Manuel Pichler

Now that the founding of the Qafoo - Passion for software quality company is announced, it is time to present the consulting services which we will provide around the quality lifecycle of PHP applications.

The first series of services that we will provide is all around the high quality component library Zeta Components, formally known as eZ Components. The Zeta Components provide a loosely coupled set of unique and well thought out features, like the WebDAV server implementation, the Graph component which makes the generation of appealing charts very easy, or the widely used Mail component. Other aspects of the Zeta Components, which highlight our quality claim for the Qafoo GmbH, are the excessive documentation and the very high test coverage, which guarantees a consistently good product quality. Another key benefit of the Zeta Components are their loosely coupled structure, so that you can cherry pick some of the components and integrate them in your current application or framework infrastructure.

Based on the profound knowledge of Toby and Kore, two core developers behind the components for last five years, we will offer professional trainings and support that is backed by a company. Furthermore we provide paid-development and customization of the components to your own special needs.

Another point that speaks for the use of Zeta components is that the components are currently on their way to become an official project under the umbrella of the Apache Software Foundation, which guarantees a free use of the components, ensured by a stable legal basis.

So if you would like to use the Zeta Components for your projects or you are interested in a custom training, send us a mail to contact@qafoo.com.

Yesterday I released version 0.3.(0|1|2) of phpUnderControl. Except bugfixes and enhancements the major change in this new version of phpUnderControl is an ezcGraph replacement of the original cewolf metrics view. For the excellent appearance of the generated graphics I would like to thank kore, who supported me actively with his deep knowledge of the ezcGraph component. Beside the better appearance, the new graph implementation has another advantage, it performs much better than the original cewolf implementation, because cewolf generates graphics in real time, while the new ezcGraph solution generates static graphics during the build process.

phpUnderControl 0.3.2 Metrics

To integrate the graph generator into your build process, you must alter the <publishers /> elements in the config.xml file. Simply add a CruiseControl execute-publisher that calls the phpUnderControl cli tool with the graph command, as shown in the following example.

The phpUnderControl graph command expects at least the project log directory as argument, it is the directory where CruiseControl stores the merged xml log files. In this default mode phpUnderControl will generate the metric charts for each build into logs/<project-name>/<build-timestamp>/graph directories. If you use a different CruiseControl setup where artifacts are not stored in the logs/ directory you can call the graph command with a second argument that specifies the output directory, for example:

[mapi@arwen /opt/cruisecontrol]$ phpuc graph logs/phpUnderControl \
                                             artifacts/phpUnderControl

Finally I say thanks to Sebastian, because he integrates a new css file for the coverage reports into PHPUnit, that produces a harmonious overall picture between phpUnderControl and the coverage-report. This stylesheet is yet another contribution by kore.

PHPUnit Coverage report

All phpUnderControl versions are available thru the phpunit.de pear channel, just type:

[mapi@arwen ~]$ pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
[mapi@arwen ~]$ pear install --alldeps phpunit/phpUnderControl-beta

eZ Components

On the basis of a single sample application both authors, Kore Nordmann and Tobias Schlitt, take the reader on a journey into the depth of many components and in addition they show many PHP best practices.

In my opinion the approach of a single example application is really great, because the readers are not forced to switch between different contexts and code snippets, that allows them to be concentrated on the main topic of the book.

What this book makes really special for me is, that I have spend most time during my summer vacation to cross-read all chapters, to propose some changes and to correct some inaccuracies. To be honest the most important part in this book are two small words in the foreword

Manuel Pichler