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Poor programming practices

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When will it stop. These amateur programmers that simply cut/paste code really affect those good programmers in the ecosystem trying to make a decent living. I was reviewing a developed (but incomplete) PHP/MySQL system using a common framework (which in itself is irrelevant for this post).

In one source file there were 12 repetitions of the following code:

   //permissions
    $this->security_model->setUserPermissions($id);
    if (!array_key_exists($id,$this->session->userdata['permissions']) OR
	!array_key_exists('id', $this->session->userdata['permissions'][$id]) OR
	!array_key_exists('scope', $this->session->userdata['permissions'][$id]['name'])){
      $this->session->set_flashdata('alert', 'You are not authorized to go there.');
      redirect($this->agent->referrer());
    }

It’s bad enough when code is repeated and not put in a simple re factored function. When it’s repeated 12 times in one file, and OMG over 100 times in the product, that is a recipe for bugs, and high maintenance codes due to extremely poor coding practice.

UTF-8 with MySQL and LAMP

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A recent question on a mailing list was the best practices for UTF-8 and PHP/MySQL. The following are the configurations I used in my multi-language projects.

MySQL UTF-8 Configuration

# my.cnf
[mysqld]
default_character_set = utf8
character_set_client       = utf8
character_set_server       = utf8
[client]
default_character_set = utf8

PHP UTF-8 Configuration

#php.ini
default_charset = "utf-8"

Apache UTF-8 Configuration

#httpd.conf
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
<VirtualHost>
    AddCharset UTF-8   .htm
</VirtualHost>

HTML file UTF-8 Configuration

 <meta charset="utf-8">

PHP file UTF-8 Configuration

header('Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');

MySQL connection (extra precaution)

SET NAMES utf8;

Shell UTF-8

And last but not least, even editing files in shell can be affected (.e.g UTF-8 data to be inserted into DB from file). Ensure at least

#~/.profile
export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.

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I recently deployed a new WordPress installation to my existing production webserver running Apache, MySQL and PHP for other websites, yet I was presented with the following message.

“Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.”

This thread at wordpress.org did not help me, however I was able to solve the problem, but this thread is now marked as closed. That’s poor form because I can’t share the solution I found.

My PHP configuration file did not have the following.

#php.ini
[PHP]
extension=mysql.so

Adding this and restarting Apache did not fix the problem.

The problem was more fundamental and required PHP to be recompiled. Orginally PHP was configured with the ‘–with-mysqli’ option. PHP requires the ‘–with-mysql’ which is rather stupid they have this dependency.

Recompiling PHP and adding the necessary extension were both necessary to get my new WordPress installation operational.

MySQL 5.5.8 GA and PHP 5.3.4 don't get along with libmysql

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Today I discovered that you are unable to compile the current stable PHP version 5.3.4 with yesterday’s MySQL 5.5.8 GA release. I was able to download the current MySQL 5.1.54 and compile without issue.

You can find all the gory details in Bug #58987 however I was able to edit a number of MySQL include file to get a build. Does this mean it’s a MySQL packaging problem or a PHP problem I don’t know, but I would hope that Oracle in the testing phase of a GA release test this against popular programming languages starting with the LAMP stack to ensure compatibility such as what I uncovered.

Gearman examples under Mac OS X

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Today I listened in on the O’Reilly webcast Introduction to Gearman by Eric Day of Rackspace. I thought I would follow through on the machine at hand; a Mac with OS X 10.5, however I again got caught up with the gearman PHP extension integration. A look at and older post Getting started with Gearman based on Ubuntu needed an update for Mac.

First I downloaded and installed the latest gearman. This was version 0.12 and includes libgearman 0.7.
You should always check for any more recent updates.

wget http://launchpad.net/gearmand/trunk/0.12/+download/gearmand-0.12.tar.gz
tar xvfz gearmand-0.12.tar.gz
cd gearmand-0.12
./configure
make
sudo make install
ls -l /usr/local/lib/libg*
#-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  79808 Mar 12 13:33 /usr/local/lib/libgearman.4.dylib
#lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     18 Mar 12 13:33 /usr/local/lib/libgearman.dylib -> libgearman.4.dylib
#-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    960 Mar 12 13:33 /usr/local/lib/libgearman.la

gearmand was installed in /usr/local/sbin and gearman installed in /usr/local/bin

Next we needed the gearman PHP extension from pecl

wget http://pecl.php.net/get/gearman-0.7.0.tgz
tar xvfz gearman-0.7.0.tgz
cd gearman-0.7.0
phpize
./configure
make
sudo make install
# Installing shared extensions:     /usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/

Take note of the extension location, as I needed this for the next step.

Php was already installed, which was good.

$ which php
/usr/bin/php

However I found no configuration loaded.

$ php --info | grep -i configuration
Configuration File (php.ini) Path => /etc
Loaded Configuration File => (none)
Configuration

What exists is a default example only. In order to include the gearman extension I needed to do the following.

$ sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini
$ sudo vi /etc/php.ini

# Set extension directory
extension_dir = "/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/"
# Add Gearman extension
extension="gearman.so"

And a confirmation.

$ php --info | egrep -i "(configuration|gearman)"
Configuration File (php.ini) Path => /etc
Loaded Configuration File => /private/etc/php.ini
Configuration
gearman
gearman support => enabled
libgearman version => 0.12

Ready now to try out the PHP examples.

Getting started with Gearman

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Gearman is an open source generic framework for distributed processing. At OSCON 2009 I attended the Gearman: Build Your Own Distributed Platform in 3 Hours tutorial.

While it’s very easy to install Gearman, and follow the first example, if you missed the all important additional PHP steps listed on just one slide you may be left with the “‘Class ‘GearmanClient’ not found” error.

