New York PHP

This is a running archive of presentations given to or by NYPHP.

View more PHP presentations and tutorials from our PHP Conference NYPHPCon 2006.

And, subscribe to the NYPHP-Announce Mailing List to stay updated on our next event in 2007.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, April 21, 2008
PHP Security and PHP Tainted Variables, with Wietse Venema (Presentation) PHP is a popular server scripting language for creating dynamic web page content. While writing applications can be relatively easy, avoiding security holes can be difficult. In an attempt to help improve PHP application security, Wietse proposed to add run-time support for tainted variables in December 2006, and released a first implementation in November 2007. With a run-time overhead of only 1-2%, permanent deployment becomes a realistic option. Wietse will show how his taint support works, and how it can help programmers to eliminate vulnerabilities such as Cross-site scripting, SQL injection, Shell command injection, Remote file inclusion, and more. Wietse Venema is known for his software such as the TCP Wrapper and the POSTFIX mail system. He co-authored the SATAN network scanner and the Coroner's Toolkit (TCT) for forensic analysis, as well as a book on Forensic Discovery. Wietse received awards from the System Administrator's Guild (SAGE), the Netherlands UNIX User Group (NLUUG), as well as a Sendmail innovation award. He served a two-year term as chair of the international Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST). Wietse currently is a research staff member at the IBM T. J. Watson research center. After completing his Ph.D. in physics he changed career to computer science and never looked back.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, March 25, 2008
Sun & MySQL: A New Hope Join Philip Antoniades, Systems Engineering Manager, NA, as he walks us through MySQL's roadmap and the latest developments. Philip has been with MySQL since 2003 as a Consultant and Pre-Sales Engineer, and now heads up Systems Engineering for North America. Prior to joining MySQL Philip was a C++ and Java Developer. Join Sun, MySQL, Philip and New York PHP at our March general meeting for the latest developments on this important relationship.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, February 26, 2008
White-Hat SEO in PHP (Presentation) (Code) David Fischer of Avity LLC will speak on "white-hat" Search Engine Optimization, with a focus on technical issues relating to SEO for PHP-based sites. He will present an overview of the "three legs of the SEO stool" with a focus on the technical leg - how coding decisions can affect search rankings. David has 10 years of experience in technology. He has built and sold two web startups and is the founder and principal of Avity, a full-service web design and software company with a staff of 25. He holds a B.A. with distinction in Computer Science and Economics from Yale University.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, January 22, 2008
Web 2.0 Mashups from IBM Several emergent trends and technologies under the Web 2.0 umbrella have set the stage for a dramatic shift in Enterprise IT whereby business users and SMEs can leverage internal and external content to define and build their own situational decision making utilities with little help from IT. This top-down view of application development allows the knowledge worker and the IT professional to redefine their application development relationship. Today non-programmers can assemble, wire and share their own web applications while corporate IT focuses on the delivery of content centric widgets and data services. The business impact of this paradigm shift in application development is such that information is now in the hands of the end user thereby enabling that user to create his/her own just-in-time situational business application. Attendees will experience the development of several live mashup assemblies using IBM's Mashup Starter Kit and other partner offerings. In addition to best practices for designing content centric architectures, harvesting web content and assembling enterprise mashups, the session will feature an analysis of the roadmap for enterprise mashups. We will also cover the IBM and ProgrammableWeb interlock and an update on our work with Zend.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, November 27, 2007
Cryptography and Tamper Proof URLs (Presentation and Code) (Blog) Using a standard cryptographic technique we can construct "tamper proof URLs". By preventing user modifications to a URL, one can help prevent cross-site scripting, parameter modification and parameter scanning. In addition we can make URLs that expire and can allow "single sign on" between two websites or applications. This talk will provide a introduction to cryptography, the PHP modules that provide cryptographic services, and sample implementation of the tamper proof URL technique. Nick Galbreath have been working on high performance servers and web security at various high profile startups since 1994 (most recently Right Media). He holds a Master degree of Mathematics from Boston University, and published a book on cryptography. He currently lives in the Lower East Side.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, October 23, 2007
Native XML Databases (Online) (Single File) Databases and XML are both vital components of today's Internet and web applications. Often, however, they're thought of being on distant ends of the technology spectrum. This October, New York PHP is pleased to have recognized XML and Java author Elliotte Rusty Harold speak on what it means when these two worlds start to talk - natively. While much data and many applications fit very neatly into tables, even more data doesn't. Books, encyclopedias, web pages, legal briefs, poetry, and more is not practically normalizable. SQL will continue to rule supreme for accounting, human resources, taxes, inventory management, banking, and other traditional systems where it's done well for the last twenty years. However, many other applications in fields like publishing have not even had a database backend. It's not that they didn't need one. It's just that the databases of the day couldn't handle their needs, so content was simply stored in Word files in a file system. These applications are going to be revolutionized by XQuery and XML. If you're working in publishing, including web publishing, you owe it to yourself to take a serious look at the available XML databases. This high-level talk explains what XML databases are good for and when you might choose one over a more traditional solution. You'll learn about the different options in both open and closed source XML databases including pure XML, hybrid relational-XML, and other models.

