06Jan 2010 by Asim Zeeshan 5 Comments

Kohana or CodeIgniter or CakePHP?

Personal, PHP, Thoughts
I am going to start on a small system for internal use and I wanted to re-think my choice of CodeIgniter because it does not have templates or ORM. Guess what, I landed with KohanaPHP. It sounds very tempting that a new MVC Framework based on CodeIgniter with new features (especially ORM) is here but the documentation is really really poor. I tried googling for a book or tutorial and I was really disappointed to have found none. I tried Amazon.com for a book but no books. Looks like I have landed in some weird space that might be good looking but I need to get my hands dirty in the code to learn it and at the end of the day, it may seem that I have lost a…
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02Jul 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 2 Comments

How to Install Apache, PHP and MySQL on CentOS

How to, Linux, OpenSource, PHP, Resources, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials
I have seen people installing Apache, PHP and MySQL from source code on a production server. You should NEVER, NEVER, NEVER install these packages from source on an RPM or DEB based Linux distributions. Did I say “NEVER” enough times to make your realize that it is not a good practice? Installing from source is bad idea; there are many reasons for this but the major one is that you will be spending a lot of time keeping the system updated. If you love installing from source then I would suggest using a different distribution e.g. Gentoo. You can build from source if the package is not available in yum but still, try to use “yum” (or “apt-get” on Ubuntu) because it will save a lot of your time when…
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26May 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 9 Comments

CodeIgniter or CakePHP? can’t decide

Personal, PHP
Can't decide between CodeIgniter or CakePHP for my personal project. CodeIgniter is faster in terms of performance but development is slow, CakePHP's cake-bake makes development faster but its performance is not good. My problem is that I need both. I want it at best performance since I will be handling millions even billions of domain records AND I cannot spend more time developing my own system. Any ideas?
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14May 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 21 Comments

Creating and Installing crontabs using CodeIgniter

How to, OpenSource, PHP, Resources, Reviews, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials
Last night, I was trying to get a crontab working in CodeIgniter, since my current project (a personal project) is using CodeIgniter now. I didn't wanted to use the conventional approach of running crontabs and my code seperate. Unfortunately, CodeIgniter does not have support for Crontabs and I didn't wanted to user wget in linux crontab to initiate unwanted requests. I spent some time and came up with a solution. It uses CodeIgniter backend Does not modify any core architecture of CodeIgniter Keeps configuration at one place So enough of the summary and let me show you how its done. Create a file (e.g. cron.php) in the same place as your index.php and system folder. Here is its code [php]/** * @author Asim Zeeshan * @web http://www.asim.pk/ * @date 13th…
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07May 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 2 Comments

Template Library for CodeIgniter, Simple, Fast and Easy!

How to, OpenSource, PHP, Resources, Reviews, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials
If you have not noticed, I just got started on CodeIgniter. I was really disappointed today when I noticed the lack of a template system in CodeIngiter to skin my little application. They say The Template Parser Class is not a full-blown template parsing solution. We've kept it very lean on purpose in order to maintain maximum performance. Lucky for me, I got a little help here, the library is great and works well for the latest version of CI too best of all its small and does not modify the CI code in anyway. It just uses the already available code to skin the application. Sleak! I made a couple of modifications in the original library, here are my modifications [php]<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access…
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06May 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 4 Comments

Getting Started on CodeIgniter, the lightening fast PHP Framework

OpenSource, PHP, Reviews, Thoughts
Today, I have started on CodeIgniter, one of the powerful PHP frameworks recommended by Rasmus Lerdorf CodeIgniter is most often noted for its speed when compared to other PHP frameworks. In a critical take on PHP frameworks in general, PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf spoke at frOSCon in August 2008, noting that he liked CodeIgniter "because it is faster, lighter and the least like a framework". Read more about it here. So far what I can tell you is that it really is FAST. I have been coding in CakePHP and Zend Framework, but this framework is very fast. Truely speaking I did not felt any difference using it. I will keep posting about my experience of CodeIgniter.
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28Feb 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 2 Comments

TwitterTweets, a PHP wrapper class for Twitter REST API

How to, OpenSource, PHP, Resources, Reviews, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials
I have just finished hosting my first OpenSource project on Google Code. Its called TwitterTweets. Its a small wrapper API that consumes Twitter REST API. It can be easily included in any PHP script / application to support manipulation of TwitterTweets from a single user. Currently it has the following features Reading updates including or excluding replies. Caching support to store xml/json response locally as a file with cache-timeout Built-in custom Array I will be writing and uploading modules and plugins for Joomla and Wordpress in the coming days. Stay tuned. Project Homepage: http://code.google.com/p/twittertweets Project Discussion Group: http://groups.google.com/group/twittertweets Enjoy!
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