Careers: Interviews
John Coggeshall: Internationally Respected Developer/Technical
Consultant for Zend Technologies
This week, Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P., has an
exclusive interview with John Coggeshall.
John is a Technical Consultant for Zend Technologies where he provides
professional services to clients around the world. He got started with PHP in
1997 and is the author of two published books and over 100 articles on PHP
technologies. John also is an active contributor to the PHP core as the author
of the tidy extension, a member of the Zend Education Advisory Board, and a frequent
speaker at PHP related conferences worldwide. His web site, http://www.coggeshall.org/ is an excellent
resource for any PHP developer.
Discussion:
Q: John, thank you for sharing your
authoritative views on PHP with our audience!
A: Of course, I'm more than happy to be
involved.
Q: Describe
your experiences at Camp CAEN and how you got started with PHP.
A: CAEN didn't really shape my involvement
with PHP, but it was where I was first introduced to the language. It was back
in 1997 or so, and while I was in the CAEN labs, a friend of mine pointed me to
php.net for the first time. I started playing around with the PHP 3.0 beta and I
soon downloaded a copy of MySQL as well. Once I saw how easy it was for me to
write database-driven web applications, I was hooked and never looked back.
Q: How about your time at Kettering and
with Delta Tau Delta?
A: College, in general, was where things
really started taking off for me and PHP. Between CAEN and my freshmen year at
Kettering, I had become a frequent poster to the php-generals mailing list
where I would constantly be answering questions about PHP-related things. It
was from all the time that I spent there that I got noticed as an author. And
by the time I joined Delta Tau Delta at Kettering, I had started my writing
career. It was a very good call for me professionally, because I could fit it
in around my studies without killing myself. As I continued through college, I
found myself complementing everything I had learned in the field with my
studies. It made for a really killer combination.
Q: From your time as author of Zend�s Code
Gallery Spotlight, what are the ten most common PHP problems and can you
provide an overview of their solutions?
A: The ten most common PHP problems and
solutions? That's almost an article within itself I think. Still, looking back
at the Spotlight column, topics such as E-mail, HTML Forms, Data Validation,
and generation of things like PDF documents were all very popular columns. I
still get the occasional e-mail about them from time to time and most were
written almost 4 years ago. I think that�s because I always tried to address a
very specific topic and to give a front-to-back solution to it. I don't think I
can just �pull out of the air� ten problems that everyone encounters today,
because PHP is now used in so many more ways than it used to be back then.
Q: Can you comment on your articles
featured in the the php|architect publication?
A: I've written a few articles for
php|architect. I think three features to be exact. The first is an article
about SQLite, a great new relational database extension for PHP, which doesn't operate
on a client/server model. That's really useful because it gives you a way to
write applications which are database dependent without making a �heavy�
database like MySQL or Oracle a requirement to use it. Basically, it's like
using SQL to work with flat-file databases.
I believe it was my second piece which was
featured on the cover � the IntSmarty project. IntSmarty is a technology to
solve the problem of multi-lingual web site development by harnessing the
Smarty templating engine for PHP. It's different from other solutions because
it allows you to put logic into your translation tables so when you do a
translation, you can actually do it properly. This is most valuable when doing
things with numbers, �I have X apples� for instance. What if X is zero? The
phrase then should be, �I have no apples�. If X is 1 the proper phrase is, �I
have 1 apple�. Even in English alone we need to apply logic to the actual language
of our application, and IntSmarty allows us to do that.
The third article I published with
php|architect was an overview of PHP 5. It discusses all of the awesome new
technologies you can find in it, such as the drastically improved object model
and the new PHP 5 extensions that improve PHP's support for everything from the
everyday HTML page to Web services.
Q: Discuss your involvement with and some tips
for: PHP Tidy, BLENC, and Pure.
A: These are all projects of mine which are
at varying degrees of stability. Tidy, BLENC, and Pure are all extensions for
PHP 5. The tidy extension is a part of the standard PHP distribution and gives
you the ability to manipulate HTML documents in a way never before available to
PHP. For instance, with tidy you can automatically �tidy� up user-submitted
HTML and correct errors like missing closing tags, unquoted attributes, and
more. BLENC stands for �Blowfish encoded� and is designed to encrypt a PHP
script to keep unwanted eyes out of it. Although it's not the most secure
approach, the primary reason I wrote it was for my work as a consultant. When
you write code for a client you really don't want them messing around with it. If
they manage to break it, they almost always come back to you wanting it fixed.