Online Presentation, May 24, 2007
PHPOpenbiz - Building Data Centric Web Applications with Little Code (PPT) New York PHP is pleased to provide another online presentation, this time from PHPOpenBiz. Learn how to quickly build data centric web applications with minimal manual coding by using the PHPOpenBiz framework. Want to build a data centric business application without dirty code? Want to have a rich client interface for your applications? PHPOpenBiz (OpenBiz) is the solution! PHPOpenBiz is a PHP-based business application framework featured with: Metadata-driven design principal. Developers declare business logic as metadata (zero-coding) Model-View-Controller Object Relational Mapping (ORM) AJAX browser client Eclipse integrated authoring tool The goal of PHPOpenBiz is to speed up development of business applications by providing standard development structures that allow producing database driven web interfaces in less or no time. PHPOpenBiz can minimize application supportability & maximize application upgradeability by: providing centralized & complete application framework, minimizing application coding requirements and clear separation of technology from business. PHPOpenbiz is the first application framework that brings metadata-driven concept from successful commercial products to the open source world. Rocky Swen has been playing as an architect role for PHPOpenbiz for more than 3 years. He is not only making big contribution of the design and coding of the framework, but also helping PHPOpenbiz community to learn and develop their own PHPOpenbiz basd applications.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, May 22, 2007
Introduction to Databases for Programmers (PDF) This May, New York PHP takes a look at a critical, yet often overlooked, aspect of web development. The database is the heart of any system, but it often gets-no-respect by application developers. Join Kenneth Downs as he leads us through the important database concepts for a successful system. Databases work on principles that are different from programs. Best programming practices, when applied to databases, will produce bad results, and vice versa. In this talk we will look at how databases differ from code (the so-called "impedance mismatch" between code and data), see a brief introduction to normalization, find out what "ACID compliant" means, and see some triggers and stored procedures.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, April 24, 2007
Security 2.0 With 2.0 sites taking the web by storm, security is an ever important aspect of development. This near-Spring April, we welcome back New York PHP regular Chris Shiflett to discuss the latest in security. Web 2.0 has been described as many things. It's the Web as a platform, a network of networks, the architecture of participation. However you choose to define it, the way we build applications online has changed. Web sites do more by empowering users, but this has opened a Pandora's box. Cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgeries (CSRF), and Ajax are being combined in creative new ways to launch sophisticated attacks that penetrate firewalls, target users and spread like worms. This talk examines this new threat, dubbed Security 2.0, by demonstrating some hypothetical and real exploits as well as discussing methods of safeguard and prevention. Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, February 27, 2007
Eclipse PHP Project and Zend Platform 3.0 It may be cold outside, but there's nothing like a good IDE to keep a programmer cozy. And at this February meeting, New York PHP Community is pleased to have Yossi Leon of Zend warm us up to a double-shot of their latte-no-foam solutions - Eclipse PHP IDE and Zend Studio. In the last year Zend and IBM started a new project called PHP IDE. This project is the official project from Eclipse organization for the PHP language. The idea of the project is to provide a framework in order to build a PHP development environment (as any other project of Eclipse which is a framework) on top of it. The project stable version (0.7) will be released on February 2007. In the session we will talk about Eclipse, the short history of the project and a demonstration of the features. In the second (and the short) part of the session I will demonstrate the new cool features of Zend Platform 3.0 and the integration with Zend Studio 5.5. Yossi Leon is the project leader of the Eclipse PHP IDE. In addition, he is also the development tools product manager at Zend Technologies. He has many years of experience in the design and implementation of application development environments as well as a deep knowledge and understanding of Quality Assurance and Packaging processes. Yossi holds a B.A in Computer Sciences and is currently studying for MBA.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, January 23, 2007
Application Building With Horde (Online) As New York PHP Community enters our sixth year, we're pleased to kick off the new year with one of the oldest and respected PHP projects - The Horde Project. This January we're pleased to continue our framework review series with Horde's founder, Chuck Hagenbuch. You probably know that Horde does webmail. But Horde also provides a framework for building applications. Chuck Hagenbuch will demonstrate a mix of ORM, prototype + script.aculo.us, and mapping APIs that quickly assemble into an application using Horde (call it a mashup if you must). We'll also demonstrate building standalone pages that incorporate content from an existing Horde installation. Chuck Hagenbuch founded the Horde Project in 1998 and has been working with PHP and the world of web development ever since. He is currently an independent consultant, and has provided professional services to high-profile PHP users such as PayPal and Portugal Telecom.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, November 28, 2006

NYPHP-Talk Live (Meeting Links)

Still sleepy from the tryptophan, New York PHP Community again presents NYPHP-Talk Live for our post-Thanksgiving November General Meeting.

NYPHP-Talk Live, which we first did for our August meeting, is an open forum, giving the community a chance to ask questions, voice their opinions, and interact in person. The NYPHP Talk Mailing List is regarded as one of the premier technical and non-technical discussion lists for the PHP and open source communities. NYPHP-Talk Live brings the list to life by opening the meeting floor to those with engaging questions and insightful viewpoints.

The format of this meeting is very different from the usual. Rather than a single presentation, we're asking community members to come and speak for no more than 5 minutes. These short "lightning talks" will be the basis to spark further audience participation, discussion and Q&A.

No slides or formal presentation material is required, but a projector will be available, and we encourage everyone to come and start impromptu discussion. Discussions will be moderated, and capped at 30 minutes, at which point another lightning talk will be presented. Here are some tips:

Viewpoint and experience based questions and discussions are best
Feel free to come prepared with a couple of URLs or other online material to help demonstrate your discussion points
Basic how-to questions will have a lower priority

NYPHP-Talk Live isn't an easy way to get technical help - don't come with a list of homework questions. Think of broader, more engaging question and discussion points. While technical discussion is encouraged, be mindful of material that is more appropriate for in-person discussion, rather than the mailing list.

No prior registration is required (except to RSVP), and we encourage everyone to come with their questions and discussion starters. Laptops and Internet access will be available to aid in discussion and for short demonstrations.

