1. In the Terminal type sudo nano /etc/php.ini (Terminal will ask you for your password)
2. Change: mysql.default_socket = to: mysql.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
3. Press Ctrl-O, then Enter to save
4. Type sudo apachectl graceful

Note that you may need to duplicate the original install php.ini.default file, just simply copy the contents of the file and create a php.ini. (cp php.ini.default php.ini)

I discovered this simple library about 4 days ago and have been reviewing it. I came to a conclusion to use it after about 3 hours of playing with it! I was able to pull back all the information i needed to complete my new application and add-on to Wordboxes. Below i will cover a few samples of what this class will do.

Character

The first thing i did was try to pul my character information back. This was simple and done quickly with just a few minor calls. Once i got the multi level array back (when i say multi level I am talking about 4 to 5 levels deep) i was able to sift through it by using print_r() and a pre tag.

// First include the phpArmory class
include 'classes/phpArmory.class.php';
$a = new phpArmory();
 
// Character lookup
$character = $a->characterFetch('Name', 'Realm');
 
print_r($character);

Now, I wanted to take this a bit farther and list my characters gear with the image and item level. Below is a foreach loop, looping through the ‘item’ array. You may also notice i am 4 levels deep in the array at this point, i figured that out by just looking at the above code output. As i am looping through the ‘item’ array i will also have to step one level deeper into the ‘attributes’ array so i can see the information on the gear.

foreach($character['characterinfo']['charactertab']['items']['item'] as $item){
	echo '<p><img class="gearicon" src="http://www.wowarmory.com/wow-icons/_images/64x64/'.$item['attributes']['icon'].'.jpg" alt="' . $item['attributes']['name'] . '" />';
	echo $item['attributes']['name'] . ' (ilvl ' . $item['attributes']['level'] . ')</p>';
}

The above will output:

Items

Another great thing about this library is that you are able to pull back just single items based on ID. This is great because after pulling back character info you also get gear ID’s. Then you can use the gear ID’s to get more information on that single item. This also makes it handy for tool tips as you will see on may wow sites.

// Item lookup
$item = $a->itemFetch(41922);
 
print_r($item);

The above will be a large multi level array with that item information.

Other stuff

There are other things you can use this library for such as Guild lookups and PVP team lookups.

Download the phpArmory.class.php and start building a web based wow app! Full documentation and support at http://phparmory.sourceforge.net/.

A survey by Accenture also showed that nearly 40 percent of those queried also planned to migrate critical operations to open source systems in the next 12 months.

About half the 300 organizations – in both the public and private sectors – already are using or have committed to using open source software and about a third are experimenting with OSS. Fully 88 percent of those that already are using OSS in their operations plan to increase their investment.

What may be the key finding in the survey, however, is the reasons behind the move toward open source: Quality.

Firms in the U.K. were more positive about the quality. When asked which aspects of OSS were very or quite important in their decision to go with the open source solutions, 86 percent of the UK organizations surveyed said open source provided better quality software than proprietary systems, and just 49 percent pointed to the lower total cost of ownership. In the U.S., those figures were 66 percent and 65 percent, respectively.

When it came to the disadvantages of open source, those in the U.S. were far more likely to cite the lack of “true standards” (42 percent) or “development control” (29 percent), while those in the U.K. were focused overwhelmingly on training and education in how to use open source (41 percent), though the standards also were an issue (29 percent). Interestingly, no one in the U.S. cited training and education as an issue.

But in the U.S., companies were far more likely to expect their investment to increase than in the U.K. — 82 percent versus 56 percent.

From Net Workworld

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

From the official Google blog.

I for one am a huge Google Wave fan and hate to see this go. Why Google? Why!?

namespace Foo;
class Bar {
    public function Bar() {
        // treated as constructor in PHP 5.3.0-5.3.2
        // treated as regular method in PHP 5.3.3
    }
}

Update from PHP.net

It’s quite simple to use, below is an example of how to use it.

