To use localStorage in Firefox cookies must be allowed

In case a JavaScript generates a security error in Firefox when using localStorage, I found the advice to make sure the about:config property dom.storage.enabled to true.

But this is not enough! localStorage is only available if cookies are allowed for the domain that serves the web page with the script.

I find this strange, cookies are completely different things.

Smaller classes make better code

Tip: read In Praise of Small Classes and its follow-up Making Large Classes Small (In 5 Not-So-Easy Steps) about writing better code. Better here means:

• easier to read and understand, so easier to maintain
• less complex classes
• better testable classes
• a better class and package structure

PHP tip: omit ?> from PHP only files

Great tip from the Zend programmer’s Reference Guide: For files that contain only PHP code, the closing tag (”?>”) is never permitted..

This is useful as it prevents whitespace after the closing ?> from being accidentally added to the output. I always check PHP files for whitespace manually, but this technique solves that problem automatically. Great!

MySQL STRICT_TRANS_TABLES mode and truncated text values

I just upgraded Apache, PHP and MySQL to their current versions on my development system. After that a unit test of one of my PHP classes failed on inserting a row in a MySQL table. The test inserts text with a greater length than the maximum column length of a VARCHAR column.

This test fails because the new server runs with STRICT_TRANS_TABLES mode. It means that a inserted value must be equal to the stored value or the statement fails. Without the mode setting the inserted value is truncated to the column’s maximum length.