A while ago I installed Zend Server Community Edition on OS X which was pretty straightforward. It was only recently that I found out that, as opposed to mysql which worked fine, mysqldump didn’t work correctly and terminated with the error: ``A while ago I installed Zend Server Community Edition on OS X which was pretty straightforward. It was only recently that I found out that, as opposed to mysql which worked fine, mysqldump didn’t work correctly and terminated with the error:…

In my previous post about Zend_Form I showed how, using Zend_Form, a form’s structure can be separated from it’s presentation and how to use custom Decorators and Validators. The example used showed a form that is tightly coupled to a record in a database: One form edits one record. There are however numerous occasions where no ‘one to one’ connection exists and where the fields that need to be shown are not predetermined.…

When doing client-side developing there are times that jQuery’s get-this-do-that nature doesn’t provide all that is needed. For more complex applications I usually find myself creating javascript objects that ‘control’ a specific part of the page’s interaction. In the objects the application’s state is tracked, references to other objects (could be relevant DOM nodes) are stored and event handlers are set.

One of the problems typically encountered when dealing with javascript event handlers is that they have their own take on the ‘this’ keyword. Closures to the rescue.

In a recent Zend Framework project I’ve used Zend_Test to test the functioning of the website ‘as a whole’. So besides testing the separate (authorization) components, the website was tested in the same way a visitor would use it. This is especially useful for testing login scenarios, so I added the test below:

public function testLogoutShouldDenyAccess()
{
    $this->login();

         // verify that profile page now doesn't contain login form
    $this->dispatch('/profile');
    $this->assertQueryCount('form#login', 0);

        // dispatch logout page
    $this->dispatch('/login/logout');

        // verify that profile now holds login form
    $this->dispatch('/profile');
    $this->assertQueryCount('form#login', 1);
    $this->assertNotController('profile');
}

This failed on the last assertQueryCount() which left me puzzled. Performing above steps manually seemed to work fine so I was overlooking something either in my app-code or the test-code.

This morning I upgraded my Ubuntu machine using the auto-update. As I just recently started using Ubuntu I’m very pleased at how some features work compared to Vista. (Vista users will probably be familiar with the auto-update restart that has a terrific feel for timing by always presenting you the choice for postponing the restart when you have several documents opened and are away for a coffee break.) After my self initiated restart everything worked like a charm, OpenOffice is updated to version 3 (nice for the docx workflow) but… Netbeans didn’t start.…

Banners play an essential role in many site’s business models so they are an inevitable price paid for all the free content that is available on the internet. To get a user’s attention a lot of practices are employed like animation, placement or sound (horrible). Today I stumbled on a T-mobile advert on the site nu.nl that indeed attracts a lot of attention but does so in a questionable way: It makes using the visited site almost impossible.…

Recently I started using jQuery in some projects. In past projects I have mainly been using Prototype and the fact that jQuery also has a $() function made me feel at home right away. That same fact put me a bit off-guard as both functions are in fact quite different: Prototype extends the selected HTML node with added functionality and returns it. Argument should be a HTML node or element id.…

Yesterday Internet Explorer 8 is released. I consider that a good things as it will move more people farther away from the severe case of release abuse called IE6. Improvements include integrated developer tools for css analysis and script profiling and debugging. And there is ‘Compatibility View’. Developers can specify, by adding a specific meta tag, that IE7 rendering should be used. There seem to be some tricky aspects related to Compatibility View:…