PHP Doctrine 2: Convert UK date string to datetime

You have a form with a date field, and on submit you want to save the value as a Doctrine Datetime. You may find PHP's strtotime() function, but this will only work for dates in the US format (e.g. mm/dd/yyyy) and not the UK format (e.g. dd/mm/yyyy). The solution is to use DateTime::createFromFormat() which lets you specify the way the date string is formatted.

$result = DateTime::createFromFormat("d/m/Y", $dateString);

This can then be set as your datetime property on your entity, and persisted in the database. You can see which letters to use to represent your date format here.

PHP autocomplete / code assist in Eclipse

I've been programming in PHP a lot recently, and the main issue I've been having is that Eclipse finds it difficult to auto-complete e.g. suggest methods that can be run on an instance of a class. This article shows you how to fix this using PHPDoc to give Eclipse more type information. Note: it assumes you have a User class on your include_path.

You can declare types for arguments to functions. Note: ignore the double spacing - it is a bug with the FogBugz wiki

function myFunction(User $user) {
$user-> // this will now autocomplete
}

You can declare return type of functions

/** @return User */
private function getUser() {
return new User();
}

public function run() {
$user = $this->getUser();
$user-> // this will now autocomplete
}

You can declare the type of class properties (AKA fields), accessed with $this->var. Note: you can also do this inline above the property itself, using @var instead of @property, BUT annoyingly the PHPdoc has to be in the 3 line form (doesn't work if you shorten it to 1 line e.g. /** @var User $user */)

/**
* @property User $user
*/
class myClass {
protected $user;
function myFunction() {
$this->user-> // this will now autocomplete
}
}

You can declare the type on variables in the code

/* @var $user User */
$user-> // this will now autocomplete

Zend Log: Log to a file, formatting output, logging request details, and all error info

Wham this in your Bootstrap.php (replacing YOUR_WEBSITE):

protected function _initLogger() {
$writer = new Zend_Log_Writer_Stream('/var/log/YOUR_WEBSITE/output.log');
$format = '%timestamp% %priorityName%: %message%' . PHP_EOL;
$formatter = new Zend_Log_Formatter_Simple($format);
$writer->setFormatter($formatter);
$logger = new Zend_Log($writer);
$logger->setTimestampFormat("d-M-Y H:i:s");
Zend_Registry::set('logger', $logger);
}

Functions starting with _init will automatically be run during the bootstrap. This will setup the logger to log to a file in your logs directory, with a slightly clearer format than the default one (inc. simplified date format). It then saves the logger instance in the Zend_Registry, which means we can access it from our controllers!

Now in your Controller:

class IndexController extends Zend_Controller_Action {
private $logger;
public function init() {$this->logger = Zend_Registry::get('logger');}
public function indexAction() {$this->logger->info("Hello");}
}

Next, lets setup our logger to log the details of all requests, as this is really useful for debugging. We do this with a Controller Plugin, by implementing the preDispatch function (create application/plugins/Logger.php):

class Application_Plugin_Logger extends Zend_Controller_Plugin_Abstract {
public function preDispatch(Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request) {
$uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
if ($uri != "/favicon.ico") {
$logger = Zend_Registry::get('logger');
$logger->info("* REQUESTED URI ".$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']
    .", CONTROLLER ".$request->getControllerName()
    .", ACTION ".$request->getActionName());
}
}
}

Note: we don't bother logging browsers requests for favicon.ico, as they are not very interesting

Then we need to register the plugin, which we do back in our bootstrap, at the end of _initLogger():

$front = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();
$front->registerPlugin(new Application_Plugin_Logger());

Finally, we setup the ErrorController to log all error information by adding this code to errorAction():

$logger = Zend_Registry::get('logger');
$params = $errors->request->getParams();

$paramsString = "array (\n";
foreach($params as $key=>$value) {
$paramsString .= "'".$key."' => '".$value."'\n";
}
$paramsString .= ")";

$logger->crit("ERROR = ".$this->view->message."\n"
    ."MESSAGE = ".$errors->exception->getMessage()."\n"
    ."STACK TRACE = \n".$errors->exception->getTraceAsString()."\n"
    ."REQUEST PARAMS = ".$paramsString);