Archive for Articleswithout synopsis

PHP's Type System

PHP was created to be dynamically typed, yet it is slowly being converted to be statically/strictly typed. his article explains the diferences between the two type systems, how they arose, and why the option to add strict typing to PHP has been mishandled.

Published: 29 March 2025

What is a "User Transaction"?

In many of the articles on my website I refer to something called a User Transaction, but some people do not know what exactly it means. This article provides the answers.

Published: 17 March 2025

Geoprise celebrates Radicore awards

Geoprise, the company behind the GM-X Application Suite, is proud to announce the awards recently won by Tony Marston who is the Geoprise R&D Director as well as the author of the RADICORE framework which lies at the heart of GM-X.

Published: 07 March 2025

Global Awards Winner 2024/25

RADICORE has won an award for Software Design Service of the Year for the second time!

Published: 01 March 2025

Developer Awards 2024 - Best Open Source RAD toolkit

RADICORE has won an award for Best Open Source Rapid Application Develeopment Toolkit 2024

Published: 11 November 2024

Global Awards Winner 2023/24

RADICORE has won an award for Software Design Service of the Year

Published: 28 July 2024

Support for PHP4 dropped, support for PHP7 started

Version 2.00.0 officially drops support for PHP4 and starts support for PHP7. This has required updating all class files to replace the PHP4 constructors with the alternative constructors which were made available in PHP5.

Published: 01 October 2016

Why you should build your web application back-to-front

This article describes why, when building a front end website and a back end management application, it would be best to start at the back and leave the front till last.

Published: 06 January 2013

What is the 3-Tier Architecture?

By splitting an application's code into 3 layers - Presentation, Business and Data Access - the 3-Tier Architecture provides much more than the rarely used ability to switch from one DBMS to another. It also provides the ability to share the same Business layer with multiple Presentation layers at the same time, such as with a back-end Administrative application and one or more front-end websites. This article describes how an application can be split into different tiers or layers, and the benefits which can be made from making such a split.

Published: 14 October 2012

What is a Framework?

This article explains the difference between a "library" and a "framework".

Published: 10 April 2012

An end-to-end eCommerce solution requires more than a fancy website

This article explains that an eCommerce solution requires more than a fancy front-end website, and shows how an ERP system developed with RADICORE can be used as the back-end to provide a complete end-to-end solution.

Published: 09 March 2012

Using Radicore components in a front-end website

This article shows how to use Radicore components with a different presentation layer, such as in a front-end website.

Published: 01 June 2009

Web Site vs Web Application

This article shows that a web site is not the same as a web application.

Published: 01 September 2008

Working with a stateless protocol

This article shows how RADICORE deals with HTTP's stateless protocol, avoids using GETS to change state, uses buttons instead of hyperlinks to jump to other pages without displaying primary keys in the URL, avoids problems with the browser's BACK button, and allows multiple browser windows from the same client.

Published: 10 March 2006

Performing client-side XSL transformations

This article describes how the XSL transformations used by the RADICORE framework can be performed by the client's browser, thus reducing the load on the web server.

Published: 11 December 2005

Saving PHP's Session data to a database

This article shows how to switch PHP's session handling functions from a disk file to a database table.

Published: 04 July 2005

Client Clones and Server Sessions

This article show how the RADICORE framework allows the user to have multiple browser windows without causing any conflicts.

Published: 30 April 2005

A Flexible Tree Structure

This article shows how to deal with a flexible tree structure, from the database design to the screen display.

Published: 25 August 2004

Create XML files from SQL data in PHP 5

This shows how to use PHP 5's DOM extension to create an XML document from database data.

Published: 22 August 2004

Transforming XML into HTML with PHP 5

This shows how to use PHP 5's XSL extension to perform XSL Transformations in order to convert XML into HTML.

Published: 22 August 2004

Reusable XSL Stylesheets and Templates

Instead of having a separate XSL stylesheet for each HTML page, with he field names hard-coded, this article shows how to make your XSL Stylesheets more reusable by passing the field names in with the XML document.

Published: 31 March 2004

Back Button Blues

The browser's BACK button was designed in the days when all web pages were static, and its use can cause problems in modern web applications whose pages are dynamic. Although it is impossible to disable the BACK button, this article shows how potential problems can be detected and eliminated.

Published: 16 February 2004

Pagination - what it is and how to do it

This article show how to break a large number of records into smaller groups or pages. It shows how to construct the hyperlinks on the HTML document, and how to read the requested pages from the database.

Published: 05 January 2004

Dealing with null End Dates

This article shows how an end date which is blank to the user can be converted to a non-null value representing infinity on the database.

Published: 01 January 2004

Keeping a history of changes by date

This article shows how to deal with the situation where an object can be given a set of values with different start and end dates so that only one of those values is active on any given date.

Published: 01 January 2004

Producing a two-column, side-by-side view with XSL

Instead of a simple single-column view you may want to show two columns of row data side by side. This article shows how to do it with XSL.

Published: 22 December 2003

A reversible encryption routine for PHP

This article shows how to create a reversible encryption routine for PHP. The code is customisable so that each implementation can be unique.

Published: 14 June 2003

Customising the PHP error handler

This article show how to customise the PHP error handler so that it can deal with different errors in different and more sophisticated ways.

Published: 12 June 2003

A class for validating and formatting dates

This show how to create a class that will take a user-supplied date and format it so that it can be added to the database, and then to take a date from the database and format for display to the user.

Published: 09 June 2003

Dealing with Many-to-Many relationships

This article shows how to handle a Many-to-Many relationship with PHP and MySQL.

Published: 21 May 2003

Transforming XML into HTML with PHP 4

This shows how to use PHP 4's Sablotron extension to perform XSL Transformations in order to convert XML into HTML.

Published: 18 May 2003

Create XML files from SQL data in PHP 4

This shows how to use PHP 4's DOM XML extension to create an XML document from database data.

Published: 04 May 2003

Generating a tree view using XSL and XML

This article shows how to create an HTML page containing data in a tree view using XSL and XML, with nodes that can be expanded and contracted individually or collectively.

Published: 01 April 2003

Generating dynamic web pages using XSL and XML

Instead of generating HTML directly from program code this article shows how to create web pages using pre-defined XSL stylesheets, with the program passing the necessar data by means of a dynamically created XML document.

Published: 01 February 2003