https://github.com/glenscott/simple-crypt

This is an OO wrapper around the most common mcrypt functions. An example of use:

require_once 'SimpleCrypt.php';

// show the algorithms available for use
print_r( SimpleCrypt::get_available_algorithms() );

// encrypt a string using Triple DES (CBC mode)
$crypt = new SimpleCrypt( 'tripledes', 'mysecretkey' );
$encrypted_data = $crypt->encrypt_data( 'stringtoencrypt' );
echo "Encrypted data: " . bin2hex( $encrypted_data ) . "\n";
echo "Decrypted data: " . $crypt->decrypt_data( $encrypted_data ) . "\n";

If you find it useful, please let me know!

Introduction

MongoDB is a document-orientated database written with scalability and high-performance in mind. It is one of a growing number of NoSQL systems – a database that does not rely on SQL or relational theory at all.

Getting a MongoDB server working with PHP on Mac OS X is relatively straightforward, and this tutorial shows you how.

Installing the MongoDB Server

The first step requires you to download and install the actual MongoDB system. The example shown below downloads v2.0.0 64 bit binaries for OS X. For other binaries, please check out the MongoDB Downloads page.

cd /tmp
curl -O http://fastdl.mongodb.org/osx/mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.0.0.tgz
tar zxvf mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.0.0.tgz
sudo mv mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.0.0 /usr/local/mongodb
mkdir /usr/local/mongodb/data

Configuring the MongoDB server

We need to create a small configuration file so that MongoDB knows where its data files reside. Create the file /usr/local/mongodb/mongod.conf and add the following line:

dbpath = /usr/local/mongodb/data

Starting MongoDB

To manually start the MongoDB server, use the following command:

/usr/local/mongodb/bin/mongod --config /usr/local/mongodb/mongod.conf

This will start the server and will by default log all output to STDOUT.

Installing the MongoDB PHP Extension

Installing the PHP extension is simple:

sudo pecl install mongo

Once this has completed, add the following line to your /etc/php.ini file:

extension=mongo.so

Restart apache using sudo apachectl restart, and the extension should be available. This can be verified with the phpinfo call:

Example PHP script

To test your setup, the following simple script can be used to create a new collection and add two new records:

    <?php

    // connect
    $m = new Mongo();

    // select a database
    $db = $m->comedy;

    // select a collection (analogous to a relational database's table)
    $collection = $db->cartoons;

    // add a record
    $obj = array( "title" => "Calvin and Hobbes", "author" => "Bill Watterson" );
    $collection->insert($obj);

    // add another record, with a different "shape"
    $obj = array( "title" => "XKCD", "online" => true );
    $collection->insert($obj);

    // find everything in the collection
    $cursor = $collection->find();

    // iterate through the results
    foreach ($cursor as $obj) {
        echo $obj["title"] . "\n";
    }

    ?>

The script should output the following:

Calvin and Hobbes
XKCD

And that’s it! You now have a working MongoDB setup on Mac OS X.

For more information on the PHP extension for MongoDB, please see the following pages in the PHP Manual:

PHP: Mongo – Manual

A couple of points that I noticed post-install. Firstly, my existing /etc/php.ini file was moved to /etc/php.ini-5.2-previous. Restoring this was trivial:

sudo cp /etc/php.ini-5.2-previous /etc/php.ini


However, I noticed that extensions previously installed under /usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/ had been removed. So, if you have extensions that you wish to still use with 5.3, they will need to be re-built.

I also noticed that Apple have included the Suhosin patch and extension. Suhosin is part of the Hardened-PHP project which aims to protect PHP applications against buffer-overflow and format string vulnerabilities. In theory, this functionality should be transparent to your application – no configuration or code changes are required.

Please note: The following instructions apply to Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). I have an updated guide for how to install mcrypt on 10.7 (Lion).

mcrypt is a useful extension to PHP if you would like to support a wide range of encryption algorithms within your code.

This guide explains how you can enable install mcrypt, along with the PHP extension, on Mac OS X 10.6.

Xcode

The Xcode package installs the necessary versions of tools like autoconf which is needed during the PHP extension compilation process. Make sure you have at least Xcode v3.2 installed; the install package is available on the Snow Leopard install DVD under the “Optional Installs” folder.

libmcrypt

libmcrypt is the library that provides the encryption functions. We need to install this before building the PHP extension.

