UltraMega Blog

Create Callbacks Using __invoke

Steve — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:44:19 +0000

The __invoke magic method (available as of PHP 5.3) is used to make an object callable as if it were a regular function. The combines the usefulness of objects with the simplicity of functions. One application of this feature is creating callback functions that can be passed around like objects. This is common practice in [...]

Deciphering Magic Methods in PHP

Steve — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:36:31 +0000

Deciphering Magic Methods in PHP | Nettuts+ PHP provides a number of ‘magic’ methods that allow you to do some pretty neat tricks in object oriented programming. These methods, identified by a two underscore prefix (__), function as interceptors that are automatically called when certain conditions are met. Magic methods provide some extremely useful functionality, [...]

Round Robin Tournament Scheduler

Steve — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:07:13 +0000

Here's a snippet I wrote for a project that I thought might come in handy for someone else. It generates a schedule for a round robin tournament. I found some other snippets to do this, but I found them overly complicated or lacking in other ways. Here's an example of what this code does: <?php [...]

PHP: Recursive Functions

Steve — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:16:42 +0000

A recursive function is a function that calls itself. This is useful for certain applications. This short tutorial will show an example of a recursive function in action. Let's say we have the following array of categories. Normally this might be stored in a database, but we'll use an array here for simplicity. /* Example [...]

Using a PHP Class to Store Configuration

Steve — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:20:11 +0000

In a comment on my post listing 5 Tips for Writing Cleaner PHP Code, some good arguments were made against using constants to store configuration variables. The main arguments is that it pollutes the global namespace, which can lead to collisions when implementing other code, and the way it handles typos. This article demonstrates some [...]

Using SSH in PHP

Steve — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:19:38 +0000

This tutorial will show you how to use the SSH2 functions in PHP to execute commands over SSH. This requires the SSH2 PECL extension to be installed on your server (installation instructions). Keep in mind that as of this time, the extension is in a beta state, so stability is not guaranteed. Sending commands is [...]

Snippet: Fetch Twitter Feed (With Retweets) in PHP

Steve — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 21:19:17 +0000

Here is a PHP that fetches a Twitter stream for a specified user. It also combines retweets with the regular updates. This puts them all in an array to make it easy to output them however you want. This snippet uses APC to cache the data, but you can use any caching method such as [...]

TempServers Finally Out of Beta

Steve — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:16:01 +0000

After almost a year since being announced, TempServers is finally out of beta. The system has been stable for months now, and it is ready to go live. The price is set at just 99 cents per hour for all games. No major changes have been made since the previous announcement, other than some back-end [...]

PHP in the Shell

Steve — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:38:04 +0000

PHP may be most commonly used within a web server to produce web pages, but it is a powerful scripting engine by itself. PHP is an amazingly useful multipurpose tool when used from the command line. This post will show you how to use the PHP Command Line Interface (CLI). Some of the information here [...]

TempServers Is Looking for a Home

Steve — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:05:34 +0000

TempServers, the hourly game server rental service, is now for sale. I've been working on this project independently for about a year now and it is very close to being out of beta. The decision to sell was made for a number of reasons. As a freelance Web developer, I simply don't have the time [...]