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, October 24, 2006
The Andromeda Framework (PDF) The world of PHP frameworks and Content Management Systems is a vibrant area of development, with new and evolving projects making news every day. In recent meetings we've had a number of PHP framework and CMS presentations, including Joomla! with Mitch Pirtle and CakePHP with Nate Abele. This month, we'll continue our review of this industry hotspot with project lead Kenneth Downs presenting The Andromeda Framework at the October New York PHP General Meeting. Andromeda is a GPL'd software automation tool primarily targeted for complex line-of-business database applications, but also has been used for smaller scale data-driven websites. Its primary design goal is to store business rules as data instead of code, and to eliminate code rather than to manage the coding process. Andromeda is written entirely in PHP, runs on Linux, and targets the PostgreSQL database. Kenneth Downs began programming professionally in 1992. His first project was a Vax/VMS based accounting and manufacturing system. He worked from 1995-2004 in the Foxpro world, first doing LAN apps and then Client/Server, working from small 5-user systems to being system architect on an ERP system with deployments of hundreds of users. He founded Secure Data Software July 1, 2004 to develop and use the "Andromeda" project, a database-centric open-source development framework and toolset. Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, September 26, 2006
The CakePHP Framework (PDF) Fall is here and with it comes a look at another active PHP framework. With feedback from the New York PHP Talk Mailing List, core developer Nate Abele will be answering community questions at this September meeting. Join us as we chew on MVC concepts and learn the CakePHP framework. CakePHP is an MVC framework based on the principles of convention over configuration and "Don't Repeat Yourself" (DRY). Distributed under the MIT license, Cake is flexible not only in terms of IP but also deployment: being compatible with PHP 4.3.2 and higher, Cake runs out-of-the-box under most PHP installations/web servers, including Apache, LightTPD, and IIS. Cake sports "pretty" URL's with or without mod_rewrite (or equivalent), and it's simple, array-based ActiveRecord enables easy implementation of complex database logic. Nate Abele has been a core developer of the CakePHP project for almost a year and a half. He considers himself one of the few developers out there who actually has the patience to deal with clients... sometimes. When not coding, sleeping, or watching the Red Sox lose--again, Nate enjoys writing about himself in the third person, snowboarding, and... well... snowboarding.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, August 22, 2006

NYPHP Talk Live

As the dog-days of summer draw to a close, New York PHP Community will be trying something new for our August General Meeting. The NYPHP Talk Mailing List is regarded as one of the premier technical and non-technical discussion lists for the PHP and open source communities. This month, we bring the mailing list to life by opening the meeting floor to those with engaging questions and insightful viewpoints.

The format of this meeting will be quite different from the usual. Rather than a single presentation, we're asking community members to come and speak for no more than 5 minutes. These short "lighting talks" will be the basis for further audience participation, discussion and Q&A.

No slides or formal presentation material is required, and we encourage everyone to come and start a discussion. Discussions will be moderated, and capped at 30 minutes, at which point another lighting talk will be presented. Here are some tips for asking the right questions:

Viewpoint and experience based questions and discussions are best
Feel free to come prepared with a couple of URLs or other online material to help demonstrate your discussion points
Don't ask How-To questions: These are best left for the mailing list itself
NYPHP Talk Live isn't an easy way to get technical help - don't come with a list of homework questions. Think of broader, more engaging question and discussion points
Technical discussion is encouraged, but think high school debate club or model UN - not physics class or a spelling bee

No prior registration is required (except to RSVP), and we encourage everyone to come with their questions and discussion starters. Laptops and Internet access will be available to aid in discussion and for short demonstrations.

Please join us this August as we break new ground, and help shape what could be a regular occurrence for NYPHP Community meetings.

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, July 25, 2006
Presenting... the New Joomla! 1.5 (PDF)(PPT)(ODP) More than just a name, Joomla! is the CMS formerly known as Mambo, which continues to be a powerful and actively supported open source project. Let Joomla! core developer (and NYPHP stalwart) Mitch Pirtle introduce you to the new features and capabilities introduced in this release, which includes a complete refactoring of the core systems. Joomla! has evolved into a rich framework that facilitates rapid, featureful development with a flexible and powerful API suited specifically for third party developers. Learn about how the new system was designed, by both hearing anecdotes and seeing examples provided by Mitch as he shows us the new API. He will walk us through implementations of third party applications that provide case studies on how to develop to the new API, providing examples of developers leveraging the latest features and additions to the core.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, June 27, 2006

An Introduction to PHP-GTK 2 (HTML)(TGZ)

For most people PHP is a language that allows them to create dynamic web pages, but not much else. Many developers have probably used PHP on the command line in the form of PEAR but even this does not take full advantage of PHP's power. PHP-GTK 2 is a PHP extension which combines the power of PHP 5 and Gtk+ 2 allowing developers to create standalone PHP applications free from the confines of a web browser. Applications written in PHP-GTK 2 can be much more powerful and interactive than those which rely on a web server.

This presentation will introduce the basic concepts of PHP-GTK 2. First we will discuss how an application can interact with the user via signals and events. Next we will see how to layout an application and present data to the user in many different formats. Finally, we will look at how to customize an application to give it a unique look and feel. These topics will be covered as we step through the process of creating a relatively simple PHP-GTK 2 application, which will be a sort of desktop mashup. The application will allow a user to search for an event using the EVDB web services API. Of course the user will want to know what the weather is like at the event, so the application will use the National Weather Service API to show the current weather in the destination city.

Scott Mattocks is a LAMP Developer for OnForce.com. He is also the author of "Pro PHP-GTK" (Apress 2006). Scott has been working with PHP-GTK several years. Not only has Scott been working with PHP and PHP-GTK, but he has also been contributing back to the community in many ways. Scott spent many hours to help improve the first set of documentation for PHP-GTK and is listed as one of the authors for the PHP-GTK 2 documentation. He has also contributed several PHP-GTK classes to PEAR and has added code to more traditional PEAR packages such as PHPUnit and Console_Getargs.