The following are detailed instructions for the installation and configuration of Gearman and PHP on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty.

Add the Drizzle PPA to get pre-packaged versions of Gearman.

cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.orig
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/drizzle-developers/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/drizzle-developers/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 06899068
apt-get update

Get the gearman packages

apt-get install -y gearman gearman-job-server gearman-tools libgearman1 libgearman-dev libgearman-dbg libgearman-doc

Get the German PHP extension.

wget http://pecl.php.net/get/gearman-0.4.0.tgz
tar xvfz gearman-0.4.0.tgz
cd gearman-0.4.0/
phpize
./configure
make
make install

If phpize is not available then you are missing the development packages.

$ apt get php5-dev

You also configure PHP to load the extension. This will vary on different Linux environments. In this case.

echo 'extension="gearman.so"' >>/etc/php5/cli/php.ini

Verify the PHP Gearman extension is configured.

$ php --info | grep gearman
gearman
gearman support => enabled
libgearman version => 0.8

Now you are ready for working with the Gearman PHP examples.

UltimateLAMP

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This product is no longer available. This was created over 6 years ago and software is too out of date.


As I discussed earlier in A picture can tell a thousand words, I outlined briefly what the intention of UltimateLAMP was for. Let me spill the beans so to speak.

What is UltimateLAMP?

UltimateLAMP is a fully functional environment allowing you to easily try and evaluate a number of LAMP stack software products without requiring any specific setup or configuration of these products. UltimateLAMP runs as a Virtual Machine with VMware Player (FREE). This demonstration package also enables the recording of all user entered information for later reference, indeed you will find a wealth of information already available within a number of the Product Recommendations starting with the supplied Documentation.

My executive punch line with the “right” buzz words is:


You have heard of all the hype in Open Source with lowering Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO) or Total Economic Impact (TEI)? Evaluate Open Source now
in your organistion at no cost or risk with this software package.

What are the uses for UltimateLAMP?







Well, in a nutshell UltimateLAMP allows for instant exposure of Open Source products that use MySQL. You have to remember my goal here is to promote MySQL. Unfortunately, as with any database the features alone will not get the new sale, it’s the applicability to an organisation, and with Open Source the wealth of existing and developing applications that exist can. I don’t necessarily like this approach. Indeed many open source products are poorly designed and can be poor choices in a large scale enterprise solution, but the flip side is, where else can you start.

The benefits of selling a MediaWiki for example due to the success and scalability with Wikipedia is great. So it’s important that the product list includes proven products and currently developing products (rather then stale ones). This is something that the community can definitely provide valuable feedback on to help in this selection.

Other then becoming a CD used as a drink coaster, I feel the potential is here already to provide a copy to people, even install it on a managers computer. You can’t break the software, so why not install it for your non-computer user friends/family. The goal is to move up to executive management however I feel the exposure to the general community first will greatly help.

How it came about

There is some history to this idea. Here are some of the highlights.

  • Late 2005, several planning sessions with Jon and Morgan about a more practical Open Source Contribution user group lead to obviously LAMP stack products for simplicity and exposure. This lead to exposure of LAMP stack products to more of the general person and split from the original intended goal, but was a great idea.
  • Early 2006, futher discussions of how MySQL could get exposure and traction into organisations. For myself professional, how could I promote in industry sectors that I work in.
  • In April 2006, the MySQL Users Conference with discussions of this idea with others and the positive feedback
  • In May 2006, the VMware Appliance Challenge was the possible exposure and deadline needed for me to “Just Do It”. Originally the idea was intended as a Live CD, but in some ways a virtual machine is just as good.

Where to from now!

Well, supply and demand. I don’t know if anybody else has a particular use, or will even download to use it, or market it.

I could see the potential for MySQL User Groups to get behind my idea, and enable members to filter this into known organisations. I could see for targeted opportunities/events, CD’s or information could be distributed. With the support and backing of MySQL AB, I could see the opportunity for even a breakfast CEO/CTI/CIO introduction or other format of meeting the ultimate intended audience.

I could see the potential that an organisation or entity could provide free hosting (30 days) to an organisation that pointed a 3rd level domain to the provider (e.g. wiki.acme.com). It’s like the honeypot, if it takes off after 30 days, the company will either want to pay for hosting, or what to move it. And that’s also fine, organisation provides a MySQL dump, and links to documented installation instructions, or perhaps a sale of services for initial installation/customisation/training can be made.

What can I do?

There is always a list of things that can be done. For now the greatest thing I can ask for is feedback. The good, the bad and the ugly. It’s find to get the comments to say, “That’s great”, or “Good job” or “I can use this”, it’s just as important to get the comments that are proactive in what’s not good. I would value any feedback. Please feel free to Download UltimateLAMP

On my immediate ToDo List or even partially complete is:

  • Document VMPlayer installation instructions for Windows/Linux (partial).
  • Add more product sample content.
  • Add more mediawiki content about the product, like customisation options, references to specific documentation, or other online working examples.
  • Documenting the installation/creation instructions for individual products.
  • Figure out a better way for users to contribute content that get’s rolled back into the Virtual Machines. For the mediawiki, I could see a public online copy, but for other products it could become harder
  • Optimise VM image (removing unnecessary OS stuff), removing product language support (not ideal), but my goal is to provide a 2 CD pack. The first CD has VMplayer in Win/Linux/RPM formats and the default VMware BrowserAppliance (All software from VMWare). The second CD is UltimateLAMP. Combined in a DVD 2x case along with perhaps a small booklet of a few pages, would enable this product to potential move to a commercial state.
  • Investigating other products

Should anybody wishing to help, leave a comment, that way I can see somebody is reading this and so can others.

Related Post:

UltimateLAMP Passwords