Take a simple PHP trick and follow it on a huge tangent to the philosophy of good web architecture. Presentation given as Flash Talk at Automattic Meetup in Seaside on September 2010 Presentation originally a long form, but in the spirit of things, I have cut it down. Automattic is the company I work for. The company is distributed worldwide and once a year we gather at a remote location and meet face-to-face. This year, all the employees are taking a little time during the meetup to compose and give at least one presentation for each other, talking about any subject we are passionate about. This is based on <a>a PHP Advent article I wrote almost two years ago</a> and formed a low key presentation. I thought it’d be nice to give a more “traditional” PHP talk at the meetup—but one which I felt the audience at large could relate to. I hope you enjoy it.

1. PHP without PHP
A Philosophy for Good
Architecture
terry chay
2010-09-12T18:00-0500
WordCamp Meetup
Seaside, Florida

2. Funky Caching
Prologue #1

3. aka
ErrorDocument trick
Smarter Caching
… Rasmus’s Trick (Stig’s trick)
Go into apache.conf (or .htaccess) and
ErrorDocument 404 /error.php

4. Error.PHP
$filepath = parse_url($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], PHP_URL_PATH); //or $_SERVER['REDIRECT_URL']
$basepath = dirname(__FILE__).DIR_SEP;
// Test to see if you can work with it
if (false) { //…EDIT…
//output a 404 page
include('404.html'); // see http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/ for tips
return;
}
// Generate the file
// …EDIT…
$data = 'something';
// Don't send 404 back, send 200 OK because this is a pretty smart 404
// not a clueless one! http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=404
header(sprintf('%s 200', $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL']));
//Show the file
echo $data;
//Store the page to bypass PHP on the next request. Use a temp file with a
// link trick in order to avoid race conditions between concurrent PHP
// processes.
$tmpfile = tempnam($basepath.'tmp','fc');
$fp = fopen($tmpfile,'w'); //remove the "_" this is crashing my blog syntax hilighter
fputs($fp, $data);
fclose($fp);
@link($basepath.$filepath, $tmpfile); //suppress errors due to losing race
unlink($tmpfile);

5. Error.PHP
$filepath = parse_url($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], PHP_URL_PATH); //or $_SERVER['REDIRECT_URL']
$basepath = dirname(__FILE__).DIR_SEP;
// Test to see if you can work with it
if (false) { //…EDIT…
//output a 404 page
include('404.html'); // see http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/ for tips
return;
}
// Generate the file
// …EDIT…
$data = 'something';
// Don't send 404 back, send 200 OK because this is a pretty smart 404
// not a clueless one! http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=404
header(sprintf('%s 200', $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL']));
//Show the file
echo $data;
//Store the page to bypass PHP on the next request. Use a temp file with a
// link trick in order to avoid race conditions between concurrent PHP
// processes.
$tmpfile = tempnam($basepath.'tmp','fc');
$fp = fopen($tmpfile,'w'); //remove the "_" this is crashing my blog syntax hilighter
fputs($fp, $data);
fclose($fp);
@link($basepath.$filepath, $tmpfile); //suppress errors due to losing race
unlink($tmpfile);

6. Error.PHP
$filepath = parse_url($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], PHP_URL_PATH); //or $_SERVER['REDIRECT_URL']
$basepath = dirname(__FILE__).DIR_SEP;
// Test to see if you can work with it
if (false) { //…EDIT…
//output a 404 page
include('404.html'); // see http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/ for tips
return;
}
// Generate the file
// …EDIT…
$data = 'something';
// Don't send 404 back, send 200 OK because this is a pretty smart 404
// not a clueless one! http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=404
header(sprintf('%s 200', $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL']));
//Show the file
echo $data;
//Store the page to bypass PHP on the next request. Use a temp file with a
// link trick in order to avoid race conditions between concurrent PHP
// processes.
$tmpfile = tempnam($basepath.'tmp','fc');
$fp = fopen($tmpfile,'w'); //remove the "_" this is crashing my blog syntax hilighter
fputs($fp, $data);
fclose($fp);
@link($basepath.$filepath, $tmpfile); //suppress errors due to losing race
unlink($tmpfile);