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, May 23, 2006
Beyond Mashups: Situational Application Runtimes using PHP (PPT) We're less than a month away from the New York PHP Conference. And what better time to explore enterprise mashups. We're pleased to have David Boloker, CTO of Emerging Technology in the IBM Software Group, and his team back to discuss how PHP can be used to enable the building and running of situational applications. Do you buy into the hype around mashups? Given the maturation of SOA, could there be merit in the recent ramp up of a mashup ecosystem? Consider the predicted yearly growth rate of over 900 new mashups a year. The listing of hundreds of such Web 2.0 composite applications on The Programmable Web also factors into the viability of this emerging web technology. Assuming that the ad-hoc situational aspects of mashups are here to say, what will the new breed of mashup developers require from a web application runtime? Developing humongous applications that try to solve many possible situations of a given subject domain is no longer the prudent approach for web based solutions. Now it is more efficient to enable application users with the ability to establish flexible ad-hoc short-term applications that adapt to the needs of the moment quickly and easily. A Situation Application is a web application that meets the following criteria: It is rapidly created to address an immediate need of an individual or community. It is a Just-in-time solution that is typically but not necessarily short-lived. It is informal thus lacking product quality look and feel. It provides a "just good enough" solution as opposed to a generalized solution. A Mashup can be a form of a Situation Application that yields a new utility by seamlessly combining content from more than one sources into an integrated experience. Mashups are comprised of 2 or more disparate components that are bound together through content. Join us this month as we hear from David Boloker, CTO of Emerging Technology in the IBM Software Group. David and his team will present IBM's PHP based Wiki platform for situational applications and provide a general update on IBM's PHP strategy, contributions, and upcoming products. The primary focus of this briefing will be IBM's introduction and demonstration of their application runtime for situational applications. Referred to by the codename, QEDWiki (more), this technology enabler seeks to improve the ways in which the knowledge worker interacts and integrates with the overwhelming amount of information they face in our fast past information driven world. QEDWiki represents a next generation Wiki which combines Do-It-Yourself IT (DIY-IT) with the flexibility of user-oriented information architecture to create an easy-to-use integration platform for rendering mashups. QEDWiki is an application runtime environment for collaborative and situational (ad hoc) dynamic content development. It enables quick and easy web programming and deployment of Wikis for non-programmers who are domain experts. Once the IT community sets up the basic Wiki, individual groups can quickly aggregate, deploy and collaborate based upon their requirements. As a result, minimal maintenance is required from IT.

Internal NYPHP Presentation, April 25, 2006

It's a Small World - Build Applications for It (PPT)

We all know that the Internet has global reach. But as obvious as it sounds, when developing, this very success factor of web applications is often forgotten. Carlos Hoyos, Team Lead and Architect for ibm.com's Global Production Services Tools Team, takes us on a tour of the vital considerations and technologies involved in supporting a global audience. Join us this April for yet another leading presentation at New York PHP Community.

Carlos writes:
You are president of your own web development company, and have deployed a web tool where clients can login and submit changes to their pages. Business is going great and before you know it, you have your first customers overseas. Will your tool work correctly? What about time zones, internationalization and those funny characters? Will the tool be available at 3am during their day? You go back to the drawing board.

Through this example, I will review some of the lessons learned when designing and deploying a global facing web application: internationalization, proper usage of character sets, localization, time zones and time awareness. Including pitfalls and suggestions for PHP 4 and 5.

About Carlos:
Currently working as Team Lead and Architect for ibm.com's Global Production Services tools team, Carlos is in charge of the tools used by ibm.com to handle web content production and web effectiveness.

Carlos is a mathematician and has been programming for a long long time -- his first language was assembly -- and a PHP enthusiast since 2001. Prior to IBM, Carlos worked as an economical advisor for the Colombian government as well as a professor of mathematics.

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, February 28, 2006
RSS, Atom, OPML, and All That: A Course for Developers This February, New York PHP Community explores the world of RSS and related technologies. As PHP developers, we're often called upon to generate and read dynamic feeds. Join us this month as author, professor and Java developer - yes, Java developer - Elliotte Harold gives us an indepth look at these essential technologies. XML based syndication is moving from its foundations in weblogs to unexpected arenas: source code control systems, audio narrowcasts, e-mail, bug tracking, stock tickers, and more. News readers like Vienna, NetNewsWire, RSSOwl, and Newsgator are replacing classic web browsers for many uses. This session explores the fundamental technologies underlying this explosion of content: the various versions of RSS, OPML, Atom, and the Atom Publishing Protocol. Learn the tricks and techniques for integrating these XML applications into your products as both clients and servers. Elliotte is originally from New Orleans to which he returns periodically in search of a decent bowl of gumbo. However, he currently resides in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn with his wife Beth and cats Charm (named after the quark) and Marjorie (named after his mother-in-law). He's an adjunct professor of computer science at Polytechnic University where he teaches Java, XML, and object oriented programming. His Cafe au Lait web site at http://www.cafeaulait.org has become one of the most popular independent Java sites on the Internet, and his spin-off site Cafe con Leche at http://www.cafeconleche.org has become one of the most popular XML sites. His books include Java I/O, Java Network Programming, the XML Bible, and XML in a Nutshell. He's currently working on the XOM Library for processing XML with Java, the jaxen XPath engine, and the Amateur media player. Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, January 24, 2006
Practical Experience with PHP (zip) This is the perfect meeting for those starting with PHP or considering it's use. Randall Writes: In 2004 I was introduced to the world of RSS, news feeds, Wikis and blogging. It was immediately obvious to me that these technologies offered exciting new possibilities for web site development. I started messing around with blog software, creating my own on line blog and using it in my teaching. In the fall of 2004 I saw a recommendation (on a blog of course) about the WordPress software. After downloading and installing it, I was really impressed with its capabilities, and saw its value not just for blogging, but as a front-end content management system for a web site. I started poking around inside the application and discovered that all this magic was the result of PHP programming and a MySQL backend database. And realized that I wanted to learn more about what this was all about. I found the NYPHP.org site and luckily there was an upcoming PHP for Designers class being offered. I signed up immediately. Once in class, in one of those wonderful 'a-ha!' moments, I realized that not only was this fun, but that I had some problem projects that would be perfect for a PHP/MySQL application. Upon return to the office I started immediately roughing out a test version of an on-line course evaluation system for our school. I called it a 'proof of concept' but it was mostly there to prove to myself that I could pull this off before promising it to our Dean. Well he bought into the idea, and much to my delight I managed to pull it off. We ran a pilot of the system this fall, and overall it was a great success. There is still a lot of work to do to make it a robust enough application for regular work. But we had 50 students evaluating 35 classes on line for the pilot, and the response from them, their faculty, and our Dean was very positive. The most enthusiastic was the administrative assistant, who's work load in processing the evaluation responses went from a week with the old paper-based system, to under an hour in this new on line system. In this presentation I'll review my experiences on this project, and some other PHP work I've done, learning resources I've found helpful, challenges encountered, and other reflections on my experiences with PHP/SQL. About Randall Rode Randall Rode, Information Technology Director for the Yale University School of Drama, brings 20 years of expertise in non-profit management to his technical management and teaching at the school. First introduced to computers in the mid 70's with programming in BASIC, Fortran, and game development on a TI-99, I've always maintained a strong interest in, and a willingness to mess around with, new technologies. I started developing web sites in 1996, and have made web design a staple of my professional work and teaching ever since, working with javascript, perl scrips, Flash, and other technologies whenever possible. Database development is another technical direction of mine, working extensively with Microsoft Access, and more recently SQL server and MySQL. Please visit my web site at http://rodeworks.com for more information, and the occasional ramblings in my blog. Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, November 22, 2005

