Hey!

[w101@mastodon.social]

@futurebird You can use it as a bridge between APIs + use cron to run the script automatically in intervals:
- build a bot that posts an interesting quote / dad joke on Mastodon
- build a script that messages you the latest weather report in your area every few hours

If you want to skip the cron part just put it on a webserver to render a local shell command - e.g. cowsay + random funny quote

[jollyorc@social.5f9.de]

@futurebird I keep wanting to build a simple webapp that feeds a digital GM screen, but I have too-many-projects-syndrome, so I'll probably never get around to that: One UI would allow you to choose a picture from a gallery, the other simply shows the chosen picture full screen on a different device, changing it only when a "change now!" button is pressed.

[fruitcakesareyum@mastodon.social]

@futurebird

I still use PHP both for hobby localhost webdev and also for local Linux scripting.

In the past, I made a script that monitored a folder for new files and then moved the files to subfolders depending on the extension.

I've also made a sort of dynamic class to handle MariaDB tables without having to make new handlers for every new table (I would just make a definition class that the dynamic class would then use).

PHP was the first language I learned 25 years ago. I love it.

[fruitcakesareyum@mastodon.social]

@futurebird

For the first one, I used incron. I'm not sure if it's still available in modern Linux. I'm guessing it is, since cron is also still being used.

[girgias@phpc.social]

@futurebird first thing I ever built with it when I was a teen was a public chatroom that used the HTML `<meta http-equiv="Refresh">` tag to update the room. Somewhat janky but quite fun.

[ben@mastodon.lubar.me]

@futurebird decades ago, I made an IRC bot in PHP because it was the only language I had access to

there was also a period of time where I was running a RuneScape grand exchange website scraper that would update the RuneScape wiki and that was written in PHP too

[nyamsprod@phpc.social]

@futurebird back in the days I remember PHP and simple HTML being used to do some comics cover generator ... but I suppose this is now a bit risky with all the legal issue around intellectual properties. But it should be easy and fun do to a similar engine for something else I guess

[futurebird@sauropods.win]

@nyamsprod

What is a "comics cover generator" ? Like a meme maker where you can change the text?

[nyamsprod@phpc.social]

@futurebird yes for instance Let's say you take the last One Piece manga cover and you could change the title of the chapter. Of course it meant having the exact font on the server and so forth

[nyamsprod@phpc.social]

@futurebird you can recreate something like this too https://pufa.afup.org/

[futurebird@sauropods.win]

@nyamsprod

This is mostly done with javaScript right? What is the role of the PHP?

[nyamsprod@phpc.social]

@futurebird php handle the result, the persistence layer how each word are chosen for each days javascript is used for presentation only but the bulk of it (the logic) is PHP

[ben@s.djehuti.com]

@shovemedia @futurebird Check out Phabricator and Arcanist. Phab is like a GitHub in PHP; arc is its command line client. Both are dead projects now afaik, but they show how you can do some pretty amazing stuff in PHP.

In a month or two I will finish eliminating our last uses of arcanist and will remove php from our internal Ubuntu distro, and the whole company will clap.

But if you do want to use php, Arcanist is a great example.

Apparently there's a successor, Phorge, but I don't know anything about it.

Phacility - Phabricator

(phacility.com)

[david_chisnall@infosec.exchange]

@futurebird

I wrote a scrabble game in PHP (which, to avoid trademark issues, was called 'Leonard Da Quirm's Making Words Out Of Letters That Have Been Jumbled Up Game' (or whatever the correct quote was). It stored the game state as a serialised object in the filesystem after each move, so it could then give you a view of the entire game history at the end.

It was way back in 2003, so used a table for the board, but used some nice CSS styling to make the tiles look like tiles. Each empty slot on the board was a text box, so you would enter each letter in the place you wanted to put it. Doing your move was a complete form submit, which then checked that the letters you'd placed were ones that existed and then grep'd for the word you found in a word list file. I used grep in a child process initially because it was easy, but it also turned out to be really fast so I never bothered to make it faster.

We played it quite a bit when I was a student. I probably have the code somewhere, but it's almost certainly totally awful in every possible way and not something anyone should ever look at.

[jrf_nl@phpc.social]

@futurebird When I was first learning PHP I build a website to share my photos with my friends.

This was before Flickr, Insta etc etc.

Now with the move away from Big Tech, might yet again be an interesting idea to work on for teens ?

[futurebird@sauropods.win]

@nyamsprod

Nice!

[richrarobi@mastodon.social]

@futurebird
I had a book, back in the day, I think I gave it to charity.

I think the modern equivalent is "php & mysql in easy steps", the "php for dummies" should be good, too, they usually are.

World of books have them both at less than £5 (used)

[tomberend@hachyderm.io]

@futurebird uphill because PHP also means HTML (esp forms), JS, and CSS.

Here's a small learning game written in PHP. https://communityreading.org/math/

[c_salem@mastodon.social]

@futurebird when I was learning PHP, I used the nasa API to build a satellite visualizer. A bit basic but it works, for the most part.

[iagox86@infosec.exchange]

@futurebird @jollyorc When I was learning to program in the VB6 days, I made all kinds of character generators for my favorite RPGs