Wrenbjor

Growing Up with PHP, Zend Framework Enter stage left…

wrenbjor — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 05:13:30 +0000

I have been using PHP for nearly 10 years but my growth within the language stalled a while back. I could try to blame it on lack of challenges but really it’s been a lack of drive. Even if I had projects that I could have used to learn more about the language, I think I would have stuck to old programming habits because thats what I was familiar with. Lately at my day job, my projects have started to get more and more complex and I am quickly realizing that I need to grow in PHP and in my programming style.

About a year ago I started looking into PHP frameworks as well as the MCV structure for applications. At first I looked at CakePHP, then CodeIgnighter. I also found Kohana and Zend. I tried my hand at CodeIgnighter for a project or two but I really couldn’t get into it. I naturally went right to Kohana (It was forked from CI’s source but was built for PHP5). I ran into the same issues, I could get the framework up, build a sample project but it really didn’t excite me. At that point I stopped trying to work with frameworks and really focused on the language.

I learned about PDO, I started building classes, and I really focused on better programming with out the help of a framework. So fast forward to last month. I started to revisit PHP frameworks again. After looking at the current states of the frameworks I really feel that Zend will work best for me. I think the reason I could not get into the flow with the other frameworks was that I was jumping in head first into both a framework and MCV. Zend is the only one of the frameworks that allows you to work with it and not force your apps to be in the MVC structure. I have started working with Zend 1.11 but I am using it without MVC. I am really liking it so far and once I get more familiar with the framework I will jump into MVC.

If you want to follow along in my journey, you can start with these Zend resources:

Cheat Day

wrenbjor — Tue, 24 May 2011 12:13:28 +0000

So It’s cheat day, Time to stuff your face with tons of candy and soda and all the junk you can’t have during the week right? Personally, I don’t look at cheat day as an excuse to binge. I use it as just eating like I used to before Slow-Carb. Skipping breakfast, a lunch, candy, soda, dinner, and desert. My food intake was never that large to begin with, my food intake quality is the reason my weight went out of control.

So use cheat day how you see fit, I think I will just use it to eat food with carbs On that note, if you have any good recipes for Slow-Carb meals, send them my way and I will post them!

Slow-Carb Breakfast

wrenbjor — Sun, 22 May 2011 19:29:10 +0000

This is what I have for breakfast every day on the Slow-Carb Diet. My base is always the same and I change up one or two things for verity.

Base Ingredients (These Never Change):

2 Hardboiled eggs
1 1/2 Cup Chopped Spinach
1/4 Cup Salsa

Extras (One of any of these):

1/2lb Ground Turkey
1 8oz Chicken Breast
1 Cup Kidney Beans

Slow-Carb Chili-Redux

wrenbjor — Sun, 22 May 2011 19:04:25 +0000

I have been on the Four Hour Body program for about 2 weeks. I have been looking all over for good recipes and I was pointed to this Slow-Carb Chili recipe. It’s really good but I tweaked it a bit by removing some of the ingredients and making my own chili flavor mix. Heres what I did:

INGREDIENTS:
2lb organic ground beef
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed well
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed well
4 chopped bell peppers
2 cans stewed tomatos

Start by adding the olive oil in to a medium hot pan. Add the chopped onion and the chopped bell peppers to the pan and sauté them until the onions are translucent and the peppers are startting to soften. Add the beef and cook until there is no pink left.

Add the beans, celery, and the tomatos. Mix well and let it come to a boil. Add the chili seasoning and let simmer for 30min.

Chili Seasoning Ingredients:
2 tablespoon paprika
4 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons ground cayenne pepper (Use 1 teaspoon if you want it mild)
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried oregano

PHP Arrays

wrenbjor — Mon, 09 May 2011 04:53:49 +0000

Ok I have been dealing with people that just don’t understand arrays… I don’t know why they cant grasp the concept but I am going to explain single and multi-demential arrays and how to use them.

PHP Arrays

An array is a list of items that are tracked by an index number (or name “key”). Here is an example of a list of names:

$array = array("Joe", "Bill", "Susan", "Kim"); echo "

";

        print_r($array);

        echo "

";

    ?>

The above lines of code create an array (list) of names in order. In programming and most engineering fields we start counting at 0 and not 1. So the “First” item in the array is “Joe” but we call it the value at index 0. There are four items in the array, most people would count it like this:

1 => “Joe”, 2 => “Bill”, 3 => “Susan”, 4 => “Kim”

but programmers count it like this:

0 => “Joe”, 1 => “Bill”, 2 => “Susan”, 3 => “Kim”

Ok, so now when we run the code the “

” tags will format the output for us and make it more readable. Another note, I echoed the

 tags to the screen but you can't echo an Array. You must use print_r() to display the contents of the array to the screen as text.


    ARRAY

    {

        0 => "Joe"

        1 => "Bill"

        2 => "Susan"

        3 => "Kim"

    }


Now if we want the value of index #2 we would do this:


    echo $array[2];


We would see "Susan". Now this can get confusing with the numbers being shifted so I introduce Associative Arrays.