Practical SSL With Apache and PHP; Internationalization with OASI

This month we're proud to present New York PHP authors Chris Snyder and Michael Southwell, who teamed up to write Pro PHP Security from Apress. We also have special guest Matteo Rinaudo, CCNA, from Italy. Join us as they share their insight gained while writing the book on making SSL, Apache and PHP a happy family, and Matteo's introduction of internationalization toolset, OASI.

Snyder and Southwell write:

Setting up an SSL-enabled web server is relatively easy using Apache's mod_ssl... so easy, in fact, that an understanding of how SSL and certificates work to ensure the privacy and integrity of HTTPS communication is not even a requirement. It just works, as is shown by the little gold lock in the browser.

But as we found out in the course of writing Pro PHP Security, correctly configuring an HTTPS server to be truly secure requires a working knowledge of the tools and techniques of public-key encryption, and a general understanding of what happens during the various phases of the SSL protocol (now better known as TLS).

The bonus for getting your hands dirty and really grokking SSL, as a PHP developer, is that you will end up with more than just a production-ready secure server. Thanks to PHP's OpenSSL module, your applications have the ability to sign and/or encrypt messages, including database fields, files, emails, XML values, and so on. You can also verify the integrity of signed messages, and decrypt messages that have been encrypted using your public certificate. And you can use PHP to script the creation and maintenance of keys and certificates on the command line.

Our goal, then, in sixty minutes or less, is to:

Give you a comprehensive re-introduction to SSL/TLS, and do a quick walkthough of what's going on between server and client during the all-important handshake phase. Then we'll take a close look at the Apache configuration directives for mod_ssl.

Show you how to use PHP to assist in the generation, verification, and day-to-day maintenance of RSA keys and certificates.

Walk through PHP code for signing, verification, encryption, and decryption of arbitrary values, using those keys and certificates.

Then we'll open the meeting to discussion of some of the ways that NYPHP community members use SSL and/or Public Key Encryption in their applications, and of the tradeoffs between creating your own CA and paying for a commercial signature.

Once the discussion turns into a gripe session about commercial certificate authorities and patents, we'll close the meeting with a book raffle and head to TGI Fridays for beverages and grub.

OASI

OASI is a recursive acronym and stands for `Oasi's A Serviceable Implement'. It is a framework which allows PHP web developers to write internationalized web pages. By means of a control panel, you can add, modify, delete user created custom languages, defining items like language name, charset, text direction and so on. This information will be stored into a MySQL database. In the control panel also, you can add the internationalized text (already translated by humans or by the supplied `google-plugin'.
Internationalized contents are bound to user defined needles which will be passed as arguments in the PHP script page to the method which retrieves the internationalized text according to the session language in use (changeable by means of a text box).

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, October 25, 2005

eZ Publish - PHP based open source content management (.PDF & .OPD)

New York PHP's Andrew Yochum and Michael DeWitt will present eZ Publish. eZ Publish is an PHP based open source content management system (CMS) and application development framework. eZ Publish combines powerful enterprise level functionality with an easy to use interface and quick startup out of the box while providing a framework to customize, extend and integrate it. And wiith a dual commercial and open source licensing scheme, eZ is appeealing to all types of developers and organizations.

Andrew and Michael will demonstrate:

creation of custom content classes
building and applying templates to display content
creating site structure and content
content reuse and relationships
user, group and role management
workflow creation and use
creating a basic extension

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, September 27, 2005
PHP Security Audit HOWTO The heat has finally broken and it's now time to get back to work. With that, we're pleased to have Chris Shiflett, prolific author for O'Reilly, phpArchitect and PHP Magazine, presenting on the too often neglected topic of PHP Security. Peer reviews are a frequently neglected asset of professional PHP development teams. With a moderate understanding of how to audit PHP code, you can vastly improve the security of your team's PHP applications. This talk, by Chris Shiflett, explains the art of the PHP security audit. Using practical examples, you are shown how to search for common pitfalls, how to identify filtering and escaping errors, and how to report your findings. Download PDF of slides: PHP Security Audit HOWTO PDF

Internal NYPHP Presentation, August 22, 2005
Tools for Writing Better Code-Part 1 It's August, it's hot and everyone is either on vacation or too delusional from the heat to get any serious work done - including us, considering how long it took us to post this! What better opportunity to present the first part of our long awaited series on writing better PHP code. Join the New York PHP core developers as we present some of the tools we use to enhance the single or multi-developer environment. President Hans Zaunere will present on using Windows XP to development remotely with Eclipse / PHP and Subversion (.PPT). Exposing concepts such as how to get Windows to talk to a remote Webdav / Subversion server, and brief examples of the improved workflow, this is sure to improve your development with the Windows client. Vice President Jeff Knight and Core Developer Andrew Yochum will team up to explore why Subversion is an excellent choice for Version and Source Control, and the choice internally at New York PHP. Further they will demonstrate how Subversion can be used to manage multiple projects and developers as well as development and production environments. With any time left over, we'd like to offer the opportunity to bring the Talk list face to face. Come prepared with your questions / problems and solutions and we'll open up the floor to discuss your topics. Audio recording of presentation: Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, July 26, 2005

Building Rich Internet Applications Using JavaScript(.PPT)

Join us this month as we hear from Dan Gisolfi and Laurent Hasson from IBM on building rich internet applications with a reusable and accessible JavaScript framework.

