I've previously shown you why you may want to put some tasks through a queuing system, what sort of jobs you could define, plus how to keep a worker process running for as long as you would like (but still be mindful of problems that happen).

In this post, I'll show you how to put the messages into the queue, and we'll also make a start on reading them back out.
Continue reading "Doing the work elsewhere - Adding a job to the queue"

I'm taking a slight diversion now, to show you how the main worker processor runs. There are two parts to it - the actual worker, written in PHP, and the script that keeps running it. Continue reading "Doing the work elsewhere - Sidebar - running the worker"

The use of Beanstalkd as a queueing system

What is an asynchronous queue

The classic wikipedia quote (Message queue)

In computer science, message queues and mailboxes are software-engineering components used for interprocess communication, or for inter-thread communication within the same process. They use a queue for messaging – the passing of control or of content. Group communication systems provide similar kinds of functionality.

So one part of a system puts a message into a queue for another part to read from, and then act upon. The asynchronous nature means that each side is otherwise independent from the other, and does not wait for a response. That independence is an important part of the nature of the system though – and we’ll see later how some of the more advanced functionality for our software of choice here can give some extraordinary flexibility to what can be done.

Continue reading "Doing the work elsewhere - Asynchronous Message Queues"

Phew. That would have been embarrassing if I’d not passed my ZCE on Thursday afternoon.

The rant on how useful it actually is though, will be coming early next week.

Back at the PHP London Conference at the end of February, iBuildings was offering a little test, with prize for people that could do well answering the sort of questions that are on the ZCE exam. Never one to turn down something for free, I took ten minutes to answer the eight questions. A few weeks later, I get an email from them/Zend to say I’d won the chance to take an exam – ZCE, or ZFE (Zend Framework). Although I use ZF, I don’t know it well enough to begin to pass any exam, so as I’ve still not had the chance to take it, I figured, why not take it on their dime?

About 14 months ago, I’d bought 5 tries on the PHPArch-based ‘Vulcan’ test prep exam. Today, I’ve come back to it, and gone through it again. Like last time, the test (practice and real) is scheduled to take up to 90 minutes, but I had whipped through them all in 45 minutes, I have finished the 70 questions.

I’m amused by the fact the only part of this I failed was ‘Basic Language’. The first time around it was design patterns. Either way, now I’ve got some time, I’m going to schedule the test for quite possibly later this week and see about getting the paperwork for it.

It’s also still 7 ‘EXCELLENT’s, and a fail – just in different places :-)

Category	Grade
XML & Web Services	PASS
Arrays	PASS
Web Features	EXCELLENT
Basic Language	FAIL
Streams and Network Programming	PASS
Database Access	PASS
String Manipulation and Regular Expressions	EXCELLENT
PHP 4/5 differences	EXCELLENT
Security	EXCELLENT
OOP	EXCELLENT
Functions	EXCELLENT
Design	EXCELLENT

Overall : EXCELLENT

After my little trip out yesterday to Google Dev Day 2008 (London) at Wembley – I thought I’d post some pics I took of the day, or more precisely, of what my Elephpant got up to. You can see them on the Elephpant at GoogleDevDay08 Flickr set page.

Also, some link love to to http://www.elephpantworldtour.com/ for the idea of taking the cute little blue guy along.