I wanted a way to encrypt scripts that worked transparently to PHP so this is
what I came up with. Pure is a project I'm still working on releasing �
basically it can be described as a transparent �function cache� for PHP 5. You
give it the name of a function and it will automatically cache the results of
that function call in shared memory, based on the parameters it was given.
Then, next time you call that function with the same parameters, it'll simply
return the result without executing the function for whatever length of time.
This sort of partial-caching of select functions can really improve the performance
of an application.
Q: What essential points can you share on
topics ranging from Smarty to SQLite?
A: Well, thinking of those two technologies
specifically, the first thing that comes to mind is that it's important to
apply the right tool to the right job. Smarty is an excellent template engine
for PHP, but it's not for everyone to use all of the time. Understanding the
technologies behind web application development is more than just knowing how
to code, but rather knowing enough about the strengths and limitations to pick
the right tool for the job. For instance, although SQLite is a great technology
it�s not very well suited when you have to do a lot of writing to the database
concurrently. Then again, you can also use it to quickly make tables in memory
and perform queries against them � very cool if you are taking data from a
third-party non-relational source and need some quick analysis of it. Same
thing goes for Smarty, although it is a great template engine, you need to know
when you really need a template engine and when it's more trouble than it's
worth. Like I said, it's all about understanding the technologies.
Q: Please comment on PHP Fundamentals with
O�Reilly.
A: PHP Fundamentals is a column that has
been running for a very long time, but I have been too busy lately to do much
with it. The concept behind it was to provide a ground up set of articles,
teaching the basics of PHP for someone who has little programming experience.
Since it started it has now moved into more �advanced� subjects such as
databases and security. I try to write each article in the column in such a way
that by the end of it you really understand the important concepts. So if you
are just getting started, I would really recommend you check it out to get your
feet wet.
Q: Describe your most interesting projects
for Zend and share five helpful lessons with our audience.
A: Working with Zend has given me the
opportunity to really work with lot of high performance web sites, from the
entertainment to the financial industry. I've also had a great experience being
a member of the Zend Education Advisory Board which developed the PHP
certification test. All of the projects have presented unique challenges and I
really enjoyed the diversity. If I was to pick out five things I've learned
from my work I'd have to say these:
1)
Avoid 'whack-a-mole' problem
solving
All too often
when working with companies I see them trying to solve this problem, right now,
and not looking at the big picture. If you are having trouble with your web
site because of a bug, it�s really worth the time to step back and make sure
you are actually addressing the issue. I've seen too many people get into the
mindset where they see a bug and put in a band-aid fix, and then two days later
the same bug crops up somewhere else. Then they do it all over again without
ever really addressing the root of the problem. I call this 'whack-a-mole'
problem-solving because I always think of that game where the mole sticks his
head out from a hole so you hit him with a hammer, only to see him come out of
a different hole. That sort of problem-solving won't get you anywhere.
2)
Obscurity is not security
This is another
huge problem in PHP web sites that I've seen � security through obscurity. Too
many companies and too many developers write PHP applications which are
insecure, or they make the scary assumption that just because a URL isn't
linked to anywhere on the web site that no one will never know it's there. So
they don't protect it. Another great mistake that I see web sites make is their
blind trust and confidence in third party data. By this I mean taking a piece
of data from a third party source, (for instance, a form submission), and then
throwing that data straight into your application without doing anything at all
to make sure it's what you expected it to be. Not only does this sort of thing
make your applications less reliable, but sooner or later, malicious users will
figure out a way to take advantage of your neglect and will compromise your
applications.