At our May meeting Jay Sheth introduced us to the concepts of building rich enterprise applications with Mozilla, AMP, XML-RPC and JSON. Yet XUL does not offer an adequate RIA solution across all browsers and it is not a zero-footprint based solution. JavaScript represents a common cross browser technology to enable rich yet lightweight web applications. IBM has developed a very extensive Rich Browser Framework which uses JavaScript to implement a Client-side MVC Architecture. The framework supports:

A Distributed Data Model
A library of Reusable and Accessible UI Controls
A JavaScript Event Model to bind the model, view and controller together
A JavaScript Communications Library that supports Ajax, Web Services and Web Messaging

IBM's framework was developed as part of their IBM Rational tooling for JSF. At this time IBM has separated the framework from the Java Tooling and is considering contributing it or similar technology to an open source community for use by Java and PHP developers alike. A key motivation for open sourcing a JavaScript framework is to introduce a reusable library of accessible UI widgets that implement the DHTML Accessibility technology outlined at: www.mozilla.org/access/dhtml.
The presenters will cover:

Framework overview
Standalone Code demonstration using just the JavaScript Framework
Demonstration of Accessible Widgets using Mozilla Firefox 1.1+ and GW-Micro's Window-Eyes 5.0 Beta
Code demo using complete end-2-end Java development solution
Code demo using framework with a PHP data mediator
Open Discussion on value and community interest in an open source JavaScript Widget library

For related reading prior to the meeting check out these links:

For a trial version of Rational Application Developer V6 and IBM's implementation of JSF which embeds JSL (In short, access to the cool JavaScript) visit:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/r/rad

Dan Gisolfi has posted a bunch of links that might be useful:

Audio recording of presentation:

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, June 28, 2005

IBM@NYPHP(.PPT)

Join us this month as we hear from David Boloker, CTO of Emerging Technology in the IBM Software Group. Dave and his team will speak about IBM's PHP strategy, contributions, and upcoming products.

The team from IBM will also discuss the recent Zend Technologies partnership and demonstrate some PHP applications and extensions that are in the works. This meeting promises to be a great opportunity to ask questions about IBM's PHP roadmap.

The presenters will cover the following topics:

IBM's PHP Strategy (David Boloker)

Why PHP
The Zend relationship

PHP Technologies and IBM (Stewart Nickolas)

PDO status and efforts

Composite Applications using Mambo (Dan Gisolfi)

Building composite applications with open source components and frameworks

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, May 24, 2005
Building Enterprise Applications with Mozilla, AMP, XML-RPC and JSON (PDF, PPT, HTML and FLASH) As a follow-up to his introductory presentation last year on connecting Mozilla applications to a LAMP (or WAMP) backend using XML-RPC, Jay Sheth will explain how to build large data-set applications on the same combination of platforms. A convincing desktop/web-application hybrid can be built using XUL, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL by letting each component in this platform do what it does best. XUL has a rich set of user interface widgets (editable combox boxes, tabs, and so on) not found in HTML; thus XUL activated with JavaScript enables easy data entry and modification. PHP is great at getting data from external resources (local MySQL database, remote web service gateways), processing it, and sending it back to the browser. MySQL is great at storing, sorting and searching through data. Jay will show how one can building a useful and usable rich web application by focusing on and combining each component's strength. But sometimes, even using each component's strength results in a solution that is not as fast as desired. If the application is retrieving over 500 records at once, the main bottleneck is often the underlying transport protocol. XML-RPC can facilitate communication between Mozilla and the AMP backend, but also also proves to be resource intesive to parse on the client-side. This is due to the verbose structure of its underlying XML format. In order to speed up the retrieval of large chunks of data, the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format can be used instead. With the help of source code examples and a real world application, Jay will explain how to best use each part of the Mozilla + AMP platform, and how to alternate between the XML-RPC and JSON data transports in order to create a responsive, rich and useful web application. He has also provided a bunch of links Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, April 26, 2005

The Tidy Extension

New York PHP's own John Coggeshall, Technical Consultant for Zend Technologies, will be presenting on his Tidy extension. This talk will focus on introducing the new Tidy extension for PHP5 and how it can be used to make working with and generating properly-formed HTML in a fast and effective manner. Specifically this session will focus on:

How to use Tidy to diagnose existing HTML for errors
Using Tidy to clean and repair HTML documents
An overview of the most useful Tidy options
Using the Tidy OO interface to navigate the HTML doc tree
Examples of how to navigate HTML effectively using Tidy

With the introduction of the Tidy extension, users will no longer need to rely on messy regular expressions to mine data such as URLs, e-mail addresses, or entire tables from HTML documents. Furthermore, thanks to the diagnosing technologies provided by Tidy HTML documents can be diagnosed and even corrected on the fly to ensure complete HTML or XHTML compliance before being sent to the end user. This talk assumes users are familiar with basic PHP object-oriented and procedural constructs.

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, March 22, 2005

SourceLabs and the Certified LAMP Stack (.PPT)(.PDF)

SourceLabs is releasing it's first LAMP stack this Spring, and wants to come share with the New York PHP community what is special and different about it, including detailed results of SourceLabs CERT7 stress and scalability testing on the LAMP stack.

Part of the strength of the open source development is its distributed, participatory process. But a byproduct of this strength is a lack of integration. Today open source projects are not tested together as integrated systems, forcing users to integrate, and test the open source "stack" themselves, which slows open source adoption and increases costs of deployment. SourceLabs CERT7 process enables testing and release of projects together as an integrated stack, with a level of thoroughness and process transparency that exceeds that of commercial vendors. SourceLabs' Jeff Ort will explain how SourceLabs has adapted the enterprise software testing methods used by vendors such as Oracle, IBM and SAP to create CERT7. CERT7 augment the open source development process to deliver highly dependable and well integrated software stacks.
Details provided include:

Descriptions and examples of the scalability, security, failover, stress, regression, and integration tests included in the CERT7 regime.
How CERT7 has been applied to LAMP for stress and scalability and the test data generated by that process
How LAMP users can adapt and build on CERT7 and what’s involved

Jeff has 14 years of software engineering experience working for leading companies such as Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Cirrus Logic and Openwave, and has been granted 9 patents for his hardware and software inventions. Cool technologies Jeff has worked on include digital video, 3D rendering technology, mobile IM platforms and open source CMS systems. He joined Source Labs as the Certification Team Lead, and is the architect of SourceLabs CERT7 testing process.

