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php

All my posts about php.

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Convert a pdf to an image using PHP original

by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read

Converting a pdf to an image is easy using PHP, but the API kinda sucks. $imagick = new Imagick('file.pdf[0]'); $imagick->setImageFormat('jpg'); file_put_contents($pathToImage, $imagick); The pdf-to-image-package aims to fix that. Here is the equivalent code: $pdf = new…

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A new version of the medialibrary package original

by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read

When starting out with Laravel I made a medialibrary to associate uploaded files with models. In our custom made cms we use the medialibrary to for example associate articles with images. In short the medialibrary could: associate files with models generate thumbnails and other derived images from…

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In favor of the singleton

A short and very enjoyable read by Uncle Bob on singletons:

Do you recognize this: ``` public class X { private static X instance = null;

private X() {}

public static X instance() { if (instance == null) instance = new X(); return instance; }

// more methods... }


<em>Of course. That's the Singleton pattern from the GOF book. I've always heard we shouldn't use it.</em>

Why shouldn't we use it?

<em>Because it makes our systems hard to test.</em>

It does? Why is that?

....</blockquote>
You can read the whole conversation on <a href="http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2015/07/01/TheLittleSingleton.html">http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2015/07/01/TheLittleSingleton.html</a>

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Add .env support to Laravel 4

It's very easy to port Laravel 5's way of handling environment files to Laravel 4.

You've got to require this package (it's that one that L5 uses): [code]composer require vlucas/phpdotenv```

And then you should update bootstrap/start.php:


...
$dotEnv = new Dotenv\Dotenv(__DIR__ . '/../');
$dotEnv->load();

$env = $app->detectEnvironment(function () {
    return getenv('APP_ENV') ?: 'production';
});
...

And boom, done! Now you can use an .env-file instead of .env.php.

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Voodoo PHP

If you're interested in some dark magic you should watch this talk by Marco Pivetta on Voodoo PHP. I really like these show-me-the-code type of talks.

We've often seen "magic" code, but how does it even work? Let's explore some arguably bad PHP coding techniques that are actually used in real world libraries to solve problems that would otherwise be a huge burden for all of us.

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The first PHP Antwerp meetup original

by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read

Earlier tonight the first PHP Antwerp meetup was held. The event was organised by Dries Vints of BeatSwich. I was the first speaker and talked a little bit about Satis and how we use it at Spatie. You can view the slides on Speakerdeck. The big talk of the evening was delivered by Mitchell van…

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Recursion and Generators

Christopher Pitt experimented a bit with generators and wrote down the thought process on his blog.

Generators are awesome. If they’re new to you then take some time to read where they come from and what they do. If you’ve come from a particular programming language background, they may be difficult for you to understand.

They were, and continue to be, tricky for me to grasp. So I’ve spent loads of time trying to understand them, and what they can do for my code.

https://medium.com/@assertchris/recursion-and-generators-d56f513ea6ab

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Aspect Oriented PHP And The Interceptor Pattern

There are many ways to modify the behavior of existing code with actually changing the core logic. Some patterns you might be familiar with are the decorator pattern or the observer pattern. Both allow you to take another object and modify the behavior by wrapping your modifications around the original code. One pattern you might not be familiar with though, is the interceptor pattern.

The interceptor pattern is a core concept of what is called aspect oriented programming (AOP). AOP aims to improve the modularity of your code by allowing you to separate cross-cutting concerns from the rest of your code.

http://www.edzynda.com/aspect-oriented-php-and-the-interceptor-pattern/

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A trait to optionally abort a Laravel app original

by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read

Inspired by Edd Man's post on optional value control-flows I made a small Laravel package to optionally abort your application. The package provides a Spatie\OrAbort\OrAbort-trait that can be used on any class you want. All the methods of the class will gain orAbort-variant. When the original…

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Optional Value Control-flows in PHP using Traits and Magic-methods

Edd Mann demonstrates a nice trait to add OrElse functionality to a class via a trait. With it you can do things like:

[code]

$cart = $repository->findByIdOrElse(1, new ShoppingCart); $cart = $repository->findByIdOrElse(1, function () { return new ShoppingCart; });



<a href="http://tech.mybuilder.com/optional-value-control-flows-in-php-using-traits-and-magic-methods/">http://tech.mybuilder.com/optional-value-control-flows-in-php-using-traits-and-magic-methods/</a>

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Common string functions

When working on projects I found myself, over time, needing the same string functions over and over again. Things like how to shorten a string but still let it end on entire word, replace the last occurrence of string in a string, ...

Instead of keeping these functions in a helper file locally in the project, I made a package out of it. It was a good opportunity to spice it up with bit of OO to make them chainable. An example:

[code] // outputs "MIDDLE" echo string('StartMiddleEnd')->between('Start', 'End')->toUpper();



In addition to it's own methods, the package provides <a href="https://github.com/spatie/string#integration-with-underscorephp">an integration</a> with <a href="https://github.com/Anahkiasen/underscore-php">Maxime Fabre's underscore package</a>.

You are very welcome to submit pull requests to add functions that you feel are missing. Be sure to include some unit tests to ensure everything working as intended.

Granted,  it isn't the most sexy package in the world, but it sure is handy.

<a href="https://github.com/spatie/string">https://github.com/spatie/string</a>

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A Laravel package to easily add paginated routes original

by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read

Laravel offers a nice way to add pagination. As far as your routes are concerned you don't have to do a thing. It just works out of the box. Unfortunately the generated url's are pretty ugly: http://example.com/news?page=2 What we want are url's that look like this: http://example.com/news/page/2…

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Semantic versioning and public interfaces

...

Interfaces are more susceptible to BC breaks than concrete classes. Once an interface is published as “stable”, I don’t see how it can be changed at all per the rules of SemVer (that is, unless you bump the major version). The only thing you can do to maintain BC is add an entirely new interface to the package while leaving the old one in place, perhaps even extending the old one if needed.

http://paul-m-jones.com/archives/6136

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