html2pdf alternatives

I'm offen asked about libraries that do what html2pdf (the one on http://html2fpdf.sourceforge.net/), but without the bugs.

We have found 3 others that you might want to try:

• DomPDF: http://www.digitaljunkies.ca/dompdf/ (not much maintained, but works much beter than the original html2pdf)
  
  
• html2pdf (uses ghostscript, not fPDF): http://code.google.com/p/html2pdf/ or http://www.tufat.com/s_html2ps_html2pdf.htm

Everything is under control

To follow up on my last post, we've made the jump from Phing to CruiseControl and phpUnderControl. The reasons behind the change are :

• Phing didn't work well
• phpUnderControl works well !

To be constructive, I find Phing to be a nice piece of software, but the fact it's written in PHP, and that in a few places it has to includes stuff from our application defies a little the black-box testing concept - in particular, it broke the code coverage analysis, and all in all was a pain to set up.

On the contrary, CruiseControl and its patch phpUnderControl did roll quite nicely. I had to dig a little to make it work, tune the xml files here and there, but very quickly we ended up with a running setup.

I found that the documentation is not as good as Phing, but now, these tools are for grown men, we're suppose to find our way in it...!

Now I'm twicking phpCodeSniffer, and find myself having quite a lot of fun picking the rules to match our style. Next step: hook it up to SVN (will my developpers like that ?)...

Testing a web application

We've set up a built server, with PHPUnit, Selenium RC, Phing and Xinc. These tools are absolutely mind blowing !

I'm still in awe in front of the level of integration between PHPUnit and Selenium, being able to control Internet Explorer on a distant machine using PHP, that's just excellent...

We're still at the beginning of our learning curve, in particular I'm still undecided between keeping Phing and Xinc or moving to Ant, CruiseControl and phpUnderControl.

Now we're reaching a perfect setup, with, for each feature, a (Scrum) Definition of Done that includes a Selenium or PHPUnit scenario and a documentation page on MediaWiki. It's alreadybeen  proven usefull !

When to use Get or Post

Every time I get someone interviewed for a position here, I ask the the same question: what's the difference between Get and Post in an HTML form, and when to use one or the other. At last, here is the answer - just RTFM!

http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/whenToUseGet.html

Two very interesting reads

Two powerpoints from Jay Pipes - worth a read: http://jpipes.com/index.php?/archives/239-Slides-for-Join-Fu-The-Art-of-SQL-I-and-II.html

I agree with most of it !

In reaction to "Where did all the PHP programmers go?"

Leonid Mamchenkov is ranting about the difficulties of hiring a good PHP dev. I find the question quite valid...

http://mamchenkov.net/wordpress/2008/06/04/where-did-all-the-php-programmers-go/

I've been hiring PHP devs for the last few years, and I too have a test that I find desesperatly easy, and that too many (even senior) applicant fail miserably... It's based on http://www.techinterviews.com/, with questions going from sorting an array (I only ask the applicant what he should use) to the differences between GET and POST (very highlighting question).

I've even been challenged by my collegues, who thought the test was too hard, so I just ran it over a few people I would hire if they'd been available, and of course, they found the test to be just fine...

I still believe PHP is a great language, and we produce software that is really cool with it, with low effort. It is a pleasure to write code in PHP, and the low training curve is a good thing.
Now I've decided I'd rather hire a good professional and train him (as long as he's aware of the particularities of web applications - jumping from java to php is easier than from C++ to PHP - the syntax is one thing, the understanding of stateless software is another). All in all I agree it's very hard to find a good php developper, and I believe they all go to .Net, which I hope they like....

PDFtk

Found PDFtk - one of these tools that save you time, exceptionnal features, free, works on windows and linux. Need no more ! (if you need to merge, split, modify PDF files)