Phly, boy, phly
the weblog and site of Matthew Weier O'Phinney

I ran into an issue recently with Dojo's ContentPanes. I was using them with a TabContainer, and had made them closable; however, user actions might re-open tabs that pull from the same source. This led to conflicts with dijit IDs that I had to resolve.

Most Dijits have a destroyRecursive() method which should, theoretically, destroy any dijits contained within them. However, for many Dijits, this functionality simply does not work due to how they are implemented; many do not actually have any knowledge of the dijits beneath them.

ContentPanes fall into this latter category. fortunately, it's relatively easy to accomplish, due to Dojo's heavily object oriented nature.

I've been doing a fair bit of programming in Dojo lately, and have on occasion run into either inconsistent interfaces, or interfaces that simply fail to load in Internet Explorer. Several people have pointed out to me some optimizations to make, but, being a lazy programmer, I often forget to do so.

Fortunately, there's a tool for lazy developers like myself: JSLint. Linters are commonly used in static development languages so that developers can verify that their programs are syntactically correct prior to compilation; they basically ensure that you're not accidentally attempting to compile something that will never compile in the first place. Many dynamic languages also have them; I've had a key bound in vim to run the current file through PHP's linter for many years now. JSLint provides linting capabilities for JavaScript, as well as some code analysis to point you towards some best practices -- mainly geared for cross-browser compatability.

That time of year again -- wrap-up time. Each year, it seems like it's the busiest ever, and I often wonder if it will ever slow down. As usual, I'm restricting myself to primarily professional activities out of respect for the privacy of my family.

The short, executive summary:

• One trip to Israel
• One trip to The Netherlands
• One trip to California's Bay Area
• One trip to Atlanta, GA
• Three minor releases of Zend Framework
• Seven webinars, six for zend.com and one for Adobe
• Three conferences attended as a speaker, including:
  • One six-hour workshop
  • One three-hour tutorial (as a co-presenter)
  • Four regular sessions
  • Two panel sessions (one scheduled, one for an uncon)
  • Two uncon sessions (one as a co-presenter)
  • One foul-mouthed Pecha Kucha talk
• Ten Burlington, VT PHP User's Group meetings attended; I spoke at many
• One Bug Hunt week organized
• Two books reviewed as a technical editor
• Six articles for DevZone
• 50 blog entries (including this one)

Read on for the gruesome, month-by-month breakdown.

I've been playing a lot with Dojo lately, and have been very impressed by its elegant publish-subscribe system. Basically, any object can publish an event, and any other object can subscribe to it. This creates an incredibly flexible notification architecture that's completely opt-in.

The system has elements of Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP), as well as the Observer pattern. Its power, however, is in the fact that an individual object does not need to implement any specific interface in order to act as either a Subject or an Observer; the system is globally available.

Being a developer who recognizes good ideas when he sees them, of course I decided to port the idea to PHP. You can see the results on github.

I've fielded several questions about setting up an autocompleter with Zend Framework and Dojo, and decided it was time to create a HOWTO on the subject, particularly as there are some nuances you need to pay attention to.

Just about every day, I have an idea for a blog post, and most days, by the end of the day, I just don't have the time or energy to actually write anything up. The inner writer in me screams, "no excuses!" while the aging adult in me whispers, "time for bed, dear."

So, to keep my hand in the game, here are a few things running through my head, or that I'm working on, or that I'll be doing soon.

I've been getting a lot of interest in my Pastebin demo app -- partly by those wanting to play with Dojo+ZF, partly by those just interested in the application.

I'm constantly trying to improve the application. I've done one webinar and one UnCon session showcasing it, and will be presenting it at Dojo Develper Day in Boston this Monday as well as at php|works later this fall, and want to keep the materials up-to-date and freely available. To this end, I've created a Github repository so you can track the latest developments, as well as pull custom tarballs:

• Pastebin on Github

All patches and feedback are welcome!

I'm a bit late on my ZendCon'08 wrapup; the conference left me both exhausted and with a backlog of email and work that has consumed me since it ended. However, this, too, is good, as it has given me time to reflect... and to finally get my slides up on SlideShare.

ZendCon was alternately exhausting, rewarding, educational, fruitful, infurating, and ultimately wonderful. I've been to every single ZendCon so far -- I started at Zend a scant month before the inaugural event -- and have spoken at each. My first time speaking was a fluke; David Sklar had just started at Ning and had to back out of his "Configuring PHP" tutorial session. Mike Naberezny and I were drafted to take it over, and we had N+1 attendees, where N was the number of speakers. Since that inauspicious beginning, I've gradually taken on more sessions and stuck around to participate in the conference more. I can honestly say that this was the biggest, busiest, and most community focussed ZendCon I can remember.

I have a number of updates and followups, and decided to post them in a single entry.

First off, you may now view my Dojo Webinar online (requires login and registration at zend.com). Attendance was phenomenal, and I've had some really good feedback. If you want to see it live, I'm giving the talk (with revisions!) at the ZendCon UnConference, at Dojo Developer Day Boston later this month, and at php|works in November. I hope to be able to show new functionality at each presentation.

Second, I've completed what I'm calling version 1.0.0 of the pastebin application I demo'd in the webinar. The PHP code is fully unit tested (though I haven't yet delved into using DOH! to test the JS), and incorporates a number of best practices and tips that Pete Higgins from Dojo was kind enough to provide to me. When using a custom build (and I provide a profile for building one), it simply flies.

• Download the pastebin application

The pastebin application showcases a number of features besides Dojo: Zend_Test_PHPUnit was used to test the application, and Zend_Wildfire's FireBug logger and DB profiler are used to provide profiling and debug information.

Finally, ZendCon is next week! I'll be around, but already have a packed schedule (1 tutorial, 2 regular sessions, an UnCon session, a meet-the-developers session... and that's just what I know about!). I look forward to meeting ZF users and developers, though, so feel free to grab me and introduce yourself.

During my Dojo and ZF webinar on Wednesday, Pete Higgins of Dojo fame noted that I could do something different and better on one of my slides.

This particular item had to do with how I was consuming custom Dojo build layers within my code. I contacted him afterwards to find out what he suggested, and did a little playing of my own, and discovered some more Dojo and javascript beauty in the process.