Anna Filina - PHP

codeFest 2.1 Conclusion

nospam@example.com (Anna) — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:33:25 -0600

The codeFest is now over. It went really well. We had about 20 developers yesterday. It was really productive for most people. Some learned a lot. The event was beneficial to the community.

With Yann Larrivée and Louis-Philippe Huberdeau, I was able to make much progress on the PHP Quebec website (jobs section). The new version should be available in a couple of weeks.

The next codeFest should be somewhere in September. For those who don't know, the codeFest is a weekend for contributing to Open Source or community projects. People gather with their laptops and spend the weekend coding. It beats working alone at home!

For more information, visit the codeFest website.

.htaccess on Leopard

nospam@example.com (Anna) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:17:09 -0600

After moving my databases and websites to a new Mac with Leopard, none of the websites were working. It was as if mod_rewrite was not working. First, I noticed that the .htaccess files were all ignored. I checked the Apache configuration file in MAMP, and everything seemed fine. After over an hour of going through blogs and forums, I finally get it: Leopard (it's my first day with it) has its own configuration file in a private folder. That file is not allowing htaccess files.

Solution
1. Open /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf
2. Line 175 and 210: change AllowOverride none to AllowOverride All
3. Restart your server
4. Yay!

2008 PHP Quebec Conference

nospam@example.com (Anna) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 09:48:08 -0600

The 2008 edition of the conference is almost over (we have yet to go to the sugar shack). The event was a total success. For the first time, all tickets we sold out. We had wonderful sponsors that allowed us to do more than before (elePHPants, job fair, cocktail...) We had very good speakers and quality presentations. I talked to many visitors and they were all very happy with the event. It is always a pleasure for me to organize this event and I will surely start planning next year's edition soon. Thanks to all the volunteers who helped us to keep the conference smooth.

Sending headers

nospam@example.com (Anna) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 10:30:48 -0700

There are many reasons to send headers in the middle of you PHP script. Sometimes you want to redirect the user based on some computed information or display different content types (mime-type). Have you ever had a problem with PHP complaining about "output already sent"?

To solve this problem, there is a workaround with ob_start/ob_flush. As pointed out in a past comment, you can put ob_start in the beginning of the script and ob_flush at the end, thus preventing any output before the script finishes executing.

A more neat solution (in my opinion) is to review your output approach. You should not send any output before you are absolutely sure about it (why would you sent kilobytes of HTML if you're going to redirect anyway?). My approach is to store output in a variable or a class and then send it when ready. I also try to limit html generation until after I processed my GET/POST requests.

2008 PHP Quebec Conference: Call for Speakers

nospam@example.com (Anna) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 14:34:01 -0600

PHP Quebec is pleased to announce the sixth edition of the PHP Quebec Conference. The Conference will take place in Montreal, Canada between March 12 and 14th, 2008. We are looking for speakers willing to share their expertise with Canadian and United States PHP professionals.

The Conference features the PHPLab, where speakers and visitors will try to find solutions to actual business problems. The two days of technical talks will be dedicated to advanced software development techniques with PHP5 and PHP6, XML, web services, databases, etc.

Organizers will prioritize new and original topics in English or French.
For more information, visit the website: http://conf.phpquebec.com