Author Archives: Marko

LAMP development in your home directory with suPHP module

4 Replies

suPHP Logo In one of my earlier articles I've described how to easily manage LAMP name based virtual hosts using bash script that simplifies virtual hosts management on a Debian based Linux operating systems. While I was coding the script in question, I have assumed that most people develop from default document root /var/www and using Apache's mod_php5. In this article I'll show you how to setup your LAMP environment to develop in your home directory using another Apache module suPHP.

Continue reading →

PHP random sentence spinning function

Leave a reply

recycle_phpIn this article I'm presenting my solution for a very common PHP developer job interview task where it is required to create a random sentence spinning function. Input of this function is a PHP string that employs syntax telling our code where's the randomness and what are the possible substrings for each section of randomness. Basically it is required to create PHP code that's able to process strings like the following:

<?php
$string = '{Please|Just} make this {cool|awesome|random} test sentence {rotate {quickly|fast} and random|spin and be random}';
?>

As you can probably guess the input sentence uses braces to declare sections of randomness and the pipe character to delimit substrings that should be used randomly inside their sections. Code also must be able to process nested sections of randomness.

Continue reading →

Install Magento on Ubuntu and fix PHP Extensions "0" must be loaded error with PHP 5.4

6 Replies

Magento LogoEvent though I follow MVC pattern in many of my web related projects, like every PHP web developer I came to the point when I have to dive into some well established MVC PHP framework. This is something backend developer must do if he wants to stop being a lone wolf and start working inside a team of developers. Web frameworks of my choice are fast Codeigniter and powerful Zend Framework. Getting to know about Codeigniter wasn't hard, but mastering Zend is still work in progress especially since Zend Framework 2 has been recently released. Talking about Zend, recently I got interested in getting to know about open source eCommerce solutions and I choose to get acquainted with Zend based Magento. In this article I'll show you how to install Magento on a Debian based distributions like Ubuntu and provide workaround for the PHP Extensions "0" must be loaded error thrown by Magento installer running on PHP 5.4.

Continue reading →

Udev rule to run a script after plugging in USB device on Ubuntu Linux operating system

3 Replies

Logitech QuickCam E3500 Web CamFor my video chat sessions I use my Logitech E3500 USB web cam. On my Linux box this hardware device sort of works fine, but it does have it's own set of quirks I've developed workarounds for over the years. One of the things that bug me is that even though you can change it's configuration options trough GUI or CLI, this hardware device has it's defaults, and these defaults are back every time you plug it in. In this article I'll show you how to create script that changes web cam settings using CLI tools I've explained in one of my earlier articles, and how to make this script being executed every time web cam is plugged in.

Continue reading →