For PHP there are at least the following implementations related to Dependency Injection:

• PHP-Dependency (Pd) - A PHP Dependency Injection Framework
• Pimple – A simple Dependency InjectionContainer for PHP 5.3
• Zend Framework 2 Dependency Injection

PHP-Dependency (Pd) works with @ annotation in the constructor comment, but why involve the constructor? And is a whole framework needed? PHP is not Java.

Pimple is very much a Dependency Injection Container, not so much about the injection. Simple, yes.

When it comes to Zend Framework 2 Dependency Injection I just can’t grasp how it simplifies anything. It seems to require a lot of boilerplate.

Unsatisfied with the above and a given a dose of NIH Syndrome, I decided to create my own DI system for PHP. After a bit of coding yesterday evening and night I named it Pebble and it is already on github! :-)

My current requirements on Pebble are as follows:

1. It must be possible to inject values of specific properties on class construction
2. It must work nicely in Zend Framework 1.x
3. It must not require any configuration files (and especially no XML)
4. It must be a single .php file for the core implementation
5. It must provide an open interface for extension and customization
6. It must work nicely with PHPUnit (especially with the getMock method)
7. It must work with autoloading of classes in PHP
8. It is allowed to use PHP 5.3 features
9. It is allowed to use @-based annotations in docComment, e.g. /** @something */

However, I have not yet used Pebble with PHPUnit, so I don’t know yet if that requirement holds!

Now is a good time for you to examine example1.php! The README is currently plain-text, I’ll format it later!

Marker tooltip

I start with the marker, as it is the simplest implementation:

function attachMarkerInfoWindow(marker, html)
{
	marker.infoWindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow({
		content: html,
	});
	google.maps.event.addListener(marker, 'mouseover', function() {
		marker.infoWindow.open(map,marker);
	});
	google.maps.event.addListener(marker, 'mouseout', function() {
		marker.infoWindow.close();
	});
}

var marker = new google.maps.Marker({
	position: new google.maps.LatLng(56.183182,15.593239),
});

attachMarkerInfoWindow(marker, '<strong>Softhouse office</strong>');

Polygon tooltip

A polygon does not contain a single position, so where should the tooltip show? One option is to calculate the center of the polygon using getCenter() on google.maps.LatLngBounds, but I decided to use the position of the mouseover event as the position of the InfoWindow. Think about it; the center of the polygon may not actually be inside the polygon!

As a bonus I change the fill opacity while the mouse cursor is inside the polygon.

function attachPolygonInfoWindow(polygon, html)
{
	polygon.infoWindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow({
		content: html,
	});
	google.maps.event.addListener(polygon, 'mouseover', function(e) {
		var latLng = e.latLng;
		this.setOptions({fillOpacity:0.1});
		polygon.infoWindow.setPosition(latLng);
		polygon.infoWindow.open(map);
	});
	google.maps.event.addListener(polygon, 'mouseout', function() {
		this.setOptions({fillOpacity:0.35});
		polygon.infoWindow.close();
	});
}

var polygon = new google.maps.Polygon(/* omitted for brevity */);
attachPolygonInfoWindow(polygon, '<strong>Info about this area</strong>');

To read and manage posts I use the Facebook Graph API, but there are a number of limitations:

• My application supports deleting posts, but Facebook does not allow applications to delete a photo
• Real-time Updates do not include support for groups (so I have to poll)
• Reading the Group feed and and using the since and until parameters do not guarantee that you find all posts in a high-traffic group, not even when using the previous and next links in the feed

Update Maybe I should start using FQL to query the Group feed?

This is quite OK, as my home-made web diary software – even rewritten in Zend Framework – will never have the same features as Facebook. There are no comments, photo uploads, likes, mentions of friends, etc, that the existing social networks already implement.

Of course I also have a Twitter account, @davideriksson, that complements this blog with mostly English-language updates regarding software development and related topics. I actually use Google Buzz for sharing some stuff with friends, and it is also connected to my Twitter account.

I never use my Orkut account so let’s ignore that. Should I mention my LinkedIn account? By its nature it is almost purely for my professional relations.

Now comes Google+ and I will give it a try as soon as they accept the invitation I have. Should I spend/waste my time on yet another social network, connected to more or less the same people?

What I want is to publish stuff (blog posts, links, photos, videos, status updates) in one place, and have it reach the desired target group (or Social Cicle, in Google+ speak). Something like Diaspora sounds like a good idea, but it is not click-and-play and does it integrate with the other social networks mentioned previously? I’m not so sure.

Ideally I publish something on Facebook and it ends up in the corresponding social circles in Google+, and the other way around.

Another solution would to be that I publish everything from my personal site, and it pushes it to the corresponding systems. Maybe I have to implement photo upload after all? And build an Android client? No, I should not have to.

A better solution would be that a single social network is my “main” one and it provides an API that I can use to share data to other social networks. Maybe Google+ is that social network, but it does not have a public API yet. I still have to build stuff, but integrating systems is much more fun than implementing photo upload… :-)

To see what others publish I realize that I still need to connect to each social network, but I’m probably curious enough!

Since I opened the forum there has been more and forum spam attempts. Actually there have been very few spam posts, and no spam personal messages that I know of, but several spammers did register only to add links for SEO purposes in their user profile. (Note to self: set rel=”nofollow” on links in user profiles?)

The first counter-measure I added was reCAPTCHA for SMF and it has saved me quite a bit of work.

When that was not enough I found an SMF plugin for the Stop Forum Spam API. Unlike Akismet that – AFAIK – goes for the content of the spam, Stop Forum Spam simply stores IP address, user names and e-mail addresses that have been used for forum spam. When a spammer try to register on my forum they get a message (in Swedish) that an extra security check is needed, and instructions to e-mail the webmaster (that’s me). I have loads of registration attempts in the forum log, but no e-mails to webmaster… :-)

I realize that it is not realistic to get rid of all spammers, but I’m pretty close now!

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as
http://www.folkmun.se/definition/Apaj%C3%A4vel. Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your website.

Needless to say, I have made a couple of modifications to the site, including hiding ads when displaying explicit words or definitions. If this wasn’t good enough, I’ll know in a couple of days…

Another domain I recently registered is Blekinge.IT. At some point in the future I want it to be a site about IT and telecommunications in the Swedish province Blekinge, but for now I only use it to aggregate local news sources.

This was also a test in registering .it domains. I had to print, sign and send a fax (!) to fulfill the registration, but otherwise it was really easy.

fmod — Returns the floating point remainder (modulo) of the division of the arguments

If you calculate 36 modulo 7.2?  What do you get? Zero, yes. 7.2*5=36. No remainder!

What if you use fmod in PHP?

$ php -r 'echo fmod(36,7.2);'
7.2

WTF? Excuse me? Is that the result from IEEE 754 hell, a parallel universe, or what?

Now I’m betting on the function below. I hope it won’t let me down.

function modulo($n,$b) {
return $n-$b*floor($n/$b);
}