3)
Cross site scripting attacks
This falls in
line with trusting user data, but it�s a big enough problem that I really think
it deserves its own point. Cross-site scripting attacks have become a favorite
way for malicious users to compromise the security of both companies and their
clients. Client-side scripting attacks occur when your web site accepts a piece
of unfiltered data from the user, stores it into the database, and then
displays that data to other users. The problem here is that because the data
was accepted originally without any filtering, it could contain anything �
including for instance, JavaScript code. When this data is then displayed to
other users, the JavaScript code executes and can do all sorts of scary things.
Again, I cannot stress this enough, always filter and validate data taken from
an outside source.
The second type
of cross site scripting attack I've experienced occurs on the server side and is
honestly probably much worst than the client-side version. In PHP, these
attacks are always related to URL wrappers available in PHP. For those who
might not know, URL wrappers are the ability to open a remote file resource
using standard file system functions such as fopen(), fgets(), etc. Even though
URL wrappers are very useful and powerful, failing to use them properly can
land you in all sorts of trouble. The most common problem is when the remote
resource being opened using this technology is determined by a variable which
might be compromised by the user. For instance:
����������� require_once(�$_LIBPATH/mylibrary.php�);
As a malicious
user, my goal here is to alter the value of $_LIBPATH from whatever it was to
say,
�http://www.coggeshall.org�
instead. If I can do that, then PHP will open up a HTTP connection to �http://www.coggeshall.org/mylibrary.php�
and execute whatever PHP code it finds there on the local server. This sort of
security hole basically gives a hacker the ability to execute anything they
want on your servers. I actually encountered this on a very popular web site �
by setting two GET parameters in the URL of their pages I could have their
servers download source code from my web server and execute it on theirs,
including having complete access to their databases. This is scary stuff, and
people need to make sure they are aware of the potential vulnerabilities.
4)
Measure twice, cut once
Carpenters
around the world know that you always measure twice and cut once when you are
building something. I wish more web developers thought in these terms before
they went off coding as well. Architecture is worth the time early on to
develop � I don't care how little time you might have to actually finish the
project being worked on. All too often in my job I see companies with a
development staff which just started coding a web site without giving any
consideration to the architecture they needed to make their site work. Without
fail they always end up regretting it. Either the site ends up in the �whack-a-mole�
mentality or it simply can't scale when it really starts becoming popular. It
is always worth the time, early on, to think about what you have to build,
before you build it, because you'll waste more time later trying to fix it and will
still end up with an inferior product.
5)
The Manual is your friend
This isn't
really something I learned dealing with clients, but is, without a doubt, one
thing you have to learn if you are going to be a serious PHP developer. PHP is
an open source project, developed in large part by countless people
volunteering their personal time. Beyond the application itself, there is an
entire group of people who have done the same just to document PHP's abilities.
Before jumping on a mailing list and asking a question, or even worse,
expecting the PHP community to have a free customer support hot line, be
mindful of this and use the resources we've provided you first. It's not that
we people in the community are unhelpful mean jerks, but when someone obviously
hasn't taken a single moment to investigate the solution themselves before
asking someone else, it tends to wear on you. Reading a question where the
poster has obviously done their best to get the answer themselves is infinitely
more likely to get a truly helpful response than someone just wanting someone
else to do the legwork for them.
Beyond that,
while I am on the subject of the manual, let me also mention this: if you are
looking for a particular function to do something like word wrapping, text
formatting, etc., the odds are it already exists as an internal PHP function.
It's always worth taking a look in the manual to make sure PHP can't already do
what you need it to do before writing a custom function � internal functions
are easier to maintain and faster across the board.
Q: What are your favorite conference
topics? Can you give us a glimpse of what you will be talking about in the
future?
A: I don't know if I have a favorite topic
I like to talk about. Anything I'm at a conference speaking on is something
that I find very interesting to begin with. So I guess my favorite topics are
the ones that everyone else finds interesting too.
I'll be giving a number of talks this year:
PHP 5 and Web Services, Migrating from PHP 4 to PHP 5, Smarty, PHP 5 / Java integration,
and maybe even an Enterprise Architecture talk. They are all going to be great
talks so I hope to see some of your readers there!
Q: How will your book, PHP 5 Unleashed,
contribute to the success of its readers?
