High level search with PHP and Apache Solr
When data sets get large and MySQL database querying to search become too load heavy and slow, full indexing is required. Several solutions are available but in this article I will be demonstrating the Apache foundations Solr Java Lucene implementation. For this a Java build will be required. Linux or Mac is less of a problem but for windows I use the Apache Tomcat server.
What most developers don’t realize is that there are three major factors that typically slow down PHP projects based on frameworks (like Symfony or, sigh, Drupal) so much that code profiling and database query redesign don’t even have a chance to become relevant factors. Fix these things first before you worry about other issues:
1. Compiling code over and over and over. Would you wait for your Mac to recompile MacOS X from source code every time you boot it up? Of course not. How about every time you fill out a dialog box? That’s pretty much what you’re doing every time you access a PHP-driven website that doesn’t use a bytecode cache.
2. Waiting and waiting and waiting for web browsers to make another request, pinning down web server processes that your other users need. By default Apache usually lets browsers hold on to a connection for up to 15 seconds just in case they ask for more. This is a good thing in many ways, but 15 seconds is far too long. Which leads us to #3:
3. Tying up a “fat” web server process with PHP on board for every request, even requests for the zillions of little static PNGs that probably make up your page design. (**) A typical Apache web server configuration with mod_php suffers from this flaw, fatally limiting the number of simultaneous users you can handle.
So what can we do about these problems? Quite a bit as it turns out. I’ll start with the low-hanging fruit and move on to the tougher stuff. The fascinating common thread with all of these suggestions: no changes at all to your PHP code.
Working with RESTful Services in CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter is becoming well known for its power as a PHP based web application framework, but it's not often that we see examples of it being used for anything else. Today we'll learn how we can use CodeIgniter to create a RESTful API for your existing web applications, and demonstrate how to interact with your own API or other RESTful web-services, such as Facebook and Twitter.
目前很多网站都使用了 Google Analytics 来跟踪各个页面的访问情况，但经常会出现页面过慢，JS 执行错误等问题，导致统计的结果不准确。现在 Google 提供了一个新的功能─异步跟踪：
JS 代码片段：
<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
ga.setAttribute('async', 'true');
document.documentElement.firstChild.appendChild(ga);
})();
</script>
New language features in Java 7
I’m just back from the Devoxx conference in Antwerp. An update was given on the new language changes that will be in Java 7. The JDK currently has a release date of September 2010.
Here are 7 of the new features that have been completed:
* Language support for collections
* Automatic Resource Management
* Improved Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation (diamond)
* Underscores in numeric literals
* Strings in switch
* Binary literals
* Simplified Varargs Method Invocation
很多特性都非常有意思，比如：
List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
list.add("item");
String item = list.get(0);
Set<String> set = new HashSet<String>();
set.add("item");
Map<String, Integer> map = new HashMap<String, Integer>();
map.put("key", 1);
int value = map.get("key");
可以变为：
List<String> list = ["item"];
String item = list[0];
Set<String> set = {"item"};
Map<String, Integer> map = {"key" : 1};
int value = map["key"];
最有意思的是数字：
int one_million = 1_000_000;
