Archive for the ‘PHP’ tag
HTML5 WebSockets, very cool. (part 1)
I only found out about these at the Future of Web Design on Tuesday. I knew they existed in the spec but had never really investigated what they were or how they worked. Now I know I am excited. It seems they are to web apps what the XMLHTTPRequest was when it started to get used for AJAX. So let’s look at what they are, and then why they can be so beneficial to web development. It’s also worth pointing out at this stage that only Chrome 4+ (I think that version, I’m writing from memory) supports WebSockets natively although apparently Mozilla want to implement them in the next iteration of Firefox (they are already available with an add-on), so don’t expect to be using them in any non-specialist projects just yet.
VPS Migration for thechriswalker.net – New Host, New OS, no Plesk
Not that I didn’t like Plesk. I just have the urge to understand things well, and I couldn’t understand all of how Plesk worked… So I wanted it “all-manual”, like the true hardcore (read: idiot) I am.
I had been using a VPS to host this website (amongst other things) and it was getting old. It ran on CentOS 4 and used Plesk as a control panel. PHP was down at version 4.2.2 or something and MySQL still at version 4.x. I didn’t understand server administration as well as I do now and the whole thing was a bit of a mess. So I decided a fresh start, with a VPS on more powerful hardware and built cleanly.
So I went for a basic VPS from 34SP.com with no control panel and using Ubuntu 9.04 as the OS. They set up the server quickly and so I went about configuring it how I wanted. There were a couple of snags along the road and so I’ll tell you about them here too.
Xbox Live Gamercard API
So, got decided to join most of my friends and I got an Xbox 360. Me being me though, I got interested in the way that all the information about your “Gamertag” is stored an accessible on the xbox.com website. Wouldn’t it be fun to do something with this data!
As it turns out, I was beaten to the post by Duncan MacKensie (http://duncanmackenzie.net/Blog/put-up-a-rest-api-for-xbox-gamertag-data) who hosts a webservice to retrieve gamer data from Microsoft. I could find no details about how this service works, where the data comes from or anything! Either he has a relationship with Microsoft, or he scrapes xbox.com but either way, the data seems pretty consistent and reliable. Actually it turns out this information was right there on his website… http://www.duncanmackenzie.net/Blog/if-you-are-wondering-where-i-get-my-xbox-live-info So he gets it as part of his membership to the Xbox Community Developer Program.
However, the webservice is great, and returns XML which is fine, but I thought it would be more useful to me to have a PHP API for this data. So I wrote one which retrieves data from Duncans webservice.
CakePHP Evangelism and T-Cake
So I’ve had this blog for 3 posts now and none of them has a “cakephp” tag yet. Shocking. So here we go…
If you don’t know what CakePHP is and you’ve ever created a web application, or even a website that did more than show a static page, then you should check it out. CakePHP is a web application framework designed for rapid application development using the MVC Design Pattern and with a focus on Convention over Configuration.
What this means in practical terms is that you can built an access controlled, database driven, dynamic web sites/applications in a fraction of the time that it would to start from scratch. A simple blog could be built in a matter of minutes. I could go on for hours. So I won’t, but really – if you make web apps, consider using a framework and CakePHP is excellent.