Using Mockery as a mocking framework with PHPUnit

emran 2 Comments

A few days ago I was explaining mocking to a few colleagues. I came up with the following quick n dirty code to show them the elegance of Mockery as a mocking framework.

The code is straight-forward: it checks the health of a server using a tiny heart beat script.

1. The script residing in the remote server:

/remote/heart.php

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<?php
 
$response = array('status' => 'online');
 
header("Content-type: application/json");
echo json_encode($response);

2. The class that tries to fetch the status from the remote server:

/test/Heartbeat.php

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<?php
 
class Heartbeat
{
    private $http;
 
    public function __construct(Http $http)
    {
        $this->http = $http;
    }
    
    public function checkHealth()
    {
        $url = 'http://localhost/remote/heart.php';
        $response = $this->http->getResponse($url);
 
        $beat = json_decode($response);
        return (!is_null($beat) && $beat->status == 'online');
    }
}

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Node access rebuild using Drush

emran

In one of our Drupal production site, we have around 84K nodes. Periodically we need to rebuild the content access permission, which takes around 6 hours to complete when done through the browser. Being very unhappy with it, today found the following drush use:

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Emrans-MacBook-Air ~: drush php-eval 'node_access_rebuild();'

The results were immediate, the whole rebuild now takes only 20 minutes!

A clean way of integrating PHPUnit 3.5.x with CodeIgniter 2.x

emran 12 Comments

Now a days, my default choice of framework is always Zend Framework. However, I have to maintain a couple live projects in CodeIgniter from early days. I feel its very important to have tests around critical applications, so I have attempted a couple times to integrate PHPUnit with CodeIgniter but failed every time – well, until now.

I’ve managed it this time with hooks. It provides a clean way of bootstrapping the framework and then performing tests on the Model layer – for me testing the model layer has been sufficient. The use is very simple as it does not require any change in how a regular CodeIgniter application is built.

Grab the code from github.

Example – /tests/PostTest.php

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<?php
 
class PostTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
    private $CI;
 
    public function setUp()
    {
        $this->CI = &get_instance();
        $this->CI->load->database('testing');
    }
 
    public function testGetsAllPosts()
    {
        $this->CI->load->model('post');
        $posts = $this->CI->post->getAll();
        $this->assertEquals(1, count($posts));
    }
}

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Quick start on new Facebook PHP SDK (IFrame based)

emran 210 Comments
This post is more than couple year old. It solved the issues when the SDK was first released and facebook had lack of documentation. However, now facebook has very rich set of documnetation and you should follow that instead!

The new Facebook API has already spread over the application developers and if you’re like me, you’ve already got your hands dirty to see how this new thing works. If you have tried to follow the documentation to authorize/get session in your canvas application, it is likely you have already hit roadblocks. Well, I am no savior but I have glued together a few clues and got it working for myself.

I am assuming that you have already created your application by following the Getting Started section from the official documentation. Also, this is for IFrame based applications only.

Enough talking, let’s get some code.

Step 1: Get the new SDK

Download the new SDK from github. We will only need the facebook.php file from the src folder. In our project directory, let’s create a folder called “lib” and put the file there.

Step 2: A configuration file

Let’s now create a configuration file to store our facebook configuration. Let’s name it config.php. Here goes the source:

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<?php
 
define("FACEBOOK_APP_ID", '113795715321151');
define("FACEBOOK_API_KEY", '064baf5fb98de050cd7b9a001ca1988b');
define("FACEBOOK_SECRET_KEY", '430f43c01f6dfe02c284b4545976f9ce');
define("FACEBOOK_CANVAS_URL", 'http://apps.facebook.com/emran-test-app/');

Step 3: Application Main Page

This file will be the main entry point to our facebook application. It just instantiates the facebook object, sets the configuration and checks for a valid session. If it does not find a valid session, it redirects to the login page. For first time visitors, it will be the authorization page. On later requests, the operation will occur in the background – without any user interaction.

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<?php
 
include_once 'lib/facebook.php';
include_once 'config.php';
 
$facebook = new Facebook(array(
    'appId'  => FACEBOOK_APP_ID,
    'secret' => FACEBOOK_SECRET_KEY,
    'cookie' => true,
    'domain' => 'phpfour.com'
));
 
$session = $facebook->getSession();
 
if (!$session) {
    
    $url = $facebook->getLoginUrl(array(
        'canvas' => 1,
        'fbconnect' => 0
    ));
 
    echo "<script" . " type='text/javascript'" . ">top.location.href = '$url';</script>";
 
} else {
 
    try {
 
        $uid = $facebook->getUser();
        $me = $facebook->api('/me');
 
        $updated = date("l, F j, Y", strtotime($me['updated_time']));
 
        echo "Hello " . $me['name'] . "<br />";
        echo "You last updated your profile on " . $updated;
 
    } catch (FacebookApiException $e) {
 
        echo "Error:" . print_r($e, true);
 
    }
}

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Enterprise PHP

emran 2 Comments

I presented this talk on the Soft Expo 2010 – the largest software fair in Bangladesh. The intention was to clear some of the misconception about PHP, the growth of PHP, how it can fit in the enterprise now, etc.

After these, I shed light on some topics that a company/developer should keep in mind in order to write good software in PHP. This was followed by live session on caching, mysql query optimization, use of Xdebug, etc.

So here goes the presentation:

And a big thanks to Ivo Jansch’s “PHP in the real wolrd” presentation, from where I took inspiration.

Cheers!

Changing the default controller naming convention in CodeIgniter

emran 11 Comments

CodeIgniter is one of my favorite framework and I often use it for developing application quickly. Although it is very flexible in most cases, I find its naming convention to be strict. Many times I have faced this problem when my controller’s class name and a model/library’s class names are the same – a Fatal error is inevitable and I have to forcefully change the name of the conflicting class to something less desirable (say from Users to UsersModel). Today I wanted to end this problem.

So I extended the CI_Router core class and made change to the _validate_request method. Now I can name my controller classes in this fashion: UsersController and it resides on the file system as controllers/UsersController.php. If you’ve tried other established frameworks, you should notice that this naming convention is widely used. So, if you have the same need, then just download the MY_Router.php file and put it on your application/libraries folder. That’s it.

Here is how your controller would start:

[cc lang=’php’]
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Facebook Developer Garage Dhaka – Open Stream API

emran 1 Comment

The first ever “Facebook Developer Garage” took place in Dhaka, Bangladesh and I am proud to be a part of it. I was one of the speakers of this spectacular event organized by Facebook and IBT bangladesh. I spoke about the recently released Open Stream API from Facebook. It was more of an overview rather than a detail one. Here goes the slides:

I have created a quick start example which outlines both Facebook Connect and the Open Stream API. You can check that here. A blog post covering the steps is coming soon in 3-4 days.

Stay tuned if you have interest in them.

Cheers

phpXperts ’09 seminar

emran 5 Comments

At last the phpXperts seminar on “Current Web Trends” have taken place and I was one of the speakers there. Among all the topics, mine was a bit suggestive and naturally a bit less exciting. I spoke about how to become a PHP ninja – what are the characteristics they posses, what are the tools they use, what are the paths they follow etc. It’s actually a follow-up of one of my blog posts: “Becoming a kick-ass PHP ninja“.

Here goes the slides:

All the other slides, pictures, and videos are available here.

Enjoy!