Chronicling the PHP Journey

The inception, rise and continual progress of PHP have constituted a phenomenal journey. It has seen its share of falls, obstacles and has still risen over all that as a preferred web application development technology for companies providing offshore software outsourcing. The demand to hire dedicated PHP developers is on the rise with each passing day as is the need for a capable PHP development company to conceive and deploy stable and robust applications. Here, we try to chronicle this very journey into eras; as a primer for newbies, or for nostalgia’s sake for the ardent PHP supporter.

• The OOP and Design Pattern Era
On 29th June, 2003, PHP 5.0.0 was launched followed by the GA release on 13th July, 2004. This release saw the adoption of best practices for elements like objects, inheritance, and encapsulation that were an integral part of the object-oriented architecture of PHP. Design patterns were also used.

• The Security Awareness Era
During this phase many eminent personalities published papers and books on the security issues in PHP and how it affected development of web applications. There was a strong push to focus on this aspect and towards finding a resolution. The Suhosin extension was released that is a part of the Hardened-PHP project.

• The Rise of the Frameworks Era
The wider application of OOPs-based coding and adoption of design patterns led to the increasing use of MVC (Model View Controller) architectures. This gave rise to frameworks like CakePHP, CodeIgniter and Symfony that today are a favorite across developer communities.

• The Era of Standardization
The rise of a variety of frameworks also meant countless pieces of reusable code all following, sometimes the same or different patterns. Community standards like PSR-0, PSR-1, and PSR-2 were launched. Code started to be divided into components that were reusable across frameworks due to the PHP base. The GitHub repositories are a prime example of this.

• The Testing Era
This is the current era where the developer community has matured and started to adopt intelligent standardized techniques in favor of bad coding practices like use of XSS, CSRF, and SQL injection. Code is being rigorously tested to weed out bugs and anomalies, and the test themselves are being automated.

We are a PHP development company specializing in offshore software outsourcing services. We firmly believe that as PHP community we are growing and moving in the right direction. Our pool of PHP Zend developers and programmers from other frameworks are primed to enter the new era of the PHP lifecycle. You can hire dedicated PHP developers from us who can leverage the advantages of PHP in a cost-effective manner for building your web application.

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Zend on Cloud Nine – PHP Tools for Mobile & Cloud

The legend that PHP is turning out to be is indisputable. For an offshore development company, PHP proves to be the ultimate code base for rapid application development and deployment. Adopted into many frameworks, PHP has wormed its way into a variety of web applications. With the current trend of everything going mobile and content available on cloud services, it is about time that PHP graduated to this platform too. Zend Studio 10, based on the Zend framework of PHP has added new tools that facilitate mobile app development with a convenient drag-and-drop environment.

The Zend Studio 10 integrates PhoneGap mobile development capabilities in addition to JQuery, creating an amazing drag-n-drop environment for rapid mobile application development. For a PHP development company, PhoneGap is a blessing as it allows UI prototyping for RIM BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and iOS mobile operating systems. It helps create convenient back-ends that range from enterprise applications to social media.

Another PHP Zend development tool is the Zend Server Gateway. It is an API for cloud services based on the REST (Representational State Transfer) architecture. This API helps integrate these cloud services into the drag-n-drop environment of Zend Studio 10 allowing easy authentication and validation. The Zend server upgrade ensures that application deployment to the cloud is automated and improved dashboards are available for in-detail monitoring of application performance across multiple cloud instances of the app. Integrated into this upgrade are compliance and auditing features that allow RCA (Root Cause Analysis) without touching the live code. Zend has also partnered with Red Hat to introduce the PHP engine for the OpenShift platform-as-a-service offering. Other prominent cloud moves by Zend include phpcloud.com, a developer space based on the Zend Server and Zend Application Fabric that is total cloud-based version of the Zend Server.

This is a major fillip to PHP Zend development and as a PHP application development company, we are keenly following all the developments in this arena. We have been developing cutting-edge PHP-based web applications for years and have a host of satisfied clientele who can vouch for our expertise. Our team of talented programmers makes an excellent bet if you are looking to hire PHP mySQL developers. We are offshore software development company committed to realizing your dream web application in the most cost-effective manner and within deadlines.

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The Deadly Duo – PHP & JAVA using the PHP/Java Bridge

The era of open source technologies has been characterised by the unprecedented and almost exponential rise of the technology called PHP. It has spawned multiple open source frameworks that form the basis of some of the most powerful software web applications available today. On the other end of the spectrum you have Java, the old warhorse that just refuses to give up. When providing PHP development services, and designing and developing an app, what happens when you combine these two dependable and powerful technologies? Your app will definitely inherit the advantages of PHP and Java. But, how do you accomplish this? Here’s how.

When PHP 4 came out, it featured support for adding an extension that would enable the use of Java. But, as the technology evolved there was a need for change. In PHP 5 and PHP 6, you need to install and configure the PHP/Java Bridge. Only then, can you use Java classes within a PHP script. Let’s first define what a PHP/Java Bridge is. It is a version of a streaming, XML-based network protocol that connects a native script engine, such as PHP or Python to a Java VM. Installation and configuration of the PHP/Java Bridge requires hands-on Java SE and PHP5 core knowledge. You can easily download the bridge as a zip file from the project’s page. The installation is Java platform dependent. 

For J2SE,

• Get a J2SE 1.6 or higher version installed
• Get PHP 5.1.4 or higher installed
• Locate and extract the php-java-bridge_5.2.2_j2ee.zip file to a folder
• Access this folder directory via the command prompt and type: …>java –classpathJavaBridge.warTestInstallation
• In the bridge folder you downloaded, locate the ext folder containing 4 .jar files
• Copy the JavaBridge.jar and php-script.jar files to the J2SE/Java SE ext directory

For J2EE,

• Put the JavaBridge.war archive in the auto-deploy folder of your J2EE server
• Change the name of the archive to the name you desire to christen your app with
• Wait while the auto-deploy process creates a directory associated with this archive
• Now, test the new app using this URL: http://localhost:8080/appName
• Alter parameters if the J2EE server is running on a different host or is listening on a different port

The bridge comes with a collection of PHP classes that facilitate the addition of Java code into PHP scripts. Some of them are:

• java – access java type with the given name
• java_autoload – loads a set of Java libraries in the PHP script in use right now
• java_cast – converts a Java object into a PHP value
• java_is_null – checks for a null value
• java_session – returns a session handle
• java_values – evaluates the object and retrieves its content

For these functions to work, your app must contain the related PHP classes, the main among which is the Java.inc class. We are an offshore software development company and have implemented this technique for developing web apps using PHP and Java. We offer PHP development services including PHP MySQL development to clients across the globe. You can hire php mysql developer from our talented pool of developers who have honed their skills in PHP and Java development technologies. Get in touch with us for the best and the most cost-effective PHP development solutions.

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