Category: Software Development
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Using PHP’s built-in web server
I recently updated [HolidayAPI][holidayapi] to no longer use my PHP framework because I wanted the system to be easier for new developers to get up and running. Instead of including configuration files for Apache or nginx, I decided that I should just use the web server that’s baked right into…
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Outline numbering for an object tree
Last week I had talked about a layout dilemma that my buddy Justin was having. This reminded me of an issue that programming challenge he hit me with a few months prior. The challenge was to take an object tree and generate the proper outline numbering for it. The object…
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Working with Dynamic variable names a/k/a Variable variables in PHP
Variable variables are one of my favorite things about PHP. PHP allows you to use a variable to reference another variable. This comes in exceptionally handy when you need to create variable names dynamically: $variable = ‘This is my variable’; $var = ‘variable’; echo $$var; Let’s say you have you…
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Layout with fixed header and independently scrolling columns
Update April 4th, 2019 Seems at some point between May of 2015 and now, the code in this post went terribly stale. It wasn’t working in either Firefox or Chrome and I’ve since updated the code with a working example. Many thanks to everybody that blew up my comments about…
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Get all defined variables in PHP
I’ve never actually used this function, but could definitely see using it to help profile a system and/or to help identify defined but unused variables. To obtain an array of all of the defined variables you would: $defined = get_defined_vars(); The function returns a multi-dimensional array of all of the…
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Open Challenge: Learn Lisp with Me
Starting on May 1st, 2015, I am setting out to learn Lisp because I feel like I’m missing out by not knowing it. I see it come up pretty regularly, it’s stood the test of time and there are a plethora of dialects. I am going to target Common Lisp…
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Working with JSON in PHP
JSON is one of my favorite human readable formats. It’s widely used and has great support in PHP as well as other languages. PHP allows you to easily convert variables into JSON and JSON into objects or arrays. First, let’s take a look at how we can convert an array…
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Handling click and touch events on the same element
I’m starting to feel behind the curve. I started receiving feedback that some clickable elements on my social networks were not working on touch devices. Without much thought, I went ahead and added touchstart along side of click to bind both events: $(document).on(‘click touchstart’, ‘.feeny’, function(e) { alert(‘Believe in yourselves….
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Truncate string with ellipses with PHP
We previously discussed how to calculate the length of a string in PHP and I made mention that using that function is how you would go about truncating a string if it’s over a specific length. I also said that down the road I would discuss the topic at hand,…
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Get date for Easter in PHP
All the good things about Easter aside, it’s one of those holidays that’s a pain to get the date for. This is because the date of Easter is based on the lunar cycle and Spring Equinox (March 21st). The date of Easter on a given year could fall between March…