1. Start Transaction on database1
2. Clear out some old data from the table
3. Select a bunch of data from database2.table
4. Loop in PHP, updating each row in its own query to update one column
5. Select a bunch of data from database2.other_table
6. Loop in PHP, updating each row in its own query to update another column
7. Commit database1

1. Create temp table on database2 to hold mydata
2. Select data from database2.table into my temp table
3. Select data from database2.other_table into my temp table
4. Move my temp table using extended inserts via PHP from database2 to database1
5. Start Transaction on database1
6. Clear out some old data from the table
7. Do a multi-table bulk update of my real table using the temp table
8. Commit database1

Back in the day, when URLs and filesystems had a 1:1 mapping, it made perfect sense to have a web server separate from the language it is running. But, nowadays, any PHP app with attractive URLs running behind the Apache web server is going to need a .htaccess file, which tells the server a regular expression to check before serving up a file. Sound complex and awkward with unnecessary overhead? That’s because it is.

Node has a web server built in. Some people call this a bad thing, I call those people crazy. Having the server built in means that you don’t have the awkward .htaccess config thing going on. Every request is understood to go through the same process, without having to hunt through the filesystem and figure out which script to run.

The official website is quite ugly and outdated.

Since a PHP process starts, does some boilerplate work, performs the taks the user actually wants, and then dies, data is not persistent in memory. You can keep this data persistent using third party tools like Memcache or traditional database, but then there is the overhead of communicating with those external processes.

The number one bottleneck with web apps is not the time it takes to calculate CPU hungry operations, but rather network I/O. If you need to respond to a client request after making a database call and sending an email, you can perform the two actions and respond when both are complete.

Node.js is a very new, unstable, untested platform. If you are going to be building a large corporate scale app with a long lifetime, Node.js is not a good solution. The Node API’s are changing almost daily, and large/longterm apps will need to be rewritten often.

Being so new, it doesn’t have a lot of baggage leftover from days of old. Having a server built in, the stack is a lot simpler, there are less points of failure, and there is more control over what you can do with HTTP responses (ever try overwriting the name of the web server using PHP?).

• Are you building some sort of daemon? Use Node.
• Are you making a content website? Use PHP.
• Do you want to share data between visitors? Use Node.
• Are you a beginner looking to make a quick website? Use PHP.
• Are you going to run a bunch of code in parallel? Use Node.
• Are you writing software for clients to run on shared hosts? Use PHP.
• Do you want push events from the server to the client using websockets? Use Node.
• Does your team already know PHP? Use PHP.
• Does your team already know frontend JavaScript? Node would be easier to learn.
• Are you building a command line script? Both work.

The only thing that is *never* on the table is using a Windows server. If you can get me unique visitors for an arbitrary date range in milliseconds and it require Hadoop, go for it.

I know you will ask how our dev db works, here you go:

1. Replicate production over VPN to home office

2. Write MySQL data on SAN

3. Stop replication, flush tables, snapshot FS

4. Copy snapshot to a new location

5. On second dev server, umount SAN, mount new snapshot

6. Restart MySQL all around

7. Talk in dev chat how bad ass that is

<?php



$date = "2011-11-01";



// add 15 days



$new_date = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($date) + (86400 * 15));



// $new_date should be 2011-11-16 right?



echo $new_date;



?>

$new_date = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($date." +15 days"));

$new_date = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($date." 12:00:00") + 86400 * 15);

if(defined("STDERR") && posix_isatty(STDERR)){

    ini_set("log_errors", false);

    ini_set("error_log", null);

}

1. Go to the message board
2. See a list of categories
3. Drill down to the category they want to read
4. Scroll through a list of messages that are in reverse cronological order by original post date or most recent post date
5. Click a message and read it.
6. Go to #3, repeat

1. Go to the message board
2. The most interesting things (to this user) are listed right there on the page. No drill down needed.
3. Click one and read it.
4. Goto #2, repeat.

query = *( pchar / "/" / "?" )

pchar = unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / ":" / "@"

sub-delims = "!" / "$" / "&" / "'" / "(" / ")" / 
 "*" / "+" / "," / ";" / "="

66.220.149.247 - - [18/Nov/2010:00:47:51 -0600] "GET /phorum5/read.php?61%2C146887%2C146887 HTTP/1.1" 302 26 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"

