I just found out a very strange PHP feature by browsing the PHP-GTK2 API with the Reflection classes : spaces can be used in some alien places, like variable names.

But the doc says you can't !

Well, try this in PHP 5.2.5, for instance:

With OSInet having a large part of its business with suppliers and customers within the EU at large, I often find myself having to check the validity of the VAT information for third parties, and the EU VIES database comes in handy.

However, although I had been discussing remote access using XML-RPC or SOAP as early at 2004 with the database administrators, the UI had remained web 1.0-only until quite recently (apparently march 2007), when an AXIS SOAP service went online, just as I had suggested three years ago. So I figured I really couldn't let the occasion pass, and did a PHP-GTK client to VIES, which happens to be my first production SOAP application in PHP-GTK, previous ones having always been done in Pascal using Delphi or Kylix.

Let's see how this can be done...

I had been in need of a class to read config data into both the PHP-GTK OSInet back-office front end, and the back-office client UI for the Drupal 5.x offload module, and hesitated between various solutions, ranging from roll-our-own to the various frameworks out there and the existing PEAR packages.

Since Zend Framework appears to be well on its way to becoming a standard for professional PHP developers, I figured I'd give it a spin :

A discussion these days on the PHP-GTK general mailing list revolved around the issue of feeding a large amount of rows to the model bound to a GtkTreeView.

The PHP-GTK community site has been running on Drupal 5 betas since its creation one month ago, and I thought it really needed a live chart of statistics to match its glorious Garland dress, and GD would allow it. But how does one go about creating charts within Drupal ?

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A few days ago, I was glad to learn that this blog had been included in the Planet PHP blogroll. And today, when checking the news, what did I see ?

The problem: while coding PHP-GTK apps, the most elementary debugging method is to use echo or print statements. These are fine and dandy for english or usonian coders, but may be a problem for coders elsewhere around the globe, since PHP scripts are typically stored under UTF-8 encoding to limit i18n headaches, while the console in which their output will be displayed is normally configured to some regional encoding, like IBM850 in Windows/XP French.

So we need a workaround...

The new Drupal-based community site for PHP-GTK is up at http://www.php-gtk.eu.

Drupal features

Technically, this is pretty much a plain Drupal 5.0 Beta 1 Beta 2 RC1 RC2 site, using the new Garland theme without custom changes besides a much needed fix, and a site-specific module for things like useful referer counting and the PHP-GTK dev geolocation service.

Zend Studio is a convenient environment to code in PHP, even though it is not currently possible to use it for integrated debugging of PHP-GTK code: its php completion and file management, and phpdoc integration make it very useful for the PHP-GTK environment too. However some settings are necessary to ease its use, due to the specific extensions typically used by PHP-GTK programs: phpw files for applications, and glade / gladep for Glade files storing UIs.

The function of the GtkCTree, GtkCList and other associated components has been overhauled in GTK2, meaning PHP-GTK now has a very thoughtfully detailed mechanism for building trees and lists, more or less following an MVC model. The attached diagram shows the relations between the set of classes involved in laying out a tree or list using GtkTreeView.