example and mysql_fetch_field ( resource $result [, int $field_offset ] )
Closes a statement. Frees all resources associated with the statement	sqlsrv_free_stmt( resource $stmt )	mysql_free_result ( resource $result )
Returns the value of the specified configuration setting	sqlsrv_get_config( string $setting )	mysql_get_client_info ( void )
Retrieves a field in the current row by index. The PHP return type can be specified	sqlsrv_get_field( resource $stmt, int $fieldIndex [, int $getAsType] )	similar to mysql_result ( resource $result , int $row [, mixed $field ] )
Makes the next result available for processing	sqlsrv_next_result( resource $stmt )	-
Retrieves the number of fields in an active result set	sqlsrv_num_fields( resource $stmt )	mysql_num_fields ( resource $result )
Prepares a Transact-SQL query without executing it. Implicitly binds parameters, executed with sqlsrv_execute	sqlsrv_prepare( resource $conn, string $tsql[ ,array $params[, array $options]] )	-
Prepares and executes a Transact-SQL query.	sqlsrv_query( resource $conn, string $tsql[ , array $params[, array $options]] )	mysql_query ( string $query [, resource $link_identifier ] )
Rolls back a transaction.	sqlsrv_rollback( resource $conn )	START TRANSACTION, BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK can be executed as statements in mysql_query
Returns the number of modified rows.	sqlsrv_rows_affected( resource $stmt )	mysql_affected_rows ([ resource $link_identifier ] )
Sends up to eight kilobytes (8 KB) of data to the server with each call to the function.	sqlsrv_send_stream_data( resource $stmt )	-
Provides information about the server.	sqlsrv_server_info( resource $conn )	mysql_get_server_info ([ resource $link_identifier ] )

Vista as my PHP Developer Workstation

nhodge — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Prior to joining Microsoft, I always setup my Windows laptop as a PHP/Apache development workstation. Having created my own content management system in PHP (and who hasn’t!) – having a remote development copy is critical.

Over the last few weeks, I have installed the following onto my Vista Ultimate 64-bit laptop and home workstation:

install IIS7 web server, with the CGI support (note: a version of IIS7 supplied with Vista SP1)
Install Thread-safe PHP from http://windows.php.net/downloads.php
Using the IIS Manager, and module remap .php extensions to the
Install php_sqlsrv~~_ts~~.dll which is a part of the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Driver for PHP, modify the php.ini to launch/activate the extension [see comments below]
The following change in the php.ini is also important in an IIS installation

; Set to 1 if running under IIS. Default is zero.
; fastcgi.impersonate = 1;
Restart the IIS
Reading the http://forums.iis.net/ I also updated FastCGI (fixes REQUEST_URI)

Development Environments

Everyone has their favourite development environment. I do have Notepad++ installed, and often just resort to Notepad. As I am from Microsoft, I have access to Visual Studio. Searching out for a Visual Studio plugin: I am currently trialling vs.php (Visual Studio PHP; http://www.jcxsoftware.com/vs.php)

Slides from Sydney PHP User Group

nhodge — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:03:47 GMT

Microsoft, PHP and IIS7

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Speaking at Sydney PHP Group

nhodge — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:09:47 GMT

Pop along. PHP and IIS7, plus other SQL goodness. Also find out what exactly is a demon core?

In Which I Get My Own IIS7

nhodge — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:28:20 GMT

Thanks to our resident Hosting Geek: Jorke, I have an internet-facing Windows 2008 / IIS7 web site.

Yes, Jorke is a brave man.

After logging in via Remote Desktop and changing my password, it is off and away on this funny experience with Windows IIS hosting.

For the record, historically I have always developed/tested my PHP/MySQL sites on Windows: from 2000, via XP and now on Vista, I would install Apache, PHP and MySQL to provide a mirror to the eventual “web hosted” server in the cloud.

First step is to install SQLServer 2008: Express onto the server.

Second step, to ensure that FastCGI PHP is running. Thanks to the support of FastCGI in IIS7, this took a minute at most:

Thirdly, as I plan to use the open source Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Driver for PHP, installing the extension: php_sqlsrv.dll and wiring this to launch in php.ini (one line addition)

After testing with php_info(); , I can see I have a working internet-facing server install.

Now onward towards php.