1. I know are not on any mailing list
2. Are on web pages as plain mailto: anchor tags for good reasons.

$res = $db->query($sql, MYSQLI_USE_RESULT);
$rows = $res->fetch_all(MYSQLI_ASSOC);

1. mysqli_result::fetch_all*
2. PDOStatement::fetchAll
3. mysqli_query with MYSQLI_STORE_RESULT followed by a loop
4. mysqli_query with MYSQLI_USE_RESULT followed by a loop

<?php

$mc = new Memcached();

$mc->addServer("localhost", 11211);

$mc->set(123, "yes!");

var_dump($mc->getMulti(array(123)));

?>

array(1) {
  [123]=>
  string(4) "yes!"
}

bool(false)

<?php

$sql = "select * from publications";

$res = $mysqli->query($sql);

while($row = $res->fetch_assoc()){

    $pubs[$row["publication_id"]] = $row;

}

$pubs_ser = str_replace("'", "\\'", serialize($pubs));

$php_code = "<?php global \$PUBLICATIONS; \$PUBLICATIONS = unserialize('$pubs_ser'); ?>";

file_put_contents("/some/path/publications.php", $php_code);

?>

<?php

$sql = "select * from publications";

$res = $mysqli->query($sql);

while($row = $res->fetch_assoc()){

    $pubs[$row["publication_id"]] = $row;

    $constants[$row["publication_id"]] = strtoupper($row["name"]);

}

$pubs_ser = str_replace("'", "\\'", serialize($pubs));

$php_code = "<?php\n";

$php_code.= "global \$PUBLICATIONS;\n";

$php_code.= "\$PUBLICATIONS = unserialize('$pubs_ser');\n";

foreach($constants as $id=>$const){

    $php_code.= "define('$const', $id);\n";

}

$php_code.= "?>";

file_put_contents("/some/path/publications.php", $php_code);

?>

<?php

//load a publication

require_once "publications.php";

echo $PUBLICATIONS[DEALNEWS]["name"];

?>

<?php

$sql = "select * from publications";

$res = $mysqli->query($sql);

while($row = $res->fetch_assoc()){

    $pubs[$row["publication_id"]] = $row;

    $constants[$row["publication_id"]] = strtoupper($row["name"]);

}

$pubs_ser = str_replace("'", "\\'", serialize($pubs));

$php_code = "<?php\n";

$php_code.= "class PUB_DATA {\n";

foreach($constants as $id=>$const){

    $php_code.= " const $const = $id;\n";

}

$php_code.= "    protected \$pubs_ser = '$pubs_ser';\n";

$php_code.= "}";

$php_code.= "?>";

file_put_contents("/some/path/pub_data.php", $php_code);

?>

<?php

require_once "pub_data.php";

class Publication extends PUB_DATA {

    private $pub;

    public function __construct($pub_id) {

        $pubs = unserialize($this->pubs_ser);

        $this->pub = $pubs[$pub_id];

    }

    public function __get($var) {

        if(isset($this->pub[$var])){

            return $this->pub[$var];

        } else {

            // Exception

        }

    }

}

?>

$pub = new Publication(Publication::DEALNEWS);

echo $pub->name;

create table clicks_new like clicks;
rename table clicks to clicks_2010032500001, clicks_new to clicks;

• Use MyISAM with concurrent inserts
• Rotate tables daily and use UNION to query
• Use delayed inserts with MySQL or a job processing agent like Gearman

This is not a detailed post about long running PHP scripts.  Maybe I can get to the dos and don'ts of that another time.  But, these are the scripts we use to manage long running processes.  They work great for us on Linux.  They will not run on Windows at all.  We also never had any trouble running them on Mac OS X.

The first script, prefork.php, is for forking a given function from a given file and running n children that will execute that function. There can be a startup function that is run before any forking begins and a shutdown function to run when all the children have died.

The second script, prefork_class.php, uses a class with defined methods instead of relying on the command line for function names. This script has the added benefit of having functions that can be run just before each fork and after each fork. This allows the parent process to farm work out to each child by changing the variables that will be present when the child starts up. This is the script we use for managing our Gearman workers. We have a class that controls how many workers are started and what functions they provide. I may release a generic class that does that soon. Right now it is tied to our code library structure pretty tightly.

We have also included two examples. They are simple, but do work to show you how the scripts work.

You can download the code from the dealnews.com developers' page.

UPDATE: I have released a Gearman Worker Manager on Github.