Lonely Lion

Just when I thought I was done with PHP, they start to pull me back in. PHP 5 looks nice, I like the improved OO support. The real kicker though, are the following two links:

http://propel.phpdb.org/wiki/
http://www.onlamp.com/lpt/a/4990

The first is for a PHP5 Object – Relational mapper, the second is for a PEAR library that builds forms dynamically. Form building / validation and SQL are typically the two hurdles I like least in web app building. Webware / Python has SQLObject and a few Form kits that make these two areas a breeze.

Lots of stuff to think about.

In addition, I spoke at length with a friend of mine yesterday afternoon about the Java equivilants of the Webware – SQLObject model that I’m really excited about. He pointed me to Hibernate and Spring, both of which have been pretty well written up on http://www.onjava.com.

PHP is easy, but I always feel limited by it not being very OO. Python is great, but now that PHP5 is out, web apps may be easier to build in straight PHP than Python.

So, in short, I’m going to try out some of this new PHP 5 stuff, and see how it goes. I’m actually pretty amazed at the new PHP 5, they may have managed to bring me back into the fold.

I caved and bought an iPod today. Next step (not really):

http://www.ben-johnson.org/blog/index.php?p=37&more=1#more37

I recently ran into a problem with how Fedora compiled suexec in their httpd package. I had to learn how to rebuild Apache from the SRPM, it was a pretty interesting process. I’m not sure if it saves a whole lot of time over compiling from source, but it keeps better in line with the rpm philosophy.

First, I downloaded the source rpm:

1. apt-get source httpd

This installed the source package in /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES. I uncompressed the source, and edited the httpd.spec file in the httpd source directory as follows:

—with-suexec-docroot=/home \

The intent is to change the root filesystem that suexec expects, so that I can turn on suexec for any of the web directories under /home.

I also had to change line 20, to change the prereq from db3-devel to db4-devel. I’m not sure if that’s a bug in the spec.

Then I ran # rpmbuild -bb httpd.spec which should have created the rpm, but ended up throwing the following error:

Checking for unpackaged file(s): /usr/lib/rpm/check-files /var/tmp/httpd-root
error: Installed (but unpackaged) file(s) found:
/usr/lib/httpd/build/config.nice
/usr/lib/libapr-0.a
/usr/lib/libapr-0.la
/usr/lib/libaprutil-0.a
/usr/lib/libaprutil-0.la
/usr/share/man/man8/apachectl.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/httpd.8.gz
/var/www/error/README

RPM build errors:
File listed twice: /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.conf
Installed (but unpackaged) file(s) found:
/usr/lib/httpd/build/config.nice
/usr/lib/libapr-0.a
/usr/lib/libapr-0.la
/usr/lib/libaprutil-0.a
/usr/lib/libaprutil-0.la
/usr/share/man/man8/apachectl.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/httpd.8.gz
/var/www/error/README

I’m not sure where to go from here, so I’m posting a message to LUNI (Linux Users of Northern Illinois) looking for help. We’ll see. If anyone (actually reads this weblog) knows what’s up, drop me an email at chris at wirelion dot com. I’d really appreciate any help.

chromatic on work

Good stuff.

On Sunday, I spent most of the day working with Webware. I needed to create an automatic billing system for wirelion.com. For a while now, I’ve been trying to figure out what “direction” I’d like to head in, in regards to web frameworks. After Sunday, I’m convinced Webware is a good way to go. I’d like to play around with Twisted and nevow at some point, just for fun, but I’d prefer to commit to Webware for at least the next couple of months. I’m getting backlogged on promises of specific web apps, and think I’d benefit from limiting my tangents.

So, going forward, I’m going to significantly rock Python, Webware, SQLObject, and Cheetah. I’m also going to play around with Ian Bicking’s FunFormKit, to just see how it goes. HTML forms rank pretty high on my list of things that temper my enthusiasm for building web apps. Tailing behind writing SQL statements. SQLObject lets me work in a purely OO manner, ignoring a lot of the SQL drudgery, hopefully FunFormKit will do the same for Forms. Both modules are by Ian. Good work Ian.

For about two hours tonight, I had migrated off of Movable Type, and on to NewsBruiser. As easy as NewsBruiser was to install, I think I’m staying with MT for now. I like mixing things up from time to time, but I’m just too used to MT at this point to warrant a change.

Ho hum, boring Chris