SEO Series, Part II
Website optimization, Search Engine Optimization and PHP
John Andrews continues the SEO/Website optimization series with a follow up discussion of Custom 404 exception handling applied in a customer-friendly and SEO-savvy manner.

During the first SEO presentation, John highlighted the need to smartly handle missing file errors, and emphasized the importance of serving up appropriate content instead of a generic error message. Based on feedback from the community, John will briefly review available Apache and PHP mechanisms for 404 exception handling, and present a didactic example of an SEO-savvy implementation co-developed with Stefan Antonowicz of Vespa Technologies.

Also presented was an update on the 302 redirect hijacking issue discussed in January, including best steps to get out of such a redirect problem.

John Andrews is an independent professional Website Optimizer with 9 years of experience planning and building goal-oriented websites using LAMP technologies. The SEO mini-series is intended to help prepare the PHP programmer, site designer, or webmaster for the kinds of challenges that can be expected should a site be considered for search engine optimization (SEO). The mini-series will introduce and address common problems and typical solutions implemented by professional optimizers.

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, February 22, 2005
Mastering the Mambo: Content Management for Everyone (.PPT) Mambo core developer and New York PHP's Mitch Pirtle looks at one of the hottest topics, CMS, and one of it's hottest solutions, Mambo. Join us in midtown at IBM for an in-depth look at Mambo's power as a CMS and framework. Now that the holidays are over we can get back to work - and in this case, that means letting the award-winning Mambo do all of the work for you! This session will demonstrate how simply and quickly one can get Mambo up and running, and then delve into the deeper mysteries of the CMS that promises 'power in simplicity'. Covering templates, components, modules and mambots, Mitch will then close the session answering questions from the NYPHP crowd. Mambo was awarded "Best Open Source Solution" at Linux World this year and was awarded "Best Free Software Project of the Year" by The Linux Format magazine. To learn more about Mambo join the New York PHP Mambo mailing list. Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, January 25, 2005
ActiveGrid Technology Overview (.PPT) California based ActiveGrid recently introduced an enterprise PHP platform. With strategic partners such as MySQL and key media recognition by Yahoo!, ZDNet, cnet and others, ActiveGrid's technology enables large companies with the critical components of scalability, stability, and reliability, while using open source and LAMP. With the introduction of the Grid Application Server, ActiveGrid leverages the experiences of technology leaders and brings PHP and the LAMP platform to new heights. By combining the best of open source and commercial ideals, Transaction Grid Computing provides functionality and flexibility never before seen in LAMP or commercial enterprise platforms. Join Founder & CEO Peter Yared and VP of Marketing & Business Development Jeff Veis to get an exclusive look at the technical workings of the Grid Application Server. Peter and Jeff will also be doing a live demo of the ActiveGrid Application Builder, the graphical next generation development environment currently in development and slated for Open Source release in February. As CTO at NetDynamic, a leading J2EE application server company, then CTO of Sun's Application Server Division, and CTO of Liberty Alliance, Peter brings enterprise insight to PHP and ActiveGrid. Don't miss this New York PHP exclusive presentation, as ActiveGrid takes open source to a new level with PHP, and sponsors free drinks after the meeting. SEO Series, Part I Website optimization, Search Engine Optimization and PHP Website optimization is a process of optimizing a website to achieve specific objectives. Websites have traditionally been optimized for search engine placement using SEO tactics, and for eCommerce using marketing and copywriting tactics. Lately more and more businesses are turning to optimizers as a means of achieving new goals of branding, dissemination, and competitiveness - especially Return on Investment (ROI). Unfortunately, new websites are rarely designed with appropriate optimization goals in mind. Usually website optimizers have to redesign, rebuild, or heavily modify existing sites to achieve optimization goals. For PHP-based websites, this can create serious challenges for the programmers and designers. For non-PHP sites, it usually means adding server-side features, and PHP is the tool of choice for today's top professional optimizers. John Andrews is an independent professional Website Optimizer with 9 years of experience planning and building goal-oriented websites using LAMP technologies. This introductory presentation will establish a framework for understanding the needs and goals of website optimization, and set the stage for further discussions as NYPHP begins to optimize the NYPHP.org website. Through a series of presentations, John will prepare the PHP programmer, site designer, or webmaster for the kinds of challenges that can be expected should a site be considered for optimization. He will demonstrate common problems, as well as typical solutions implemented by professional optimizers. He will discuss on-page factors, and highlight how some "best practices" are actually hostile to the search engine spiders and crawlers. He will show the potential for site-based factors, and demonstrate the importance of off-site factors for specific goals. John will emphasize certain PHP programming methods which can help prepare a site for the actions most often pursued by professional website optimizers, making the optimization process less stressful and more fun for all involved. Several examples will be provided from the NYPHP website, as well as others. Help kick off another amazing year for New York PHP and the AMP community. Learn solutions to the often daunting tasks of enterprise and large scale deployments, and get a leg up on the little known but vital aspects of web development, design, and SEO. As PHP moves into the next generation of Internet computing, join New York PHP to see how it's solving enterprise problems and optimizing your site for search engine exposure. Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, November 23, 2004
AMP Technology and the AMD 64 Architecture With AMD engineer David O'Brien, we'll examine the advantages and nuances of working with AMP and open source on the new AMD 64 platform. As a primer for the presentation, New York PHP is working with AMD to understand the best methods for deploying AMP on this exciting new hardware platform. 32bit is so very last decade, and thanks to NYPHP's Michael DeWitt and representatives from AMD, we've been testing AMP Technology on a complimentary dual AMD64 server. New York PHP's President and Founder, Hans Zaunere, is working with the PHP-Internal list and discussing getting PHP up to par on lib64 systems. See Zends digest for the work Hans and others have been doing on taking AMP to the 64 bit platform. As part of this NYPHP initiative, Hans has been documenting the complete steps, pitfalls, and gotchas of deploying AMP to lib64 platforms, including operating system installation notes for SuSE and Red Hat. Part of NYPHP's soon to be announced AMPeers project, he'll be publishing detailed articles and sharing his experiences on how to deploy on this next generation platform. Don't be left behind; learn how you can shatter 32bit limitations and be prepared for the next generation of hardware. Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, October 26, 2004
Testing PHP with Perl: Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together (PDF) This October join New York PHP and recognized author Chris Shiflett and special guest Geoff Young as they look at the interesting combination of PHP and Perl. Stop by our IBM location to see how these two languages complement each other for testing. Lots of people use PHP for Web development. Lots of people use Perl for testing. Why can't we be friends? This fun but genuine talk will show how developers can use the power of the Apache-Test framework to improve the overall quality of PHP applications using Perl's mature testing tools and methodologies. See Chris and Geoff demonstrate valuable new techniques, combining the power of PHP and Perl. Platinum sponsor IBM has provided a great room with seating for plenty. APress, our latest sponsor, has provided a great selection of books for meeting attendees. Tarball of files If you want to play with the tarball, just follow the steps in the INSTALL file (it even gives you an example set of steps for installing Apache with PHP, which you can probably skip). The sample application lives in t/htdocs, and the tests are all *.t files within t. Examples of tests written in PHP exist within t/response/TestFunctions. Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, September 28, 2004
New York PHP kicks off a full fall meeting schedule with a look at PHP-GTK by New York PHPer and active developer Joel De Gan. Then, join special guest Daniel Kushner of Zend for a look at the PHP job market. Join us in September at our IBM location and learn about PHP on the desktop with the revitalized GTK extension and PHP's role in todays marketplace. Skinable and Portable Desktop Applications with PHP-GTK Take PHP-GTK to the bleeding edge by creating functions and using existing ones to generate applications that are skinnable and dynamic. Joel will also be taking skinning and the PHP-GTK to it's limit by showing a new skeleton engine for building dynamic maps for games in PHP-GTK using sprites. The PHP Job Market (PPT) Zend's Daniel Kushner explores the ins and outs of businesses that rely on PHP technology. Daniel will discuss the current status of the market, its size, the large players who use PHP, who is hiring, who is developing and who is making sure that PHP becomes the enterprise development and deployment platform of choice. Join Joel, Daniel and New York PHP to see some exciting new code and techniques with PHP-GTK, and insights into the PHP job market. Platinum sponsor IBM has provided a great room with seating for plenty. APress, our latest sponsor, has provided a great selection of books for meeting attendees. Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, August 24, 2004
MySQL Cluster Johan Andersson of the MySQL Cluster team will be kicking our meeting off with an overview of the new Cluster offering from MySQL. We wrap-up a great summer with an exciting presentation by New York PHP's own Jayesh Sheth. Join us this August at our IBM location to learn how Mozilla, XUL and AMP Technology can deliver fully functioning Internet-enabled desktop applications. This technology has huge potential by providing fully integrated client applications, powered by AMP Technology, in distributed environments. "Creating Rich Applications with Mozilla, XUL, and AMP Technology" * You will need a Mozilla based browser to view this presentation. Most PHP developers are used to creating HTML-based web applications that look and feel different from traditional desktop programs. But what if there were an easy way to bridge the gap between the look-and-feel of desktop programs and the remote delivery (and remote data storage) of AMP powered web applications? The combination of the Mozilla browser's XML-based user-interface language, XUL, JavaScript on the client side, and Apache/MySQL/PHP on the server side, can successfully bridge the gap between desktop and web applications. By providing an immediate and responsive user interface that interacts with data stored on a remote server, Mozilla and XUL can deliver the user experience of desktop applications with the power of AMP Technology. The key bridge between the rich client (Mozilla) and the remote server (running Apache/MySQL/PHP) is a web services protocol called XML-RPC. With a series of code examples, including that of an interactive fortune-cookie machine, Jay will explain how the client and server sides work, and how communication between them can be facilitated through the use of XML-RPC. Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, July 27, 2004

