M5 has been released.

Some highlights provided in M5:

• Persisting Global Context zones, e.g., /app and /user
• Support for launching Zero applications through a light-weight daemon
  • Therapeutic recycling of Zero applications
• ZRM
  • Dojo Data API implementation for ZRM
  • Model declaration changes to language agnostic JSON
• Connection API enhancements
  • Protocol extension for JMS
• Command Line
  • Removed dependency on ANT
• Installer
  • Win32, Linux and Mac

• PHP
  • Multibyte String Functions
  • MySQL Functions

• Flow
  • Invoke REST services via URL templates
  • Integrated in the Web IDE

• Web IDE
  • Application creation
  • Start/stop application
  • HTML, Flow and text editors

For a more complete list of new features, see M5 Features.

For information regarding all the URLs for the M5 installer, zips, docs and update sites, see the following forum post.

- Michael

On Friday I attended the PHP London Conference which is organised by the local PHP London user group which several members of the Project Zero team regularly attend.

Ant Phillips gave an enjoyable and informative talk on PHP in Project zero which was very well attended; In fact they closed the doors once 10 people were sitting on the floor. After Ant's talk it was great to be able to talk to many members of the PHP community in London about the possibilities for PHP working together with Java and Groovy. The "best of both worlds" message seemed to resonate with attendees.

Another colleague, Zoe Slattery gave a talk on testing the PHP implementation. PHP as a language has an extensive but as yet incomplete set of tests. Zoe is a leading member of a community effort to create the remainder of the tests needed to reach a completely test specified language. The talk went down a storm and I'm sure she will have recruited some more PHP community members to the PHP Test fest events which will be happening around the globe in May.

I want to take a moment to thank the PHP London team. The conference was superbly organised by the team of volunteers led by Paul Morgan and of course assisted by a large number of elephpants..

The slides from Ant's talk on PHP in project Zero are below.

Rob Nicholson

M4 has been released.

Some highlights provided in M4:

• Configuration file improvements
  • better error handling/reporting
• JSON API improvements
  • simplified encoding/decoding APIs
  • better performance
• ZRM
  • Paging support
• Zero launcher
• Connection API enhancements
• Updateable command line

• PHP
  • Multibyte String Functions
  • Image Functions
  • MySQL Functions

• Flow
  • Groovy access/update of XML DOM
  • Tooling improvements

For a more complete list of new features, see M4 Features.

For information regarding all the URLs for the M4 zips, docs and update sites, see the following forum post.

- Michael

Following on from Rob's blog about running phpBB as a Project Zero application under Eclipse, I thought it would be interesting to show how straightforwards it is to get phpBB running using the Zero command line. The following instructions are adapted from Rob's originals.

* Follow the instructions? to install Project Zero CLI. Make sure you point to latest repository http://www.projectzero.org/update/zero.eclipse.php.latest/ rather than a milestone repository.

• Create a new Zero PHP project called e.g. phpBB, by running "zero create phpBB -template zero:zero.php.application.template"
• Get PhpBB version 3.0 and unzip it into the public directory of this new project so that in the public directory there are directories such as "adm" and "includes" (You may need to remove a level of directory heirarchy to achieve this.)
• Download and set up Mysql Community Edition 5.1 and create a database for use by phpBB.
• We need to add the mysql database connector to the project. This is available in Maven so simply add the following line to config/ivy.xml :

      <dependency name="mysql-connector-java" org="mysql" rev="5.1+"/>

• Ensure that the following extensions exist (uncommented) in php.ini:

extension=php_calendar
extension=php_ctype
extension=php_zlib
extension=php_pcre
extension=php_ldap
extension=php_hash
extension=php_xml
extension=php_gd
extension=php_iconv
extension=php_standard
extension=php_date
extension = zero.php.JSONExtension
extension = zero.php.NetworkExtension
extension = zero.php.URIUtilsExtension
extension = com.ibm.p8.library.db.MysqlLibrary

• Add public to the php include path in php.ini:

include_path = "<path to project>/public";

• Resolve the project by running "zero resolve" in the application's home directory
• Start the project by running "zero run" in the application's home directory
• Browse to the project and work through the installation pages.
• You should be able to accept all of the defaults with the exception of email. We are still working on email support from PHP so you'll have to disable that during the installation. Do this by setting "Enable board-wide e-mails:" to "disabled" in the email-settings options.

I found this to work equally well on Linux and Windows, but if you find differently please let us know via a bugzilla, or post in the forums. Thanks!

Iain Lewis

Whilst the objective for PHP support in Project Zero is much wider than simply running existing applications, the ability to do so is an important proof point for compatibility. I blogged last year about our plans to use well known PHP applications to shape our priorities as we build out the PHP extension libraries and we have been busy executing that plan.

I am delighted to be able to announce that it is now possible to install and run PhpBB 3.0 on Project Zero. The procedure is very simple:

• Follow the instructions to install Project Zero Eclipse with PHP. Make sure you point to latest repository http://www.projectzero.org/update/zero.eclipse.php.latest/ rather than a milestone repository.
• Create a new Zero PHP project. In Eclipse: File->New->Project Zero PHP Application.
• Get PhpBB version 3.0 and unzip it into the public directory of this new project so that in the public directory there are directories such as "adm" and "includes" (You may need to remove a level of directory heirarchy to achieve this.)
• Download and set up Mysql Community Edition 5.1 and create a database for use by phpBB.
• We need to add the mysql database connector to the project. This is available in Maven so simply add the following line to config/ivy.xml :

      <dependency name="mysql-connector-java" org="mysql" rev="5.1+"/>

• Ensure that the following extensions exist (uncommented) in php.ini:

extension=php_calendar
extension=php_ctype
extension=php_zlib
extension=php_pcre
extension=php_ldap
extension=php_hash
extension=php_xml
extension=php_gd
extension=php_iconv
extension=php_standard
extension=php_date
extension = zero.php.JSONExtension
extension = zero.php.NetworkExtension
extension = zero.php.URIUtilsExtension
extension = com.ibm.p8.library.db.MysqlLibrary

• Add public to the php include path in php.ini:

include_path = "<path to project>/public";

• Resolve and start the project.
• Browse to the project and work through the installation pages.
• You should be able to accept all of the defaults with the exception of email. We are still working on email support from PHP so you'll have to disable that during the installation. Do this by setting "Enable board-wide e-mails:" to "disabled" in the email-settings options.

Once you are all set up, PhpBB runs pretty cleanly on Zero on both Windows and Linux. We have not tried this yet on the Mac and we are still working though all of the functions in PhpBB so there may well be things that are broken. If you find something that does not work then we would like to hear about it. Please either open a bugzilla, or post in the forums.…Thanks!

Rob Nicholson