Author: Raffael

Best of Web #8

Posted by Raffael on Posted in Best of Web Tagged ,

best of web - runde 8And again a Monday. Besides the fact that Monday, as the beginning of the week, probably is one of the scariest days of the week, there’s a second thing that always takes place on Mondays: My “Best of Web” series.
Today, it is already the 8th episode and this time there is again a novelty. There is no video in addition to some interesting articles at the end this time, like every week, because nothing suitable has crossed my paths this week.
But everything remains the same. That means – there are a few more bits of web development, the C# world and of the subject of hardware hackers. And now, I hope you enjoy reading.
HDMI over IP Windows client
HDMI over IP PC Client

Best of Web #7

Posted by Raffael on Posted in Test Tagged ,

best of web - runde 7Today it is once again time for another round of “Best of Web”. This week I have a few more links on the hand, I would like to share with you. Overall, it comes back this week to some technical topics – good for geeks and nerds among you, rather poor for lovers of more “lighter fare”. Among others, today is about compilers, the history of Windows, some web design basics and a bit of image recognition in C#. I hope there is one or the other interesting article for everyone.
As always – who has more link tips, is hereby invited to send me these for one of the rounds of my “Best of Web” series. And now have fun with my recommendations of the week.
Quick introduction to compiler construction
On TechPro Tristan McNab […]

20 Dropbox tools you should know

Posted by Raffael on Posted in Test Tagged , , , ,

When it comes to online storage and sync, then Dropbox is my number 1 and because I’m pretty sure I’m not alone with this sight, below there is a collection of 20 tools which will help you to realize the full potential of your Dropbox.
 
 
dropplets
#1 – dropplets.com / Blog with Dropbox
With dropplets your Dropbox becomes a blogging platform. After the “installation” your Dropbox behaves like a web server.
New articles can be written in the easy to learn Markdown language and published by simply save them in your Dropbox. The whole thing is quick, easy, and also looks quite chic.
 
 
calepin
#2 – calepin.co / Publishing by Dropbox
Calepin.co is the second blog system in our listing. Also Calepin supports the markup language “Markdown” and allows […]

Benchmark: strtotime() vs DateTime vs getTimestamp in PHP

Posted by Raffael on Posted in PHP Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Recently I wrote about how one can implement date comparison in PHP. In the article I presented two approaches. Firstly, using the strtotime() method and another with the DateTime class.
Then, in the comments on the german division of this blog, it was pointed out that the strtotime() variant is probably faster. Because I wasn’t sure about this, I decided to make a small performance test and share the results with you in this article.
How did I test the performance?

Since the question aims on strtotime() vs. DateTime, the DateTime class is contrary to the strtotime() function. So because DateTime class offers more functionality, I had first to create the DateTime object and then get the timestamp of it, because the strtotime function gives a timestamp as return value and I wanted to compare the time needed to generate the identical output.
As input I have taken a date without a custom time […]

How to compare dates in PHP

Posted by Raffael on Posted in PHP, Test Tagged , , , , , ,

php_date_compareHow to actually compare 2 dates in PHP with each other? The question sounds easier than it is.  The first thought that usually comes is the following. We store both dates as strings and compare them.
Preliminary

<?php
$date1 = "2012-1-12";
$date2 = "2011-10-12";

if ($date1 > $date2)
echo "$date1 is newer than $date2";
else
echo "$date1 is older than $date2";
?>

Output:

2012-1-12 is newer than 2011-10-12

At first glance this seems to be a workable solution. But what if the two data is in a different format?

<?php
$date1 = "12-1-12";
$date2 = "2011-10-12";

if ($date1 > $date2)
echo "$date1 is newer than $date2";
else
echo "$date1 is older than $date2";
?>

Output:

12-1-12 is older than 2011-10-12

Now the date in 2012 is declared to be older than the date in 2011, which is of course wrong. However, from PHP’s point of view, this behavior is correct, because two strings were […]