7. PHP without PHP

8. Engineer and
Architect

9. 1 Fallingwater
organic, democratic, plasticity, continuity

11. …including me

12. Hatchway Staircase View at the main (living room) level, from the
bridge (from east)

13. Beyond the glass Fallingwater: Living room terraces and glass
walls (from east).

14. Fall Foliage View from lookout, downstream.

15. Fall Foliage View from lookout, downstream.

16. No barriers Detail: corner window at the guest house,
from southeast.

17. Existing tree The trellis over the driveway is built to
accommodate a tree.

18. Local quarry Living room, west (downstream) side, from
southeast

19. Existing boulder Living room fireplace and hearth, looking
from kitchen door to south windows

21. Philosophy
organic,
democratic,
plasticity,
continuity.

22. Why on PHP?

23. Harmony with Environment
Apache web server: ErrorDocument
Customer-centric: Performance
paramount
Relational Database: Slow
persistence
Harmony with PHP itself…

24. Architecture of PHP Modern web architecture

25. Architecture of PHP Modern web architecture

26. 2 Bellefield Towers
Design Hubris

28. Gothic Romanesque architecture The current Bellefield Church (two blocks
away)

29. Other city towers Allegheny Courthouse Main Tower & Four
Tower Types at Jail (and other towers)

30. Tower of
Learning
Within spitting distance of
Bellefield Towers

31. Carnegie Library Most iconic moment in baseball history

32. Why is Bellefield
Towers so Ugly?

33. Design Hubris?
Develop in the PHP community?
Take over an existing project?
Limitations of Site Operations?
Hosting? or Virtual hosting?
Business needs trump programmer
desire?
Dealt with a user request?
Choosing Frameworks over
Applications (Like WordPress)?

34. Solutions Consider
Environment

35. 3 Golden Gate Bridge
The Design Pattern

37. the other bridge

40. Same problem,
different pattern
Original design was hybrid
cantilever-suspension.
Replaced by purse
suspension

41. Art Deco
Bridge Tower, Lighting,
pedestrial walkway

42. International
Orange
Rust colored like the
environment it lives in … and
safe.

43. Part of the
whole

44. Design Patterns
Defined
“Each pattern describes a
problem which occurs over
and over again in our
environment, and then
describes the core of the
solution to that problem, in
such a way that you can use
this solution a million times
over, without ever doing it
the same way twice.”

45. Certainly iconic Me in front of both icons

46. Never the same way twice How do you know which one?
How do you know which way?

47. Funky Caching again
“search for the closest matching valid
URL and redirect, and use attempted
url text as a DB keyword lookup”
—Rasmus Lerdorf

50. Javascript and CSS
compiling & caching

53. <?php
$watermark = '3129080702_c4e76f71d7_o.png';
$dead_url = 'http://example.com/dead_image.png';
// {{{ start_image($filename, &$data)
/**
* Creates a gd handle for a valid file
* @param $filename string the file to get
* @param $data array the imagesize
* @return resource GD handle
*/
function start_image($filename, &$data) {
$data = @getimagesize($filename);
if (empty($data)) { return null; }
$data['ratio'] = $data[0]/$data[1];
switch($data[2]) {
case IMG_GIF: return imagecreatefromgif($filename);
case 3: //problem where IMG_PNG is not bound correctly for my install
case IMG_PNG: return imagecreatefrompng($filename);
case IMG_JPG: return imagecreatefromjpeg($filename);
case IMG_WBMP: return imagecreatefromwbmp($filename);
case IMG_XPM: return imagecreatefromxbm($filename);
}
return null;
}
// }}}
$requestimg = $_SERVER['REDIRECT_URL'];
if (!$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']) {
// redirect user to invalid image
tag_http::redirect($dead_url);
return '';
}
// grab image to temp {{{
$ch = curl_init($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
$tempfile = tempnam('/tmp', 'prod_remote_');
$fp = f_open($tempfile, 'w'); //again delete the "_"
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec_($ch); //delete the final "_"
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
// }}}

