Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

PHP: self:: vs. static::

I am seeing more and more PHP code with static:: key used for method calls instead of self::.  Today I’ve finally found some time to examine the novelty.  The page that is useful for more details is PHP’s late static binding.  This functionality is available since PHP 5.3.0 so you might as well start using it.

I am a bit protective of my code, so self:: feels like a safer, more natural option.  But after thinking about it for a bit, and discussing with my colleagues, I came to the conclusion that I should be using static:: instead of self::.  It provides cleaner inheritance and minimizes code copy-pasting.

 

I am loving GitHub code review so much that people…

I am loving GitHub code review so much that people are suggesting that I should change my title to Comparer of Unmerged Neglectable Technicalities. Otherwise known as … nevermind.

Major upgrade to Evernote Clipper for Google Chrome

I am a huge fan of Evernote for a few years now, and one of the reasons behind my support is the Clipper.  Instead of just saving the bookmarks the old (Delicious?) way, Evernote allows to save full or partial pages.  With this, even if the original site removes content or disappears completely, you’d still have the clip in your notes.

A couple of days ago Evernote announced that they are releasing an updated version of the Clipper for Google Chrome.  Here is the quick video with some new features.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq_mEcWvCik]

It looks like they’ve merged in some of the functionality of their other applications and browser extensions, such as Clearly – a browser extension that can cleanup noisy pages leaving just the content of the article to read, and Skitch – a simple annotations and graphical editing tool.  While it sounds complicated, the functionality actually makes sense.

There are also some other new features, such as setting reminder on the note directly from the Clipper (rather than from the Evernote), and a Share button.  When all is combined, it makes Evernote into a really powerful too.  For example, emailing someone an annotated screenshot is now a quick task of just a few clicks.

Very, very handy tool!

Beautifying PHP’s json_encode() output

I’ve been working a bit more with PHP and JSON recently and one of the things that annoyed me quite a bit was the single line output of the json_encode() function.  Here is an example:

<?php
$data = array(
'foo' => 'bar',
'bar' => 'qux',
'blah' => 'blah',
);

echo json_encode($data);
?>

Poorly readable result (imagine having larger, more complex data structures like nested arrays):

{"foo":"bar","bar":"qux","blah":"blah"}

Apparently, since PHP 5.4.0 it became much easier to optionally format the output with some indentation.  json_encode() function has an $options parameter, which was given an extra option – JSON_PRETTY_PRINT.  Here is an updated example:

<?php
$data = array(
 'foo' => 'bar',
 'bar' => 'qux',
 'blah' => 'blah',
);

echo json_encode($data, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
?>

And an updated output:

{
 "foo": "bar",
 "bar": "qux",
 "blah": "blah"
}

Very handy for debugging and for those bits of JSON that should be editable by hand.