Facebook Connect Library for CodeIgniter
Just a brief follow-up to the post series I did a while back on Implementing Facebook Connect with CI. Today, Elliot Haughin continued his tradition of releasing helpful CI libraries and published a new library for implementing Facebook Connect using CodeIgniter. Haven’t had a chance to review it personally yet but I would imagine it’s just the thing to make implementing Facebook Connect on your CI site easier. Check it out!
How-to Ensure a Secure Connection Using PHP
Image via Wikipedia When submitting sensitive information over the web it’s important to ensure that the requested page is being accessed via an HTTPS encrypted connection. I’ve come across some forms that don’t check whether a secure connection has been made or not. In other words, you can delete the S from HTTP and instead of redirecting the user back to the HTTPS connection the form is just displayed unsecured. This is a BIG NO NO… as a programmer you cannot rely on the visitor, or even other developers who would be linking to the form, to request a form securely. In this post I will review how you can ensure that your users are accessing certain pages using a secure connection.
I’m a Zend Certified Engineer (ZCE)
Last week I mentioned that I was going in for my Zend PHP 5 Certification exam on Friday. The test has come and gone and I’m happy to say I passed. To be honest, the test was a little more difficult than I thought it would be and I was a bit nervous at the end. But I passed and I can cross that off my list of goals for 2009 . If you are considering getting certified I would deffinitly recommend it. I can’t speak on the impact it will have on your ability to get a job or anything like that, but I can tell you that it’s a nice accomplishment just for yourself. If there was one thing I learned while studying for the test it’s how much I didn’t know about PHP. 5 years of programming still left some large gaps in my knowledge which this process has helped me realize and reduce. If your not certified give it a shot, you’ve got nothing to loose.
Zend PHP Certification: Necessary or Not?
Image via Wikipedia I have to start this post out with a quick apology for the lack of recent posts. There is a lot going on right now: working on ScoutPath (which launches in June), putting out fires in BadgeTracker and working full time at my day job. All of this leaves little time for blogging (or anything else for that matter). Another thing I’m working on is getting my Zend PHP 5 certification and that brings me to this post. A couple of years ago when Zend first announced the certification I was determined to get certified but just haven’t put my mind to it until recently. However, after studying for the last couple of weeks and taking the practice tests I am left wondering what this certification proves and whether it’s truly worth it.
Implementing Facebook Connect (Part 3) – Accessing Data from Facebook
About a month ago I posted a continuation of my Implementing Facebook Connect series on how to establish a connection to Facebook. In this post I am going to look at using that connection we established to access user data and render it on a page.
Implementing Facebook Connect (Part 2) – Establishing a Connection
Two weeks ago I took a look at Facebook Connect (FC) summarizing what it is and why developers would want to integrate it with their own applications in part 1 of this series. Originally I had thought this would be a two post topic but as I have learned more about FC I think it’s going to take a few posts to get up and running successfully. So, in this post we’re going to get all the pre-requisites out of the way and establish a connection with Facebook from our own application. We will then look at how we can do things with that connection in subsequent posts. Ready or not… let’s get started!
Implementing Facebook Connect (Part 1) – What is Facebook Connect?
Image via CrunchBase I have been spending some time recently developing an online community which will hopefully be launched next quarter. One of the things I wanted to integrate is OpenID to try and lessen the burden of signing-up and logging-in. However, after doing some research I’m thinking that Facebook Connect might be the better way to go. This is the first of at least 2 posts about implementing Facebook Connect with your own PHP application. To begin we will first look at what Facebook Connect is and does and the next post will get technical and look at how to integrate it with your next CodeIgniter or PHP application.
Is web development boring?
I read an article a month or two ago in php|architect magazine that got me thinking. The article is entitled Slot Machines and it’s an editorial by Steph Fox. In the article, Steph talks about electrical engineering before the age of the microchip and how it was an exciting and creative career path. However, after the microchip hit the market it became a “…boring: slot this here, slot that there” profession. Basically the creativity had been replaced with interchangable parts. The article draws the similarity between electrical engineering after the advent of the microchip and web development. It argues that there is little ‘real’ development that needs to be done anymore with all the COTS applications and programming frameworks on the market and it begged the question: is web development boring?
Great Advice
I was wandering through my RSS feeds this morning and came across a mention of a post written by Aaron Swartz entitled How To Launch Software. In it he talks about the benefits of launching software slowly and carefully vs. quickly and flashy. I totally agree with him and think you should check out his post for yourself.
Dissecting Sign-Up Forms
The folks over at Smashing Magazine have put together a very detailed article that looks at popular design patterns when it comes to sign-up forms. Check it out when you have some time.
Who is Chris Monnat?
Chris Monnat (aka mrtopher) is a web application developer and entrepreneur located in Alexandria, VA. This site is his island of information where he blogs about CodeIgniter, PHP programming, business topics, the Internet as a whole and other miscellaneous bits and bytes.
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