PHP CSV Utilities v0.3 Released!
I have been trying to wrap up version 0.3 of my CSV library for over two years now. I had actually intended for this release to be fully documented, but rather than forestall the release further by adding documentation, I decided to just wrap up the features I wanted in this version and just release it. The next version will hopefully have full documentation. For now, I will give you a quick and dirty rundown of the library right here in this blog post.
What's up, Matthew?
Hey dude, I tried to send you an e-mail, but the address you gave me doesn’t work. I tried about 50 combinations of switching letters around and stuff but no go. If you read this, e-mail me by going to my contact form. Send you your number… I wanna get a drink some time.
qCal v0.0.3 will have to be delayed until next week
Because of my exceedingly busy schedule this past week, I have had to postpone this week’s release until next Thursday. I apologize for the delay, but it is necessary. To release v0.0.3 now would be a waste of time. There just isn’t enough new (completed) features and documentation to be worth it.
You can expect qCal v0.0.3 on Thursday, February 4th. You can expect mostly just bug fixes and documentation in this release. v0.0.4 will most likely contain a rudimentary implementation of the new qCal_DateTime_Recur family of classes, which will allow a user to define a date/time recurrence rule such as “The third Sunday in January, February, and March on every other year for five years” or “The 5th of the month, every other month, until 2012”.
Zend Certified Engineer
So, after being talked into getting PHP-certified by a colleague (and being given a free test voucher), I decided to schedule a test and give it a whirl. I went down to Sacramento this afternoon and took the test. I had always assumed that, although I consider myself a very capable programmer, I wouldn’t do very well on a test because I don’t usually memorize things I can look up on php.net. Well, that assumption was incorrect. The test was a breeze. If you have been programming in PHP (for real clients) for any decent length of time, I can almost guarantee you know enough to pass the exam. The questions, for the most part, did not consist of questions that you could only answer by being the PHP manual. The vast majority of them were geared towards a general understanding of the language and I think the exam designers did a pretty good job of putting together the exam.
The only real negative thing I have to say about it is that it had a typo that could have easily caused somebody to miss one of the answers. The question was something along the lines of:
What would you use to determine the coordinates of a mouse-click when using the input type=“image” element as a submit button with a name of “myImage”?
- A: $_IMAGE['myImage’]['x’] and $_IMAGE['myImage’]['y’]
- B: $_POST['myImage’]['x’] and $_POST['myImage’]['x’]
- C: $_POST['myImage.x’] and $_POST['myImage.y’]
- D: $_POST['myImage_x’] and $_POST['myImage_y’]
As you can see, “B” appears to be the MOST correct answer, but it has “x” twice, rather than “x” and “y”. This was actually on the test. It wasn’t the only typo either. It was just the only one that could have caused somebody to miss an answer.
Update! – A friend of mine pointed out (in the comments below) that “D” was actually the correct answer. I was completely unaware that was how it worked. Every time I’ve seen the “x” and “y” has been with a GET form and I’d always see something along the lines of x=23&y=32 in the URL, so I assumed it was similar with POST. I was wrong. So I guess I really don’t have much negative to say about the exam.
All in all, it was a very easy, very positive experience. I’m not sure yet about how effective it will be during a job search, but I guess I’ll know soon enough. If you’d like a more in-depth critique of the exam, I find that although this one is from way back in ’04 and refers to the PHP4 exam, it applies just as easily to the exam I took.
qCal v0.0.2 Released
qCal version 0.0.2 has been released. There is now a significantly larger amount of documentation (although not as much as I’d have liked) included in this release. There was not a whole lot of new features in this release because I spent most of my time writing documentation. The following changes were made in this release:
- Integrated qCal_DateTime sub-components into the library.
- Removed old qCal_Date component (replaced by qCal_DateTime, qCal_DateV2, which has been renamed qCal_Date, and qCal_Time)
- Added documentation for the library at http://qcal.lukevisinoni.com/.
- Added auto-loader file
- Added changelog.
- Added README and VERSION files.
You can download the new version here: http://code.google.com/p/qcal/downloads/list