"Using HTML_QuickForm with Smarty"

HTML_QuickForm is a PEAR package providing powerful and elegant functionality for building and validating HTML forms. Its default form renderer, however, is only adequate for the simplest of applications, and customizing its output, though possible, is awkward and tends to undermine the goal of separating logic from presentation. Smarty is a popular template engine noted for its flexibility and efficiency, and HTML_QuickForm supports integration with this and other template engines.

In this presentation we quickly review the use of both tools, and then examine some techniques for getting them to play nicely together.

David Mintz is a self-proclaimed wannabe geek who works as a Spanish-English staff interpreter for the federal court in downtown Manhattan.

Join David and the New York PHP crew and see how the powerful HTML_QuickForm and elegant Smarty engine can be combined for engineering the perfect frontend. IBM, our latest sponsor, has provided a great room with seating for plenty.

Audio recording of the presentation are available:

Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, June 22, 2004
"Object-Oriented Programming in PHP 5 Through Patterns" Versions: PDF, PPT, or QuickTime Anyone who's followed the development of PHP 5 is aware of the excitement around the new object model. But what is it, and what does it allow you to do? In this talk we'll examine the new OOP facilities in PHP5 by looking at a number of design patterns and understanding the features we need to support them. George Schlossnagle is a contributor to the PHP project and an Apache module author who also has years of hands-on experience in building large-scale PHP sites and applications. He is the author of the APC compiler cache and the APD profiler (Zend engine extensions for PHP), a contributor to PHP, and is a regular speaker at leading open source conferences such as PHP-Con and ApacheCon. He now runs a consulting company specializing in scalable Web and email applications. Audio recording of the presentation are available: Download MP3s: Part 1

Internal NYPHP Presentation, May 25, 2004