Joseph Wilk

Rspec-rails is a rails plugin which brings the Rspec Ruby Behaviour Driven Development framework to rails along with some rails specific helpers. One of these hugely useful helper functions is:

mock_model(model_class, options_and_stubs = {})

This creates a mock object with the common methods stubbed out. It also allows you to specify other methods you want to stub.
(more…)

When using Rspec stories you have plain text stories which we call the ‘story’ file and the ‘story steps’ file that maps the plain text story to programmatic code. Generally you end up with your story files not being DRY. This is not a worry, your stories are the domain specific languages detailing your acceptance/integration tests. Its like saying that your Rails Models are not DRY because they repeat lots of 'has_one'!
(more…)

We use the magic __call method in PHP which is called on an object when a declared function is called on it but it does not exist. This behaviour allows us to have default getters/setters but if we want specific behaviour for a get/set we just have to add the function to the class and __call will no longer be used for that class attribute.

1. class GetSetExample{
2.  
3. /**
4. * Dynamic getters and setters than maintain getX and setX formati. They can be overwritten
5. * if custom processing is needed
6. *
7. * @param string $method
8. * @param array $arguments
9. * @return mixed
10. */
11. function __call($method, $arguments) {
12.  
13. #Is this a get or a set
14. $prefix = strtolower(substr($method, 0, 3));
15.  
16. #What is the get/set class attribute
17. $property = substr($method, 3);
18.  
19. if (empty($prefix) || empty($property)) { #Did not match a get/set call
20. throw New Exception("Calling a non get/set method that does not exist: $method");
21. }
22.  
23. #Check if the get/set paramter exists within this class as an attribute
24. $match=false;
25. foreach($this as $class_var=>$class_var_value){
26. if(strtolower($class_var) == strtolower($property)){
27. $property=$class_var;
28. $match=true;
29. }
30. }
31.  
32. #Get attribute
33. if ($match && $prefix == "get" && (isset($this->$property) || is_null($this->$property)) {
34. return $this->$property;
35. }
36.  
37. #Set
38. if ($match && $prefix == "set") {
39. $this->$property = $arguments[0];
40. }
41. elseif (!$match && $prefix == "set"){
42. throw new Exception("Setting a variable that does not exist: var:$property value: $arguments[0]");
43. }
44. else{
45. throw new Exception("Calling a get/set method that does not exist: $property");
46. }
47. }
48.  
49. }

Curl on a Windows PHP installation does not know where to look for certificates. Hence when you try and curl a https url it fails. The default value for CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER is true which means curl will always try and validate ssl by default. I discovered this while working with an OpenID library (v1.2.3):
http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/

There is the option of disabling the verfication.


$ch=curl_init;
// set URL and other appropriate options
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);


But thats ignoring the problem and opening a security hole! Instead download a reputable Certificate bundle file, for example:

http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html

Then set CURLOPT_CAINFO with the location of your certificate bundle.


if( strtoupper (substr(PHP_OS, 0,3)) == 'WIN' ) {
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_CAINFO, 'C:/certificates/cacert.pem');
}