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class A { 
     public $var; 
}
$a = new A;
$a->var = 5;
var_export($a);

The output from the above code would be…

A::__set_state(array(
   'var' => 5,
))

Note: var_export() does not handle circular references as it would be close to impossible to generate parsable PHP code for that. If you want to do something with the full representation of an array or object, use serialize().

The initial components being released through this project include the code that powers our Cloud Files (available today) and Cloud Servers (expected available late 2010). This project will also incorporate technology provided by other open-source projects. We expect to be joined by leaders in the technology industry and others to drive a deployable totally open cloud solution through this project.

Why is Rackspace doing this? Historically, most cloud offerings have been built on proprietary or closed platforms that create lock-in and make migration difficult. With OpenStack, any interested party – including our peers, Solution Partners and customers – will be able to collaborate with us to author, improve and expand OpenStack technologies.

Overview

• What the software does: The goal of OpenStack is to allow any organization to create and offer cloud computing capabilities using open source software running on standard hardware. OpenStack Compute is software for automatically creating and managing large groups of virtual private servers. OpenStack Storage is software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of commodity servers to store terabytes or even petabytes of data.
• Who it’s for: Institutions and service providers with physical hardware that they’d like to use for large-scale cloud deployments. (Additionally, companies who have specific requirements that prevent them from running in a public cloud.)

View it all at OpenStack…

How many times have we heard about security issues in PHP applications stemming from unescaped GET and POST parameters? Proper escaping of input is a perennial problem with web development in general.

On the database side, many worries over SQL injection have been squelched. The clever developers of PDO have constructed a library that analyzes data and escapes it appropriately. The problem of validating and sanitizing input is still a substantial issue on the front-end. Many PHP developers still spend time on development cycles building custom code to filter input or use a framework just for the validation helpers.

PHP (5.2 onward) has a built-in filtering system that makes the tasks of validating and sanitizing data easy. Rather than accessing the $_GET and $_POST superglobals directly, you can make use of PHP functions like filter_input() and filter_input_array().

$theGetVar = filter_input(INPUT_GET, ‘someGetVar’, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
// Same as doing the below and running it through a validator
$theGetVar = $_GET['someGetVar'];

Using post is also as easy, just change “INPUT_GET” to “INPUT_POST”

Are you sick of writing your own regex for validating an email address, url or even an IP?

// Email
$email = filter_input(INPUT_GET, ‘Email’, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);
 
// URL
$url = filter_input(INPUT_GET, ‘URL’, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL);
 
// IP
$ip = filter_input(INPUT_GET, ‘URL’, FILTER_VALIDATE_IP);

You can use multiple filters on one input:

$email = filter_input(INPUT_GET, ‘Email’, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL| FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);

Filters won’t solve every security-related problem, but it’s a great step in the right direction when it comes to writing safe code. Below are the php.net docs:

• Data Filtering
• filter_input

Prior to Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2, organizations with advanced HPC needs have been required to fund expensive, in-house compute clusters by purchasing dedicated, purpose-built hardware. As a result, the demand for high-performance cluster computing often exceeds the capacity of many organizations, and many projects are cut altogether or wait in long queues to access shared resources. With Cluster Compute Instances, businesses and researchers now have access to the high-performance computing capabilities they need with pay-as-you-go pricing, the ability to scale on-demand, and no upfront investments.

Cluster Compute Instances provide similar functionality to other Amazon EC2 instances but have been specifically engineered to provide high-performance compute and network capability. Cluster Compute Instances provide more CPU than any other Amazon EC2 instance. Customers can also group Cluster Compute Instances into clusters allowing applications to get the low-latency network performance required for tightly coupled, node-to-node communication (typical of many HPC applications). Cluster Compute Instances also provide significantly increased network throughput making them well suited for customer applications that need to perform network-intensive operations. Depending on usage patterns, applications can see up to 10 times the network throughput of the largest current Amazon EC2 instance types.

Learn more about the new Cluster Compute instances for Amazon EC2 at aws.amazon.com/ec2