Most PHP Web developers have heard of PEAR, the PHP Extension and Application Repository, but very few of them actually use it on a regular basis. Here are 10 reasons to get started today.

Most PHP Web developers have heard of PEAR, the PHP Extension and Application Repository, but very few of them actually use it on a regular basis. This is an oversight that should be corrected, because PEAR is actually a rich treasure trove of PHP widgets that can significantly simplify the average Web developer’s workday.

If you think I’m overstating the benefits, ask yourself if you’ve ever written custom code to (a) create HTML e-mail, (b) generate Web forms on the fly, or (c) validate email addresses. PEAR has pre-built PHP packages for all these tasks, and a few hundred more besides. These packages provide a robust, well-tested code base that can save you the time and effort [...] Continue Reading…

XPath is a language that allows you to address parts of an XML document, making XSLT transformations practically necessary. It also makes it an invaluable tool for managing XML data in applications such as Web applications.

Microsoft provides XPath functionality through the selectSingleNode() and selectNodes() methods on DOM nodes and documents. However, PHP uses functions that provide XPath functionality through contexts. In the following example, I’ll show sample XML data and PHP code to grab different parts of the XML document. I’ll also explain how the PHP code works.

In the example code, I use the following XML data to provide the functionality. (Note: This code was developed and run successfully using PHP 4.3.4, Windows XP, and IIS 5.1.)

Marmaduke
Garfield

Snoopy
Heathcliff

Spike
Sylvester

This XML data contains a few elements and some attributes including a namespace declaration — some basic XML. This results in varied queries for me to test.

nodeset as $node) {
[...] Continue Reading…

Sometimes you just need to know what country your site visitors are coming from—for example, if you’re trying to implement geo-targeted advertising. This article will show you how.

Sometimes you just need to know what country your site visitors are coming from—for example, if you’re trying to implement geo-targeted advertising. That’s where a tool like MaxMind’s GeoIP comes in—it lets you easily extract geographic data from your visitor’s IP address.

MaxMind makes available both commercial and free databases; the commercial ones are extremely precise and can get as fine-grained as the user’s city, while the free version can only identify the country of origin. We’ll use the free version in this article. If you need more detailed information, such as the remote client’s city and state of origin, you will need to purchase a more detailed database from MaxMind.

Getting started
To use it, you’ll have to first download the GeoIP Free [...] Continue Reading…

Developers often cringe when they have to create reports, but there are numerous options available with .NET to simplify the process. Tony Patton offers you a look at .NET’s various reporting options.
Data is the lifeblood of the enterprise and almost every application you develop will tap data in some manner. With all that data, users eventually want to view it in a report.

Many novice developers foolishly tackle reporting by creating custom forms—but this legwork is not necessary, as there are plenty of options with .NET for creating reports by dragging and dropping or a custom object model. In addition, reporting solutions offer additional functionality like PDF generation and charting that is hard to duplicate with custom code. .NET’s choices include readily available options, third-party products, and open source solutions. Let’s take a closer look at the reporting options available with .NET by category.

Readily available reporting options
I was very excited [...] Continue Reading…

The .NET Framework provides enterprise services for building highly scalable solutions, but the implementation can be tricky. Learn when and where these services should be used.

One of the biggest mistakes architects can make when designing Enterprise Services is to assume that its sole purpose is to provide wrappers for existing unmanaged COM+ and MTS functionality. It’s a common assumption, given that the current Enterprise Services implementation provides little more than a managed interface to unmanaged COM+.

However, Microsoft views Enterprise Services quite differently. In its eyes, Enterprise Services is the replacement for COM+ and MTS. Going forward, Microsoft has two primary goals for new versions of the .NET Framework, starting with release 1.1 that’s due with Windows .NET Server 2003. First, all existing COM+ functionality will move to managed code. Second, all new distributed systems management functionality will be implemented in Enterprise Services in .NET. In fact, COM+ version 1.5 [...] Continue Reading…