Tag: PHP
All the articles with the tag "PHP".
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Working with Windows Azure SQL Database in PhpStorm
Disclaimer: My job at JetBrains holds a lot of “exploration of tools”. From time to time I discover things I personally find really cool and blog about those on the JetBrains blogs. If it relates to Windows Azure, I typically cross-post on my personal blog. PhpStorm provides us the possibility to connect to Windows Azure SQL Database right from within the IDE. In this post, we’ll explore several options that are available for working with Windows Azure SQL Database (or database systems like SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL or Oracle, for that matter): If you are familiar with Windows Azure SQL Database, make sure to configure the database firewall correctly so you can connect to it from your current machine.
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Running unit tests when deploying to Windows Azure Web Sites
When deploying an application to Windows Azure Web Sites, a number of deployment steps are executed. For .NET projects, msbuild is triggered. For node.js applications, a list of dependencies is restored. For PHP applications, files are copied from source control to the actual web root which is served publicly. Wouldn’t it be cool if Windows Azure Web Sites refused to deploy fresh source code whenever unit tests fail? In this post, I’ll show you how. Disclaimer: I’m using PHP and PHPUnit here but the same approach can be used for node.js. .NET is a bit harder since most test runners out there are not supported by the Windows Azure Web Sites sandbox. I’m confident however that in the near future this issue will be resolved and the same technique can be used for .NET applications.
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Working with Windows Azure from within PhpStorm
Working with Windows Azure and my new toy (PhpStorm), I wanted to have support for doing specific actions like creating a new web site or a new database in the IDE. Since I’m not a Java guy, writing a plugin was not an option. Fortunately, PhpStorm (or WebStorm for that matter) provide support for issuing commands from the IDE. Which led me to think that it may be possible to hook up the Windows Azure Command Line Tools in my IDE… Let’s see what we can do… First of all, we’ll need the ‘azure’ tools. These are available for download for Windows or Mac. If you happen to have Node and NPM installed, simply issue npm install azure-cli -g and we’re good to go.
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Windows Azure Websites and PhpStorm
In my new role as Technical Evangelist at JetBrains, I’ve been experimenting with one of our products a lot: PhpStorm. I was kind of curious how this tool would integrate with Windows Azure Web Sites. Now before you quit reading this post because of that acronym: if you are a Node-head you can also use WebStorm to do the same things I will describe in this post. Let’s see if we can get a simple PHP application running on Windows Azure right from within our IDE… Let’s go through setting up a Windows Azure Web Site real quickly. If this is the first time you hear about Web Sites and want more detail on getting started, check the Windows Azure website for a detailed step-by-step explanation.
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Running Memcached on Windows Azure for PHP
After three conferences in two weeks with a lot of “airport time”, which typically converts into “let’s code!” time, I think I may have tackled a commonly requested Windows Azure feature for PHP developers. Some sort of distributed caching is always a great thing to have when building scalable services and applications. While Windows Azure offers a distributed caching layer under the form of the Windows Azure Caching, that components currently lacks support for non-.NET technologies. I’ve heard there’s work being done there, but that’s not very interesting if you are building your app today. This blog post will show you how to modify a Windows Azure deployment to run and use Memcached in the easiest possible manner.
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A client side Glimpse to your PHP application
A few months ago, the .NET world was surprised with a magnificent tool called “Glimpse”. Today I’m pleased to release a first draft of a PHP version for Glimpse! Now what is this Glimpse thing… Well: "what Firebug is for the client, Glimpse does for the server... in other words, a client side Glimpse into whats going on in your server." For a quick demonstration of what this means, check the video at http://getglimpse.com/. Yes, it’s a .NET based video but the idea behind Glimpse for PHP is the same. And if you do need a PHP-based one, check http://screenr.com/27ds (warning: unedited :-)) Fundamentally Glimpse is made up of 3 different parts, all of which are extensible and customizable for any platform:
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Version 4 of the Windows Azure SDK for PHP released
Only a few months after the Windows Azure SDK for PHP 3.0.0, Microsoft and RealDolmen are proud to present you the next version of the most complete SDK for Windows Azure out there (yes, that is a rant against the .NET SDK!): Windows Azure SDK for PHP. We’ve been working very hard with an expanding globally distributed team on getting this version out.
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A hidden gem in the Windows Azure SDK for PHP: command line parsing
It’s always fun to dive into frameworks: often you’ll find little hidden gems that can be of great use in your own projects. A dive into the Windows Azure SDK for PHP learned me that there’s a nifty command line parsing tool in there which makes your life easier when writing command line scripts. Usually when creating a command line script you would parse $_SERVER['argv'], validate values and check whether required switches are available or not. With the Microsoft_Console_Command class from the Windows Azure SDK for PHP, you can ease up this task. Let’s compare writing a simple “hello” command.
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Scaffolding and packaging a Windows Azure project in PHP
With the fresh release of the Windows Azure SDK for PHP v3.0, it’s time to have a look at the future. One of the features we’re playing with is creating a full-fledged replacement for the current Windows Azure Command-Line tools available. These tools sometimes are a life saver and sometimes a big PITA due to baked-in defaults and lack of customization options. And to overcome that last one, here’s what we’re thinking of: scaffolders. Basically what we’ll be doing is splitting the packaging process into two steps: To get a feeling about all this, I strongly suggest you to download the current preview version of this new concept and play along. By the way: feedback is very welcome! Just comment on this post and I’ll get in touch.
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Windows Azure SDK for PHP v3.0 released
Microsoft and RealDolmen are very proud to announce the availability of the Windows Azure SDK for PHP v3.0 on CodePlex! (here's the official Microsoft post) This open source SDK gives PHP developers a speed dial library to fully take advantage of Windows Azure’s cool features. Version 3.0 of this SDK marks an important milestone because we’re not only starting to witness real world deployment, but also we’re seeing more people joining the project and contributing.