Looking good as in tasty, yummy, delicious. Not as in, hey nice hair or where did you buy that shirt.
I’m a Qt kind of guy when it comes to OSS GUI frameworks and really Qt is more than that. However lately I’m spending some of my time in PHP. I really enjoy developing in PHP and I’m always trying to find new and fun ways to use a language I spend time in. Since PHP is primarily a web development language, I wanted to see what libraries/frameworks were out there to support desktop application development with PHP.
I looked at PHP-Qt, however I feel that project still has a ways to go before I can start using it. Keep in mind, I work on a Windows box all day and I didn’t want to have to jump through the cygwin hoop. I think they will have good support for Windows soon, but I want something that I can use now.
I did some more research and came across the PHP-GTK project. The first thing I look for in a framework project is the documentation. I was surprised to see the amount of documentation and with some code samples. The docs are not perfect, but they provide me with what I need.
Demos are the second thing I look for. I want to see how it will work, how the code is compiled/ran and if I can run it on my system. Within a couple minutes of unzipping a folder, I was up and running.
So, if you are a PHP developer looking to develop a desktop application, I would consider taking a look at PHP-GTK.
Posted in PHP, PHP-GTK.
By Chris Roland
– November 7, 2009
If you want to add a module directly into an article just follow the steps below:
-
Enable the Content – Load Module plugin
Go to the Extensions->Plugins Manager section and enable the ‘Content – Load Module’ plugin.
-
Enter a unique position name for your module
Go to the Extensions->Module Manager, select your module and enter a unique position in the Position field in the Details section. For example mod_mymodule.
-
Enter the loadposition tag into the article
Edit the article you want to put the module in and enter the {loadposition positionname} tag
For example {loadposition mod_mymodule}
That’s it!
Posted in Joomla.
By Chris Roland
– November 5, 2009
php|architect is running a contest called The Great PHP on Windows Contest. Basically you can tell from the title, this is a contest about PHP and Windows. The challenge is to develop a PHP application, desktop or web, that runs on Windows. You get bonus points for using Microsoft technology, like SQL Server, Azure, etc.
For more details you can check out the contest page.
I signed for the contest and they accepted my entry! My project is Task HUD, a task management web application, should be awesome. Not just for the contest, but because this is something I need. Even though nothing is up yet, you can keep track of the progress of Task HUD at http://www.taskhud.com.
I’m excited to be a part of this contest and I look forward to what the other entries are developing.
If you use twitter, you can follow what people are saying, using the #winphp hash tag and you can follow @phparch.
If you are a PHP developer, you should sign up, because by the way, did I mention the sweet prizes? no? well, you need to check them out for yourself.
One last thing, I would like to thank Applied Innovations for hosting my entry on their servers, rock on.
Posted in PHP, Windows.
By Chris Roland
– November 5, 2009
Well, I tried to move my blog over to Oxite and because my hosting provider is an average run of the mill providers, I wasn’t able to get it up and running. Honestly, the process to get Oxite up and running is way too much effort for a blog. WordPress works great and is a lot easier to install. So, I’m sticky to WordPress for now.
Posted in Web.
Tagged with Website.
By Chris Roland
– October 27, 2009
After some back and forth, I decided I’m going to move my blog over to Oxite. I really like how clean ASP.NET MVC is and Oxite has everything I need to run my blog. From there I’ll be able to customize my blog and mix in a little Silverlight. So… this should be my last post in WordPress.
Posted in Uncategorized.
By Chris Roland
– October 3, 2009
Hope this helps someone save some time, but that might be a hard to do, since you really don’t waste time when programming with Ruby 
To link to another controller from a different controllers view you can use:
<%= link_to 'Accounts', :controller => 'accounts' %>
Posted in Ruby.
By Chris Roland
– September 14, 2009
In case others run into this and because it’s not in an intuitive spot, here is the file location to customize the system message in Joomla:
[joomla install]\libraries\joomla\document\html\renderer\message.php
Posted in Joomla.
By Chris Roland
– September 13, 2009
To disable editing on the Frontpage in Joomla 1.5.11, all I had to do was change:
$access->canEdit = $user->authorize('com_content', 'edit', 'content', 'all');
$access->canEditOwn = $user->authorize('com_content', 'edit', 'content', 'own');
(Lines 64-65)
To:
$access->canEdit = $user->authorize('com_content', 'edit', 'content', 'none');
$access->canEditOwn = $user->authorize('com_content', 'edit', 'content', 'none');
(Lines 64-65)
In the following file:
[joomla install]\components\com_content\views\frontpage\view.html.php
Posted in Joomla.
By Chris Roland
– September 12, 2009
Here is a quick tip. To sanitize input before you send the query to the database in Joomla, you can use:
$text = "My 'awesome' text";
$text = $database->Quote($text);
This will quote and escape special characters in the text string.
Reference:
http://help.joomla.org/content/view/525/125/
Posted in Joomla.
By Chris Roland
– September 12, 2009
Hopefully this will save someone time, because the locations are a little off.
Here are the default files for the CakePHP home page controller and view.
Controller:
[cake install location]\cake\libs\controller\pages_controller.php
View:
[cake install location]\app\views\pages\home.ctp
I’m using CakePHP 1.2, so this might be a little different for earlier releases.
Posted in PHP.
By Chris Roland
– September 8, 2009
