Progammers Notes on Web Design

I am starting work on a new website and using Zend Framework (as previously mentioned).  One of the most demoralising things when coding is not seeing the finished results of your work for weeks/months.

Installing Apache, MySQL, PHP, Zend Framework and Eclipse PDT on a Windows 7 Box

Introduction
Here is the step by step instructions for installing Eclipse PDT, Zend Community Edition, Zend FrameWork and getting it all working.
Goal
To have a full install of Apache, PHP, MySQL, Eclipse PDT, XDebug and Zend Framework. The software will be installed to the standard place in a windows install (windows [...]

Interesting article on passing Parameters in Arrays

This article here is worth a read.  I have used arrays to pass parameters in the past but the method he describes for preset values is interesting and one I can adopt for certain projects.

Handy Little Development Server

As I am forced to use a Windows machine for my desktop for support purposes and I develop purely for Linux I have been in a non optimal situation.
I have tried using a remote server, an emulated server running VirtualBox , Dual Booting and using a windows based WAMP stack.  Each of these have certain [...]

BBC iPlayer goes HD

As mentioned in a previous post, it has now happened.
bbc.co.uk announces that HD has finally come to the iPlayer.

Validate uk postcodes in php

Nominet requires that the uk postcode be in a valid format, this is a routine I wrote many years ago but still works today.
Code after the break

extracting specific information from a string in PHP

I have a bunch of entries in a database where one field (varchar) is of this format
First name Last Name (AccountId-ItemId)
For example
“John Smith (1342-314)”
I needed to extract the Account and Item id’s from this.
if (preg_match(‘/\\([0-9]{1,4}-[0-9]{1,4}\\)/’, $source_data, $regs)) {
$match = $regs[0];
[...]

Wamp Server error mysqld got exception 0xc0000005

What causes Wamp Server to error with mysqld got exception 0xc0000005?

PHP Development Software

I have been asked a few times about the development software I use and after my last post I thought I would give you a list of what I find most effective.

PHPEd is a very nice IDE, it has a few niggles but on the whole I find it far superior to the others [...]