A: PHP 5 Unleashed is two years in the
making and I put a great deal of my life into making it the best PHP 5 book it
could be. It's 700+ pages, so beyond serving as an acceptable doorstop, it is
also completely packed with information on the entire range of PHP 5
technologies. Readers are going to love this book because it focuses on the
practical. It is organized in a way so that you can flip to a particular topic
and find what you need quickly. My code examples were all done so that not only
do they illustrate the concepts I'm trying to get across, but they also might
be useful to you just to cut/paste into your own applications. I also discuss a
number of non-PHP 5-specific technologies such as WML, Web Services, Data
Encryption and more. So even if you are still a PHP 4 developer, I think you'll
find this book to be a nice transition.
Q: What are your most treasured lessons you
want to share on regular expressions?
A: I definitely have a few things to say about
regular expressions � first, when it comes to PHP, 99% of the time if you are
going to write them, use the PCRE library instead of the POSIX library (the
preg_* functions instead of ereg_* functions). The PCRE is more supported and is
often just better at the job. Second, if you are the sort who has trouble
writing regular expressions, I have two pieces of advice for you:
1)
Don't use them.
Regular
expressions aren't for every problem, and often they are considerably slower
than just parsing out some data using the other string functions in PHP. If you
can do the same parsing of a string accurately using 2 or three lines of code
you're probably better off doing it that way.
2)
Find yourself a nice regular
expression helper. There are a number of programs out there which allow you to
paste in a test string and then write
your
regular expression. Good ones highlight the part your regular expression has
matched so far, show you what matches have been made if you are trying to pull
things out, and all and all are incredibly useful.
Q: Describe some of the ways to avoid
common pitfalls when building large sites around PHP.
A: As I said before, Architecture is the key.
But when building a large site specifically, make sure you are thinking in
terms of scalability. Your sites should come out-of-box ready to be scaled from
both the database and web server side of things. Understanding how to use
technologies such as MySQL master/slave replication is important. If you are
going to be using sessions make sure they are stored in the database so your
server farm can all get to them, and if for whatever reason you have to receive
files from the user at runtime (for instance, they need to be able to upload
files), those are likely best suited for a NFS mounted drive so there isn't any
lag between when the user uploads and when each server in the farm can get at
the uploaded image.
Q: What are your suggestions for
performance tuning PHP?
A: I've written a number of articles on
performance, but really the key to performance is in understanding where things
are slow in the first place. There are a number of options when trying to
profile a web site, and personally I recommend Zend Studio. I know I work for
Zend so maybe that endorsement doesn't carry a lot of weight, but I honestly
think it is the best profiler for PHP available. If you absolutely must go with
open source, the Xdebug extension is a good call, although it's not anywhere as
easy to use as Studio. Once you've identified what's slow there are a number of
options to speed things up. Zend again offers a number of enterprise-class
tools for this if you are running large sites (namely Zend Platform), but if
you are just the open-source Joe, you might want to look into open source
alternatives like APC or MMcache. No matter which product you use, simply
adding compiler caching is going to speed things up significantly. Beyond that,
if your code can't be optimized any faster you can start caching slower
function calls, and if possible, entire pages. If you do all of that, I think
you'll find that many of your problems are going to go away. (Not that it's
always easy to do everything I just said.)
Q: Do you have additional books planned in
the medium term?
A: Yes, as a matter of fact I do. I'm
currently getting started on my fourth book php|architect's Guide to
Programming Smarty which is going to cover Smarty from front to back. As
the title suggests, it's being published by php|architect and should be on the
shelves (and perhaps in PDF form) sometime this year.
Q: With your knowledge of key trends in
Open Source, what developments should we be following and why?
A: One thing that has really caught my eye
and gets me excited is that we're getting close to a world where an operating
system doesn't matter. As browsers become more feature rich and technologies
such as XUL emerge, full-fledged web based applications like an e-mail client
or word processor won't be such a far-fetched reality anymore. We're starting
to see it already with things such as Google's Gmail, but I think that's only
touching the surface of it all. I'm not ready to say anything more yet, but I
wouldn't be surprised if you saw things from me on this front for PHP in the
coming year. From a more philosophical point of view, the Internet has changed
from a focus on service and more toward information. As everything has matured
it's no longer about the technology behind making a book store or auction site,
it's about the database behind that site which adds the real value now. The
fact I can order something from my computer isn't cool anymore -- it's expected
� what's cool now is the 10 quality reviews I can read about each book, and
have someone show me other books which I'm probably also going to want too. Web
Services are going to allow us to start pulling these pieces of information
together and combining them in ways never before possible, and that's really
going to make for some really cool things down the road.
