2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here's an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 14,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 3 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Understanding Abstract Classes in PHP

Abstract classes are an often misunderstood feature of PHP object-oriented programming (OOP) and the source of confusion when considered versus an Interface. The obvious reason for using an Interface is that a child class can implement multiple interfaces but extend only a single abstract class. However, if multiple inheritance is not required then people often go with abstract classes just because they provide the option of later adding base functionality within the abstract class. This is not entirely unreasonable but the reasons for creating abstract classes should be more than that.
Why Use Abstract Classes?

An Abstract class provides concrete base functions as well as abstract functions that must be implemented by concrete child classes—binding them into a contract so to speak, if they wish to make use of the base functionality.

This is a subtle but important point and this is where abstract classes really shine. They can call abstract functions from within base concrete functions. Jumping straight to an example is the clearest way to explain this.

[sourcecode language="php"]
abstract class Animal {
function greeting() {
$sound = $this->sound(); // exists in child class by contract
return strtoupper($sound);
}
abstract function sound(); // this is the contract
}

class Dog extends Animal {
function sound() { // concrete implementation is mandatory
return "Woof!";
}
}

$dog = new Dog();
echo $dog->greeting(); // WOOF!
[/sourcecode]

This opens up a whole lot of interesting possibilities. For example, you can write a drive() function that calls $this->start(); $this->accelerate(); in an abstract class. Then create a motorcycle class that defines its own start() and accelerate() functions that may be different from those in the car class. In turn, the motorcycle and car can both be driven by just calling drive() without having to implement it locally.
Characteristics of Abstract Classes

Make a note of these characteristics to lock down your understanding of abstract classes:

• Single inheritance. Child classes can extend only one class at a time.


• Abstract classes cannot be instantiated — no new Animal();


• Abstract classes can define class variables of type const only.


• Abstract class A can be extended by another abstract class B. Abstract class B can implement none or any of the abstract functions in A.


• In the previous case, a child class C which extends abstract class B must implement all abstract functions in B as well as the abstract functions in A which have not already been implemented in B.


• The signature of the concrete functions and abstract functions must be the same. However, if an abstract function is defined as abstract function speak($greeting); then it is okay to implement it as function speak($greeting, $shout = FALSE) but not function speak($greeting, $shout).


• The visibility of functions in the child classes must be the same or less restrictive than the parent class. Thus, a protected abstract function can be implemented as either protected or public but not private.

Declaring functions as static abstract throws a strict warning in PHP 5.2 or earlier, however, as of PHP 5.3 this is allowed.

Add JSON objects ,arrays and variables from php to javascript in Zend Framework

Superb way of adding PHP variables to Javascript/Jquery in Zend Framework

The Painting

Nice Story......

Writing Your First Twitter Application with oAuth

Hello Friends

In My current application There is requirement to fetch twitter timeline for the particular user. So I’ve fetched it with the help of Rest API of twitter an oAuth.

OAuth is an open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications. In layman’s terms, it is a system by which you can allow a user to authenticate with an OAuth-enabled service without providing you with their credentials to that service.

Why OAuth?

Using OAuth allows you to write applications that access the Twitter API but do not require your users to give you their Twitter username and password. This is important for a variety of reasons:

• If the user changes their Twitter login, they do not have to update that information with you for your application to continue working for them


• Using OAuth puts the user in control – if they ever wish to stop using your application, they can disable it through Twitter instead of trusting your application to stop using their login information. Once they disable it through Twitter, any requests by your application will require them to manually approve the connection again.


• Increased sense of trust, since the user doesn’t have to worry about your application stealing their Twitter credentials and using it for nefarious purposes. I personally wouldn’t trust any web-based application that asks for my Twitter username and password, and given Twitter’s recent history of bad press regarding their security, more and more users are following that lead.

Getting Started – Registering Your Application with Twitter

First of all , you have to register your new application with Twitter. You’ll need a name and url for your application in order to register it, and you’ll need to define a callback url. The callback url is the full url of the page Twitter should send the user to after it’s done authenticating. This file can be named anything you want, but make sure the one you create on your server matches the one you register with Twitter. All of these details can be changed later if you change your mind or need to update something.

Once you’ve registered your application, Twitter will issue you a Consumer Key and a Consumer Secret for your new app. You’ll need these to get your sample code from the Twitter OAuth library working. As you can probably tell by the name, your Consumer Secret should remain private and you should never give it out to anyone. It’s used in your code so that Twitter can identify your application when you’re making API calls.

By forcing you to send your consumer key and secret with your API calls, Twitter is able to determine which application is sending the API calls, and can verify that the Twitter user you are attempting to send API requests on behalf of has actually authorized your application to access their account. If the user decides they no longer want to allow your application, they can edit their allowed application preferences and your application will no longer be able to make API calls on their behalf.

You can access a list of all of the applications you have registered with Twitter – and links to edit their details or view the consumer key and consumer secret – by going to your oauth clients page on Twitter.

The Twitter OAuth PHP Library Code

There are several oAuth Twitter -libraries for PHP. But I Recommend Abraham’s Twitter OAuth library . You can pull the code from http://github.com/abraham/twitteroauth.

This library does provide an example script. You need to replace your Consumer Key and a Consumer Secret in confing.php. Please check that callback.php file should be one that we’ve registered with Twitter as being our callback url. We can keep common configuration options such as the consumer key and consumer secret, and database credentials in a config.php file. Now you can run index.php.

Now in your callback.php you can save access_token in database for future request. You can use that access token to call the APIs and you don’t need to enter Twitter user name and password.

[sourcecode language="php"]
/* Create TwitteroAuth object with app key/secret and token key/secret from default phase */
$connection = new TwitterOAuth(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, $_SESSION['oauth_token'], $_SESSION['oauth_token_secret']);
/* Request access tokens from twitter */
$access_token = $connection->getAccessToken($_REQUEST['oauth_verifier']);
[/sourcecode]

Here you can dowanload the whole code from git hub. you just need to put your Consumer Key and a Consumer Secret in config.php and need to check callback url settings it should be demo's callback.php and than you can run index.php you will get the result.

https://github.com/viralsolani/twitter-oAuth-example

Important Links

• Register your application with Twitter


• List of all of your registered apps on Twitter


• Twitter API Documentation


• Twitter API Rate Limiting Documentation


• Download & Docs for Abraham’s OAuth PHP library


• OAuth official website


• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/creating-a-twitter-oauth-application/


• http://140dev.com/twitter-api-programming-tutorials/hello-twitter-oauth-php/

Hope it helps