Debug message in PHP?

I am using PHP from past 4 year and used to debug my code using die and echo statement and will log the debug message in file if running backend job(Cron) while using PHP 4 and then we started using Zend Framework and use Zend_log. But for those who won't use Zend Framework here is the function which will be useful in debug debug_backtrace this function is available from PHP4 didn't know i just came to know while i was browsing php.net, This information is for user like me who didn't know about it :)

What's new in PHP V5.3?

IBM's "What's new in PHP V5.3" series covers new and exciting features in PHP V5.3.

PART 1: Changes to the object interface

PART 2: Closures and lambda functions

PART 3: Namespaces

PART 4: Creating and using Phar archives

Install PHP 5.3 on WAMP Server

Just installed PHP 5.3.0 on WAMP, Nice addon facility in WAMP now can switch between 5.2.x and 5.3.0. It was so simple that even a person with little knowledge can do it.

First install WAMP.
Then download version of php you want and install from here.
Done.

Now go to the wamp server icon in tray and switch to the version you want :)

PHP Security

Good article written by Joel Reyes about PHP Security, Author has explained some of the security holes we have to take care also given link for security tool download. Go through the article worth reading.

Keywords in the URL

Reading the post 8 Tips to Get Domain Diversity came across important tips about keywords in the url. As most of us uses tinyurl or bit.ly for making our long url to short url we forget the feature tinyurl and bit.ly provide "Optional custom name/alias" this is important for SEO.

E.g., for the page http://ansarahmed.blogspot.com/2009/06/fingerprinting-to-dynamically-enable.html, you should probably try to use bit.ly/dynamic-caching

Fingerprinting to dynamically enable caching/ Caching dynamic content

While reading the caching tutorial from google came across with the section about using fingerprinting concept for caching content which changes regularly. Below is the explanation from google team.

"For resources that change occasionally, you can have the browser cache the resource until it changes on the server, at which point the server tells the browser that a new version is available. You accomplish this by embedding a fingerprint of the resource in its URL (i.e. the file path). When the resource changes, so does its fingerprint, and in turn, so does its URL. As soon as the URL changes, the browser is forced to re-fetch the resource. Fingerprinting allows you to set expiry dates long into the future even for resources that change more frequently than that. Of course, this technique requires that all of the pages that reference the resource know about the fingerprinted URL, which may or may not be feasible, depending on how your pages are coded."

I am writing the code in php to implement this concept and will share with you all soon.

Coding Standard

While going through the post from Lukas Kahwe Smith on coding standard came across the link for coding standard of various other project and framework.

Horde Project
PEAR
Zend Framework
PHP Team

include_path in php

I was just going through the post of Sam Hennessy about Zend Framework Location, I found a section which really surprised me about the include_path(performance). I know that what include_path is and how to modify it, i remember we used .htaccess way to change the include path in my previous organization, but didn't know about the performance effect if we didn't use it correctly, ok my old pal reading this post will surely correct it :)

What’s it look like?

A typical value of Linux include_path setting looks like:

.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear

It breaks down into two parts, the path and the path separator.
The path separator is “:” on UNIX style systems and “;” on Windows and acts as a delimiter between multiple paths. You can also simple use the PHP constant PATH_SEPARATOR from within your PHP scripts.

You paths should be absolute and you should be careful not to add a trailing slash to the end. In the context of an include_path, a path of “.” is considered the current directory.

How do I change it?

The three common ways to add a new path to your include_path are, changing the php.ini, adding a value in an .htaccess file or from within a PHP script.
php.ini

Open your php.ini in a text editor and find “include_path” then add your Zend Framework path.

Before:

include_path=".:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear"

After:

include_path=".:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear:/path/to/zf"
.htaccess

In an .htaccess file, add:

php_value include_path ".:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear:/path/to/zf"
In a PHP File

Before you include any Zend Framework code add the following to your PHP code:

$path = '/path/to/zf'; set_include_path(get_include_path() .PATH_SEPARATOR. $path);

Performance

The earlier on in the include_path a path
you are intending to use occurs, the faster the lookup will be. So for performance reasons you should put the paths most used by your application at the beginning of the include_path

Let’s say Zend Framework is your applications most commonly used external library. We should then change our above example for php.ini file, from:

include_path=".:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear:/path/to/zf"

To:

include_path=".:/path/to/zf:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear"

This will reduce number of folders PHP has to check, and thus file system calls, by half.

I was under the impression that the performance gain from this optimization would only be minor if using an Op-code cache like APC or Zend Optimizer+. However Matthew O’Phinney informs me:

In the profiling and benchmarking I’ve done, it still makes a difference, as the opcode cache will first hit the realpath cache, which is when the path lookup will usually occur; once it determines the path, it then checks to see if it has opcodes for that path, and then merrily goes on its way. The sooner it finds a match, the faster it can identify and use the opcodes. That said, the performance difference is minor — you only notice it when you have many class files on any given request, and if you’re under heavy load. (And those were the conditions I was profiling.)

Built in Breadcrumb in Zend Framework

Wenbert Del Rosario has posted a tutorial explaining how to use build in breadcrumb(Zend_navigation) facility in zend framework.

Managing Secure Protocol in Apache-Based Websites using PHP

In this post author explain of https protocol, how to effectively manage it, he is helping you to have good rank from google. Nice, see about use of rel="canonical" tag. He helps how to avoid your content being duplicated by googlebot as it will index your both http and https version of your website which will cause you to loss the page rank more details.