Packfire Framework for PHP

minor code speed up and improvements

Sam-Mauris Yong, CEO & Co-Founder of [HeartCode](http://heartcode.sg/) development team and developer of Packfire, shares on how developers can improve Git project flows to manage complexity better through branches, tags and Github pull requests. Read more at https://speakerdeck.com/mauris/github-project-flow

First of all, Merry Christmas to all (: More code, less talking. That's what happened for the past few weeks. Nevertheless, we came up with great projects that we are sharing open source on Github. These projects were created to solve many challenges that web developers or software engineers face commonly. Here are some of the projects: `[CLI]` means that the project runs as a command-line interface application in the form of a PHAR binary. `[Composer]` represents that the project can be installed and used by others through Packagist and Composer installation. - [PDC for PHP](https://github.com/packfire/pdc): [CLI] a smart little worker that helps you to check for missing class dependencies by analyzing your source code and checking against PSR-0 namespace and autoloading. Makes you code faster as you spend less time trying to fix a misspelled namespace. - [Packfire Torch](https://github.com/packfire/torch): [CLI] a web asset management tool for you to keep images and JavaScript libraries out of your version control. Torch installs web assets from any source just like how Composer install components. - [Packfire Options](https://github.com/packfire/options): [Composer] A PHP-implementation of NDesk.Options (C#) using Closures and callbacks to help you effectively parse CLI arguments across platforms. - [Packfire Concrete](https://github.com/packfire/concrete): [Composer] A small library that provides toolset for PHAR compilation similar to how Composer does it. Used by PDC and Torch to compile themselves into PHAR binaries. CLI version coming soon.

We all know that in a PHP script, you can return an exit code CLI-style using the `exit` language construct: `exit(2);` Exit codes have been very widely used in CLI tools such as Git or `apt-get` to tell the calling script that there may be an error of sort and the operation was not successful. This makes a great experience for an end-user. However, the `exit` call assigns the exit code and immediately terminates the script. Sometimes you just want to set the exit code, do some work then terminate the script and that can't happen. The solution is to use [shutdown hooks](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12324980/set-java-exit-code-without-exiting-yet) (the question was about Java, but thanks to Packfire Framework's ShutdownTaskManager you can quickly do the same). $this->service('shutdown')->add('exitCode', function(){ exit(3); }); doMoreWorkAfterSettingExitCode(); This allows you to do more work after setting the exit code to your PHP script. Sweet and simple!

Command Line Interface (CLI) applications are commonly used by us developers to produce work effectively and quickly without GUI. We all know that command line arguments are colourful: different standards, different formats, different arguments, etc. Reading CLI arguments in PHP isn't easy at all. Try normalizing and letting your application understanding these: `update`, `--force`, `-qf`, `--env=/usr/bin/env`. It's tedious and even worse when requirements changes. Packfire Framework makes it easy for you. With a similar implementation to NDesk's `NDesk.Option` parser, Packfire offers a set of classes in the `Packfire\Command` package for you to parse command lines easily using closures. public function run(){ // create an OptionSet parser $option = new \Packfire\Command\OptionSet(); // initialize variables to take in and be used later $command = null; $quiet = false; $force = false; $linker = false; $file = ''; // set the options // we add an index checker to check for the first argument $option->addIndex(0, function($value) use(&$command) { $command = $value; }); // now we add a 'q' checker // "q|quiet|silent" matches '/q', '-q', '--quiet', '--silent', '/quiet' and '/silent' $option->add('q|quiet|silent', function()use(&$quiet) { $quiet = true; }); $option->add('l|linker', function()use(&$linker) { $linker = true; }); $option->add('f|force', function()use(&$force) { $force = true; }); // '=' at the end defines that this flag requires a value // the value can be after a '=' in the argument or // be the next value $option->add('file=', function($value)use(&$file) { $file = $value; }); // parse the arguments $option->parse(array('update', '-qf', '/file=test.log')); // you can use "$_SERVER['argv']" instead too like this: // $option->parse($_SERVER['argv']); } Sweet and easy isn't it?

[Anchor for Windows](http://github.com/thephpdeveloper/anchor-app) - A marvellously lightweight app for managing local websites. Releasing on 12 Nov 2012.

Anchor for Windows - a marvellously lightweight app for managing local websites Development by Sam-Mauris Yong is ongoing on [Github](https://github.com/thephpdeveloper/anchor-app), but this is the conceptual design for the real application.

Before you start working on your software from blank, try: $ git init A simple command like `git init` can help greatly before you start your software development. No matter how big or small your project or simple application can be, it helps just to initialize your folder for version control. As your proceed to develop your application from scratch, practise version controlling best practices and you will find the process to be short, sweet and easy.

In normal task execution, web applications process time-consuming tasks before sending a respond to the HTTP request. However, these tasks makes your web application look slow, sluggish and inefficient. Nobody likes using a slow and frustrating website. Since Packfire Framework 2.0.3, it is possible for you to attach tasks with the `ShutdownTaskManager` IoC service to make your website faster and elegant. By attaching time-consuming tasks, such as mass sending emails and performing cache garbage collection, to the `ShutdownTaskManager` service, your application loads faster to the user. To attach tasks, simply run the code in your BucketUser classes (i.e. Controller and View): $this->service('shutdown')->add('mail', function($to, subject, $message){ $ok = mail($to, $subject, $message); });