Yahoo Developer Network is now making life very easy for PHP programmers by providing an option for REST calls to return serialized PHP, instead of XML. Not that XML is difficult to deal with, particularly with PHP 5, but now all you have to do is call unserialize() to get everything into a convenient PHP array. This and more at the new PHP Developer Center.
February 2006 Archives
Canon announced the EOS 30D yesterday, prior to the PMA show in Orlando. This is the successor to the popular 20D. Nice large LCD display on the back. Still 8 megapixels, which is plenty. I want one! (Well, I really want the 5D, but that's a little pricier...)
Great little summary of the old SOAP vs. REST question, from Don Box. Decide which to support based on your target audience. When I develop in PHP, I prefer REST, but when I'm in Microsoft's Visual C# environment, SOAP is easier. Or if you can, do what Amazon does, and support both!
Tim Bray's got an interesting discussion regarding use of PHP for building websites. PHP is easy to learn, and one can throw together PHP code to dynamically generate a web page pretty quickly. But that's also the problem -- there's lots of bad, thrown-together PHP code out there. How much of it is due to the language vs. those using it? Personally, I love using PHP, and agree with the others who say it's up to the programmer to write good code or bad. It takes a lot of discipline to write maintainable, production-quality PHP. Kind of like the old days of BASIC.
Many folks have had a love/hate relationship with Microsoft FrontPage. I was certainly never happy with the HTML it produced. Looks like with the release of Office 2007, FrontPage will be no more. Microsoft acquired FrontPage as a result of their purchase of Vermeer in 1996.
Some useful thoughts on web data vs. web page design and web APIs from Jeremy Zawodny, following up on a presentation from Tom Coates.
I like the idea that as part of your design you should think about how the URLs should look -- they should be easily read and constructed. The associated web services API should parallel this.
Welcome to jkeyes.com -- my name is John Keyes. I use this blog to occasionally talk about a few different things that interest me, namely: web services, mobile platforms, iPhone software development, and photography. It's often hard to find time to post here, so sometimes posting is a bit sporadic. I also maintain a photoblog at johnkeyes.com -- please drop by and have a look.
To reach me via email: johnk at johnkeyes dot com.