• Open up Terminal.app
• export CFLAGS="-arch x86_64"
• Download libmcrypt from sourceforge
• Unpack the archive somewhere
• cd libmcrypt
• ./configure --disable-shared
• make
• sudo make install

PHP Extension

Once we have libmcrypt installed, we can build the PHP extension.

• Download PHP 5.3.4 source (tar gz format)
• Unpack the archive and cd php-5.3.4/ext/mcrypt/
• phpize

You should see output similar to the following:

Configuring for:
PHP Api Version:         20090626
Zend Module Api No:      20090626
Zend Extension Api No:   220090626

• ./configure
• make
• sudo make install

On successful install, you will see the following message:

Installing shared extensions:     /usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/

To enable the module, include the following line in your /etc/php.ini file:

extension = mcrypt.so

Finally, restart your Apache server:

sudo apachectl restart

And that’s it: you should now be able to utilise the functions, as detailed in the PHP mcrypt documentation.

https://github.com/glenscott/url-normalizer

Specifically, the following normalization steps are performed:

1. Normalize case
2. Decode unreserved characters
3. Remove dot segments

An example of use:

require_once 'URLNormalizer.php';

$url = 'eXAMPLE://a/./b/../b/%63/%7bfoo%7d';
$un = new URLNormalizer();
$un->setUrl( $url );
echo $un->normalize();

// result: "example://a/b/c/%7Bfoo%7D"

The error message suggests looking at the README file, which actually doesn’t exist. Luckily, there’s a simple fix; to increase the shared memory to the required 32Mb, create or edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and include the following lines:

kern.sysv.shmall=8192
kern.sysv.shmseg=64
kern.sysv.shmmni=256
kern.sysv.shmmin=1
kern.sysv.shmmax=33554432

Reboot your machine for the settings to take effect, and re-launch the PostgreSQL installer which should now work as normal.

Sun has announced the official release of MySQL 5.1, a new version of the popular open source database software. Although Sun has declared that this version is ready for widespread adoption in production environments, MySQL creator Michael Widenius says that it has “fatal bugs” that seriously undermine the quality of the release.

MySQL creator: version 5.1 released with “fatal bugs”

• The Complete History of the Perle Mongers of Olde London Towne – Dave Cross
• DBIx::Class for (advanced) beginners‎ – Leo Lapworth
• closures for fun and maybe profit‎ – David Cantrell
• Catalyst, DBIx::Class and PostgreSQL -‎ Matt Trout
• ‎Introduction to Moose – Mike Whitaker

In particular, DBIx::Class caught my eye as a nice way of abstracting database details behind more friendly object methods. Although, as the list of contributors shows, this is a highly complex problem to solve and achieving a “one size fits all” solution may be unrealistic.

Matt Trout’s talk was a little disappointing. Although I admired his passion and enthusiasm, there was far too much crammed in the 40 minute talk. Just concentrating on one aspect of the development process would been more useful. However, saying that, he did enough to convince me that I need to revisit PostgreSQL at some point in the future.

My colleague Mike Whitaker talked about the “postmodern object system”, Moose. There was lots of questions by the end of the talk, which was a good sign that the introduction had achieved its aim.

Overall, a good experience and a reminder that the Perl community is very much alive and well.

• London Perl Workshop

I played around with it many years ago after being inspired by Eric S. Raymond’s seminal article, “How to Become A Hacker” in which he explained that “getting” Lisp is equalivent to finding programming nirvana.

Whilst I didn’t quite reach those levels, I found that using Lisp was a great learning experience. Despite it being half a century old, it is still a relevant language today; the online Practical Common Lisp book contains examples of a spam filter, an ID3 tag parser and other real-world examples.

The following two links are for the curious who might wish to try it out:

• Ready Lisp: Common Lisp for Mac OS X
• Practical Common Lisp

The big idea here is that we’ll have the whole platform open sourced by mid-next year, and as soon as possible we’ll have many of the services we’ve written open sourced, as well as the APIs needed to write new services. Our goal is to empower the community to contribute actual patches and new services – code to compliment the feedback.

• Yahoo! will open source BrowserPlus! – YDN Forums
• BrowserPlus™