Q: John, can you provide some wide-ranging comments on
topics of your choice?
A: I see a number of different technologies and trends
coming together which are likely to drastically change the way people think and
live in general in the world.
The first is a no-brainer - the maturing of the Internet has
forever altered our ability to retrieve information and communicate with the
world. It�s more than just the Internet in general though, I think what it has
enabled is even more interesting.
Topic 1:
Social Software programs and Internet Identity
The first thing is the idea of Social Software, programs
which allow you to share your thoughts and ideas with the world, meet new
people, and keep in contact with old friends. Although I don't really think
Social Networking sites have really matured yet (such as Orkut, Friendster,
etc.), you can start to see the business-centric ones such as LinkedIn take
shape.
I also think this is where companies like Sxip, who are
pushing for the adoption of an Internet Identity, will start to make real
progress because the concept of Internet Identity is useful. However, I don't
think anyone will be successful in making it a reality without piggy-backing it
on another social technology. In any case, as we move forward, I think you'll see
these sorts of networks not only become more useful but also much more
integrated than they are today, amongst each other as well as with related
technologies. Although it's hard to predict how exactly, I wouldn't be
surprised if five years from now your phone's address book was integrated with
these networks and you had all of this information at your fingertips at all
times. Hey, maybe our children will be using them to get that number for their
hot date on Saturday - you never know for sure. It's an interesting thought -
I'm sure that being able to view the social network of the person our children
are dating would offer some sense of comfort to us techie parents!
Topic 2:
Smart Phones
On the note of phones, another piece of the technology
puzzle that I think will open up a ton of doors for technologies like PHP is
the growth of the Smart Phone. When you blur the line between computer and
phone and start carrying around a wireless link to the Internet in your pocket
(with a decent interface and bandwidth), there are a lot of really slick things
you can do. As these Smart Phones become more affordable and accepted, I think
they will without a doubt launch a whole new massive market for business and
development online. It will enable things like the social-network in your
pocket and I really think it�s a critical piece to things advancing down the
road. I believe, ultimately, anything that puts more information in a
digestible format at your fingertips is going to become an invaluable piece of
society in general.
Topic 3:
Effects of technology on the family
As far as more personal aspects of things, I guess I can
talk a little bit about them. To begin I am a very happy father of a beautiful
daughter -- her name is Diana Katheryn Coggeshall. When I think about the
future of technology, I try to imagine how she'll use it someday all those
years down the road. My Grandmother lived from the days of the �horse and
carriage� to the �first man on the moon� and beyond; that has always been
amazing to me. Thinking about all that happened in her lifetime makes me
excited about all of the things that I'll see in mine. When I think about how
much Diana will see in her lifetime on top of that, I'm just blown away and it
makes me really appreciate the opportunities I have in shaping the technology
of the future. That said, I actually still do love to program, although to be honest,
not really so much in PHP. I would much rather be writing a new extension for
PHP using C than using a new extension from within PHP. Maybe it's just going
back to my roots, but there is just something about not having a safety net
when I program that I find stimulating. In either case, I find it all very
exciting and love being a part of it.
Topic 4:
Zend
Last but not least I guess I can talk a little bit about the
future of Zend. I haven't been working for Zend for very long, however if I had
to choose a single word to describe the future of the company, I'd pick
"bright". They have been incredibly good to me in my short time
there.Although I cannot discuss details, I can say that I know first hand their
devotion and drive for success in making PHP the single best language for web
application development in the world. It's an exciting place to work and I'm
very happy to be involved in the organization.
Q: John, we look forward to seeing future
contributions from you. Thank you again for your time, and consideration in
doing this interview.
A: Thank you for taking the time to
interview me. It was a pleasure answering your questions and I hope you've
found what I've said to be insightful.
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