54. <?php
$watermark = '3129080702_c4e76f71d7_o.png';
$dead_url = 'http://example.com/dead_image.png';
// {{{ start_image($filename, &$data)
/**
* Creates a gd handle for a valid file
* @param $filename string the file to get
* @param $data array the imagesize
* @return resource GD handle
*/
function start_image($filename, &$data) {
$data = @getimagesize($filename);
if (empty($data)) { return null; }
$data['ratio'] = $data[0]/$data[1];
switch($data[2]) {
case IMG_GIF: return imagecreatefromgif($filename);
case 3: //problem where IMG_PNG is not bound correctly for my install
case IMG_PNG: return imagecreatefrompng($filename);
case IMG_JPG: return imagecreatefromjpeg($filename);
case IMG_WBMP: return imagecreatefromwbmp($filename);
case IMG_XPM: return imagecreatefromxbm($filename);
}
return null;
}
// }}}
$requestimg = $_SERVER['REDIRECT_URL'];
if (!$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']) {
// redirect user to invalid image
tag_http::redirect($dead_url);
return '';
}
// grab image to temp {{{
$ch = curl_init($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
$tempfile = tempnam('/tmp', 'prod_remote_');
$fp = f_open($tempfile, 'w'); //again delete the "_"
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec_($ch); //delete the final "_"
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
// }}}

55. <?php
$watermark = '3129080702_c4e76f71d7_o.png';
$dead_url = 'http://example.com/dead_image.png';
// {{{ start_image($filename, &$data)
/**
* Creates a gd handle for a valid file
* @param $filename string the file to get
* @param $data array the imagesize
* @return resource GD handle
*/
function start_image($filename, &$data) {
$data = @getimagesize($filename);
if (empty($data)) { return null; }
$data['ratio'] = $data[0]/$data[1];
switch($data[2]) {
case IMG_GIF: return imagecreatefromgif($filename);
case 3: //problem where IMG_PNG is not bound correctly for my install
case IMG_PNG: return imagecreatefrompng($filename);
case IMG_JPG: return imagecreatefromjpeg($filename);
case IMG_WBMP: return imagecreatefromwbmp($filename);
case IMG_XPM: return imagecreatefromxbm($filename);
}
return null;
}
// }}}
$requestimg = $_SERVER['REDIRECT_URL'];
if (!$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']) {
// redirect user to invalid image
tag_http::redirect($dead_url);
return '';
}
// grab image to temp {{{
$ch = curl_init($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
$tempfile = tempnam('/tmp', 'prod_remote_');
$fp = f_open($tempfile, 'w'); //again delete the "_"
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec_($ch); //delete the final "_"
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
// }}}

56. <?php
$watermark = '3129080702_c4e76f71d7_o.png';
$dead_url = 'http://example.com/dead_image.png';
// {{{ start_image($filename, &$data)
/**
* Creates a gd handle for a valid file
* @param $filename string the file to get
* @param $data array the imagesize
* @return resource GD handle
*/
function start_image($filename, &$data) {
$data = @getimagesize($filename);
if (empty($data)) { return null; }
$data['ratio'] = $data[0]/$data[1];
switch($data[2]) {
case IMG_GIF: return imagecreatefromgif($filename);
case 3: //problem where IMG_PNG is not bound correctly for my install
case IMG_PNG: return imagecreatefrompng($filename);
case IMG_JPG: return imagecreatefromjpeg($filename);
case IMG_WBMP: return imagecreatefromwbmp($filename);
case IMG_XPM: return imagecreatefromxbm($filename);
}
return null;
}
// }}}
$requestimg = $_SERVER['REDIRECT_URL'];
if (!$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']) {
// redirect user to invalid image
tag_http::redirect($dead_url);
return '';
}
// grab image to temp {{{
$ch = curl_init($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
$tempfile = tempnam('/tmp', 'prod_remote_');
$fp = f_open($tempfile, 'w'); //again delete the "_"
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec_($ch); //delete the final "_"
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
// }}}

57. // configure image and dimensions {{{
$size_data = array();
$im = start_image($tempfile, $size_data);
if (!$im) {
unlink($tempfile);
tag_http::redirect($dead_url);
return;
}
// }}}
// get watermark information {{{
$wm_data = array();
$wm = start_image($watermark, $wm_data);
if (!$wm) {
unlink ($tempfile);
tag_http::redirect($dead_url);
return;
}
// }}}
// add watermark {{{
if ($size_data['ratio']> $wm_data['ratio']) {
// image is wider format than the watermark
$new_smaller_dim = $wm_data[0] * ($size_data[1]/$wm_data[1]);
$dst_x = ($size_data[0] - $new_smaller_dim)/2;
$dst_y = 0;
$dst_w = $new_smaller_dim;
$dst_h = $size_data[1];
} else {
// image is taller format than the watermark
$new_smaller_dim = $wm_data[1] * ($size_data[0]/$wm_data[0]);
$dst_x = 0;
$dst_y = ($size_data[1] - $new_smaller_dim)/2;
$dst_w = $size_data[0];
$dst_h = $new_smaller_dim;;
}
imagecopyresized($im, $wm, $dst_x, $dst_y, 0, 0, $dst_w, $dst_h, $wm_data[0], $wm_data[1]);
header(sprintf('%s 200', $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL']));
header(sprintf('Content-type: %s',$size_data['mime']));
// }}}
switch ($size_data[2]) {
case IMG_GIF: imagegif($im); break;
case 3: case IMG_PNG: imagepng($im); break;
case IMG_JPG: imagejpeg($im); break;
case IMG_WBMP: imagewbmp($im); break;
case IMG_XPM: imagexbm($im); break;
}
imagedestroy($wm);
imagedestroy($im);
unlink($tempfile);