    
        $array = array("Boss" => "Joe", "Janitor" => "Bill", "Nurse" => "Susan", "Customer" => "Kim");

        echo "
";

        print_r($array);

        echo "
";

    ?>


You will notice that the main difference is the addition of a named index. So now we can call this


    echo $array["Boss"];


We will get "Joe" as our output. All the examples I have shown are single demential arrays. Moving on...
Multi-demential Arrays are Arrays that have Arrays inside of them, observe:


    
        $array = array("Bosses" => array("Joe", "Matt"), "Customers" => array("Bill", "Susan", "Kim") );

        echo "
";

        print_r($array);

        echo "
";

    ?>


Now we have a list of positions that have a list of people.


    ARRAY

    {

        "Bosses"

        {

            0 => "Joe"

            1 => "Matt"

        }

        "Customers"

        {

            0 => "Bill"

            1 => "Susan"

            2 => "Kim"

        }

    }


Now, to get this data we do this:


    echo $array["Bosses"][0];

    echo $array["Customers"][2];


This will output "Joe: and "Kim". We can make this an associative array and make it a little easier. 


    
        $array = array("Bosses" => array("East Boss" => "Joe", "West Boss" => "Matt"), "Customers" => array("Rich" => "Bill", "Poor" => "Susan", "Avg" => "Kim") );

        echo "
";

        print_r($array);

        echo "
";

    ?>


Now we can get our data like this:


    echo $array["Bosses"]["East Boss"]; // output will be "Joe"

    echo $array["Customers"]["Poor"]; // output will be "Susan"


I hope this helps anyone that is confused.

ListViews

wrenbjor — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:00:29 +0000

Today I am going to cover Lists. Lists can be made several ways, today I will show you how to make a static text based list. After we are displaying the list I will then show you how to send the text from the list to a Toast (popup) when the item is clicked.

Lets start with the XML.

This sets up a basic ListView widget to hold the list data and display it to the screen.

Now we want to make an Activity like normal but for this example your class should extend ListActivity. We will then create a list of movie monsters.

So speaking of… Here is the list of monsters.

static final String[] MONSTERS = new String[] { "Zombie", "Vampire", "Warewulf", "Blob" };

Now for the basic onCreate method:

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
}

Now we need to make an adapter to hold the monsters. After the super call add:

setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter(this, android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, MONSTERS));

android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1 is a default xml view for displaying a list. This can be customized for a variety of list displays.

Now lets make a ListView object that links to the XML widget:

ListView lv = getListView(); // Grabs the ListView widget that is tied to the Activity.
lv.setTextFilterEnabled(true); // Enable the Text Filter. Typing when this view has focus will filter the children to match the users input

Now we are going to create the click listener and the onItemClick event

lv.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener()
{
    public void onItemClick(AdapterView parent, View view, int position, long id)
    {
        // Do Stuff Here
    }
});

Lastly we will add the Toast call, put this in the onItemClick stub:

Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), ((TextView) view).getText(),Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();

Here is the whole Class:

public class Lister extends ListActivity {
	static final String[] MONSTERS = new String[] { "Zombie", "Vampire", "Warewulf", "Blob" };

	@Override
	public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
	{
	  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

	  setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter(this, android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, MONSTERS));

	  ListView lv = getListView();
	  lv.setTextFilterEnabled(true);

	  lv.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener()
	  {
	    public void onItemClick(AdapterView parent, View view, int position, long id)
	    {
	    	Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), ((TextView) view).getText(),Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
	    }
	  });
	}
}

Custom Android Buttons

wrenbjor — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 05:18:09 +0000

So I have been looking into buttons for my app and just like in HTML I hate the default

The AndroidManifest.xml file…. (Updated)

wrenbjor — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 02:20:10 +0000

This little file seems to be the bane of my Android programming existence… It is really not referenced well in the Android books and good luck finding good information on it online other than the Android Javadoc located here. I am going to cover what I have discovered on my own and hopefully help out some people along the way.

This is a sample manifest file from a hello world app that has two views. From my extensive searching, most people have problems with intents and activities because they don’t have the manifest file setup correctly. To get started you really just need to add an tag for each class file (activity) that your application will launch.

You will also see tags in example XML files that show an , we will cover this in a later post but you can ignore it for now. This allows the system to launch pieces of our application.

Thats is for now, more to come later.

My Own Tutorials…

wrenbjor — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 04:23:43 +0000

Looks like its a good thing that I am blogging my way through Android coding… there are no good tutorials that show how to get things done.

Once I am done my app this week I will have a few tutorials put together to help the people that are lost like I am. I am going to start with the most confusing item I have found so far… The AndroidMainfest.xml

Adventures In Android

wrenbjor — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 06:19:58 +0000

I am a web app developer. I have been make web sites and apps for 10 years now and I have been taking some time lately to reflect on my programming skills.

I am confident enough to say that I am a good programmer, I’m not strong in any particular language but the concept of programming I am great with.

I write in PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Java, Objective-C, and Perl. I have used Basic, C, C++, and C# in the past. I am good enough that if I have a problem that I have to solve with a particular language I can Google what I don’t know and I will be fine. But I don’t want to be “fine” anymore. I see developers everyday that are like “I have 1 year experience” and they are spitting out apps like a baby fills diapers. But they do something that I don’t, they only focus on one or two languages for that time and that’s all they do.

I think it’s time that I start to do the same. I really want to move from web development to mobile app development. I am going to start with Android and blog my way though my app development experiences. I am going to let people know all the steps I am working on to complete my apps.

Then I am going to move to iOS (iPhone / iPad) development. I will also blog my progress in that as well. Once I am solid on those two languages I am going to start to move away from other languages all together.