Josh Sherman

Author: Josh Sherman

  • The cost of convenience

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    Josh Sherman
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    Convenience is rarely economical. Shredded cheese tends to be more expensive than a block of the same type. Pre-chopped vegetables are the same way. But when you spend that little extra, you gain that back in time that you don’t have to spend doing the prep work. Technology doesn’t always…

  • Pull random values from an array with PHP

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    Josh Sherman
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    Like most things, you can solve this problem with a number of different approaches. Without knowing about array_rand in PHP, you could end up doing something like this to pull a random value from an array: $array = [‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’, ‘four’, ‘five’]; shuffle($array); echo $array[0]; The array is shuffled…

  • Portable grits

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    Josh Sherman
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    Now that it’s starting to get cold out, which is anything below 70 degrees here in Florida, I have began searching to find a nice warm breakfast that is quick to prepare as well as portable. I tend to just make smoothies for breakfast but I have grown bored with…

  • Difference between dates with PHP

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    Josh Sherman
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    Prior to PHP 5.3 the act of calculating the difference between two dates was a bit more manual than it is now. By manual, I mean there wasn’t a function that existed to aid in the process if by nothing else, the documentation itself. Let’s take a look at how…

  • Putting the “SH*T” in Joshtronic

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    Josh Sherman
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    You may remember last December when I discussed my first impressions of the Nintendo Wii U system. Overall, I was pleased with the system with one small exception, the fact that “joshtronic” was deemed as inappropriate by the filters in place. I let it slide at the time and went…

  • Benchmarking PHP code

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    Josh Sherman
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    Have you ever asked yourself, “I wonder which of these blocks of code will run faster?” I know I have and I use a very basic template for setting up these benchmarking experiments. The gist of the script is to run through each block of code n times tracking the…

  • Why I still use and maintain my own PHP framework

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    Josh Sherman
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    I consider myself a PHP developer first and foremost. I don’t tout myself as a Pickles developer (my own framework) or a WordPress, Laravel, CakePHP, Django, Flask or Meteor developer even though I have working experience with all of them. At the end of the day those frameworks still require…

  • How to generate the Fibonacci sequence with PHP

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    Josh Sherman
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    The Fibonacci sequence is a sequence of numbers that are derived from the previous numbers in the sequence. The sequence starts at zero and each subsequent number is sum of the previous two numbers in the sequence. There are a number of ways to accomplish this and the most common…

  • Never run out of “firsts”

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    Josh Sherman
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    If you know me, then you’re probably aware of my recent desire to move away from my hometown which is quite possibly just me going through a quarter-to-mid-life crisis. Before we can get the hell out of dodge, I have to find the right career opportunity abroad. I’m fortunate that…

  • How to connect to MongoDB using PHP

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    Josh Sherman
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    I’ve previously discussed installing the MongoDB module but have yet to touch on how to actually do anything past the install. The first thing to do is to connect to the MongoDB server. This can simply be done like this: $client = new MongoClient(); This will connect to the default…