58. // configure image and dimensions {{{
$size_data = array();
$im = start_image($tempfile, $size_data);
if (!$im) {
unlink($tempfile);
tag_http::redirect($dead_url);
return;
}
// }}}
// get watermark information {{{
$wm_data = array();
$wm = start_image($watermark, $wm_data);
if (!$wm) {
unlink ($tempfile);
tag_http::redirect($dead_url);
return;
}
// }}}
// add watermark {{{
if ($size_data['ratio']> $wm_data['ratio']) {
// image is wider format than the watermark
$new_smaller_dim = $wm_data[0] * ($size_data[1]/$wm_data[1]);
$dst_x = ($size_data[0] - $new_smaller_dim)/2;
$dst_y = 0;
$dst_w = $new_smaller_dim;
$dst_h = $size_data[1];
} else {
// image is taller format than the watermark
$new_smaller_dim = $wm_data[1] * ($size_data[0]/$wm_data[0]);
$dst_x = 0;
$dst_y = ($size_data[1] - $new_smaller_dim)/2;
$dst_w = $size_data[0];
$dst_h = $new_smaller_dim;;
}
imagecopyresized($im, $wm, $dst_x, $dst_y, 0, 0, $dst_w, $dst_h, $wm_data[0], $wm_data[1]);
header(sprintf('%s 200', $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL']));
header(sprintf('Content-type: %s',$size_data['mime']));
// }}}
switch ($size_data[2]) {
case IMG_GIF: imagegif($im); break;
case 3: case IMG_PNG: imagepng($im); break;
case IMG_JPG: imagejpeg($im); break;
case IMG_WBMP: imagewbmp($im); break;
case IMG_XPM: imagexbm($im); break;
}
imagedestroy($wm);
imagedestroy($im);
unlink($tempfile);

59. // configure image and dimensions {{{
$size_data = array();
$im = start_image($tempfile, $size_data);
if (!$im) {
unlink($tempfile);
tag_http::redirect($dead_url);
return;
}
// }}}
// get watermark information {{{
$wm_data = array();
$wm = start_image($watermark, $wm_data);
if (!$wm) {
unlink ($tempfile);
tag_http::redirect($dead_url);
return;
}
// }}}
// add watermark {{{
if ($size_data['ratio']> $wm_data['ratio']) {
// image is wider format than the watermark
$new_smaller_dim = $wm_data[0] * ($size_data[1]/$wm_data[1]);
$dst_x = ($size_data[0] - $new_smaller_dim)/2;
$dst_y = 0;
$dst_w = $new_smaller_dim;
$dst_h = $size_data[1];
} else {
// image is taller format than the watermark
$new_smaller_dim = $wm_data[1] * ($size_data[0]/$wm_data[0]);
$dst_x = 0;
$dst_y = ($size_data[1] - $new_smaller_dim)/2;
$dst_w = $size_data[0];
$dst_h = $new_smaller_dim;;
}
imagecopyresized($im, $wm, $dst_x, $dst_y, 0, 0, $dst_w, $dst_h, $wm_data[0], $wm_data[1]);
header(sprintf('%s 200', $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL']));
header(sprintf('Content-type: %s',$size_data['mime']));
// }}}
switch ($size_data[2]) {
case IMG_GIF: imagegif($im); break;
case 3: case IMG_PNG: imagepng($im); break;
case IMG_JPG: imagejpeg($im); break;
case IMG_WBMP: imagewbmp($im); break;
case IMG_XPM: imagexbm($im); break;
}
imagedestroy($wm);
imagedestroy($im);
unlink($tempfile);

60. Beyond Funky
Caching

61. San Francisco
Looking around you for
inspiration

62. Thanks!