Weblog

Cloud storage is increasingly popular because it’s cheap and scalable. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is probably the most well-known, but almost every serious cloud vendor now has a storage offering. Cue my research into IBM Bluemix and its Object Storage service, which lets you attach cloud storage to your Bluemix application. Bluemix’s Object Storage service is based on OpenStack Swift and follows Swift’s three-tier hierarchy for organizing data:… Read More »Build a Photo Storage Service in the Cloud with PHP and IBM Bluemix

I’ve been using IBM Cloud (aka IBM Bluemix) for various projects, but one of the things that often frustrates me is the lack of debug information available. For example, it’s quite common to upload a new PHP application to IBM Cloud and then see a blank page when attempting to access it. The typical reason for this is that there’s a script error somewhere but the buildpack is configured to… Read More »Debugging PHP Errors on IBM Cloud

Google makes a number of APIs available for free – I’ve previously written about the Google Tasks API and the Google+ API. I recently came across another interesting one – the Google Places API. As the name suggests, the Google Places API lets you retrieve information about shops, businesses, and other establishments by location or keyword. The information returned by the API is quite detailed – it includes place names,… Read More »Build and Deploy an ATM Finder App on Bluemix

If you’re a developer used to developing and testing applications locally, moving your code to the cloud can be a bit daunting. First, you have to choose a cloud from the numerous options availabe. Then, you need to deal with the nitty-gritties of pricing, provisioning, application deployment, scalability and security. And finally, you need to keep track of server performance, debug application issues and find ways to cost-efficiently improve performance.… Read More »Host Your Application in the Cloud with XAMPP and Bitnami

I first came across PHPCR through my work with Magnolia CMS, an open source Java CMS. Magnolia CMS uses the Java Content Repository (JSR-283) as its content storage mechanism and PHPCR is a PHP adaptation of that standard. It’s great for storing semi-structured content in a hierarchical format and it also includes support for content versioning and indexing. The cool thing about PHPCR is that it lets PHP developers interact… Read More »Integrating PHP Web Applications with JCR and Magnolia CMS

The Nutritionix API is an online API which lets you access a massive database of nutrition information, covering both generic and branded food items. I came across it recently when looking for something else, and was promptly diverted from my original goal into trying it out. While playing with it, it occurred to me that this could be the basis of a very neat little application to track calorie consumption.… Read More »Build and Deploy a Mobile-Friendly Calorie Counter on IBM Bluemix with PHP, MySQL, AngularJS and the Nutritionix API

I’ve been experimenting with IBM Bluemix for some time now and a few weeks ago, I decided to try hosting a custom REST API with it. I built the API using Bullet, a PHP micro-framework, then deployed it to Bluemix and connected it with Bluemix’s MySQL service. It worked out pretty well…as you can see by trying this live demo. In case you’re interested in learning how I went about… Read More »Build and Deploy a REST API on IBM Bluemix with PHP and MySQL

A few weeks ago, I was introduced to Bluemix, IBM’s new cloud infrastructure platform for developers. With a bunch of pre-configured runtimes for Java, Node.js and Ruby, plus MongoDB, MySQL and various other database services, BlueMix provides a platform for quick app development and deployment. Bluemix is currently in beta and doesn’t support PHP (yet) but I found a blog post which suggested it was possible using the Zend Server… Read More »Configure URL Rewriting for Framework-Based PHP Applications on IBM Bluemix

I’ve been working with Zend Framework 2 for a while now, trying to learn it and map its concepts to those from Zend Framework 1. One of the things that hasn’t changed is the framework’s support for security – it still has a bunch of useful components which let you protect your PHP application from SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, spam, and brute-force password hacking. You don’t need to be using… Read More »Improve Web Application Security with Zend Framework 2

I’ve been waiting to try out jQuery Mobile for a while and a few weeks ago, I finally got the chance. I hooked jQuery Mobile up with the Google Tasks API and built a simple to-do list application that works on tablet and smartphone browsers. The application exposes most of the basic functionality of Google Tasks, allowing you to add new to-do lists, create tasks, attach due dates and mark… Read More »Create a Mobile-Friendly To-Do List App with PHP, jQuery Mobile and Google Tasks