So the next step was to make a pear package out of it so that other projects could extend out of it and also to free the developer of the include path hell that php offers and as part of the exercise, I ran my code past php code sniffer. However good the tool is, its lacking on part of documentation (or atleast i couldn’t find much) and its obscure error messages only meant that I would have to dig into the code to find out what exactly it was looking for. So here are some of them of the obscure ones:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 2 ERROR(S) AND 0 WARNING(S) AFFECTING 1 LINE(S)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 2 | ERROR | Missing file doc comment
 2 | ERROR | Missing class doc comment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There isn’t any documentation that points out what it actually means with file document and class document. It turns out that it needs documentation about the class as well as the class, usually the same if there is only one level. Here is what I put in my class file to satisfy that.

/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@lalaland.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/
/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@lalaland.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/

Here’s the next one:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 0 ERROR(S) AND 1 WARNING(S) AFFECTING 1 LINE(S)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 10 | WARNING | PHP version not specified
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now typically you would expect another @tag but its just * PHP version 5 that you need to add. This is what the final version looks like:

/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
* PHP version 5
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@ipcmedia.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/
/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@ipcmedia.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/
class IPC_Test_Config

I hope this post if useful for anyone who wants to use a code sniffer to ensure that the quality of code is kept to its highest.

This is what you would get if you have a similar problem:

% curl -k https://www.yahoo.com
curl: (1) Protocol https not supported or disabled in libcurl

The problem is that you would usually have something that depends on curl so you cant install the version of curl with its variant straightaway, so you will first need to remove the dependent first, then remove curl and clean up the install and then finally install curl with its ssl variant followed by its dependents.

The steps are something like this:

busybox:web rp$ sudo port uninstall curl @7.19.3_0 curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
--->  Unable to uninstall curl 7.19.3_0, the following ports depend on it:
--->  	php5
Error: port uninstall failed: Please uninstall the ports that depend on curl first.
busybox:web rp$ sudo port uninstall curl @7.19.3_0 curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
busybox:web rp$ sudo port uninstall php5
--->  Deactivating php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite
--->  Uninstalling php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite
busybox:web rp$ sudo port uninstall curl @7.19.3_0 curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
--->  Deactivating curl @7.19.3_0
--->  Uninstalling curl @7.19.3_0
--->  Uninstalling curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
busybox:web rp$ sudo port install php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite
Error: Requested variants do not match original selection.
Please perform 'port clean curl' or specify the force option.
Error: The following dependencies failed to build: curl
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
busybox:web rp$ sudo port clean curl
--->  Cleaning curl
busybox:web rp$ sudo port clean php5
--->  Cleaning php5
busybox:web rp$ sudo port clean php5
--->  Cleaning php5
busybox:web rp$ sudo port clean curl
--->  Cleaning curl
busybox:web rp$ sudo port clean php5
busybox:web rp$ sudo port install curl +ssl
--->  Fetching curl
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for curl
--->  Extracting curl
--->  Configuring curl
--->  Building curl
--->  Staging curl into destroot
--->  Installing curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
--->  Activating curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
--->  Cleaning curl
busybox:web rp$ sudo port install php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite
--->  Fetching php5
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for php5
--->  Extracting php5
--->  Applying patches to php5
--->  Configuring php5
--->  Building php5
--->  Staging php5 into destroot
Warning: php5 requests to install files outside the common directory structure!
--->  Installing php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite

If this is your first install, you might want
cd /opt/local/apache2/modules
/opt/local/apache2/bin/apxs -a -e -n "php5" libphp5.so

* copy  /opt/local/etc/php.ini-dist to  /opt/local/etc/php.ini
--->  Activating php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite
--->  Cleaning php5

So here’s the url that I was looking for. 

http://testsite.rajatpandit.com/university/Indian_institute_of_management_ahemdabad.html

I got to the point where I had functional code which gave me URLs like these:

http://testsite.rajatpandit.com/university/id/1

These are the steps to convert the URLs are humanly understandable.
Step 1:
Add additional field to the university table to store the modified name. So update the schema to addt the additional field.
[yml]
university:
_attribute: {phpName: University}
id: {type: integer, required: true, primaryKey: true, autoincrement: true}
name: varchar(256)
stripped_name: varchar(256)
website: varchar(256)
country: varchar(2)
city: varchar(256)
body: longvarchar
approved: boolean
created_at:
updated_at:
[/yml]

Obviously you would need to do the regular to regenerate the models.

#symfony propel-build-model
#symfony propel-build-sql
#symfony propel-insert-sql

or do it all in one easy step.

#symfony propel-build-all

Step 2:
Now modify the model to update the new column (stripped_name) every time the standard setName($v) is called. For that we need to have a helper function that does this. Here’s the code I used, you can use your own version.

function stripText($text) {
  $text = strtolower($text);
  $text = preg_replace('/\W/', ' ', $text);
  $text = preg_replace('/\ +/', '_', $text);
  $text = preg_replace('/\-$/', '', $text);
  $text = preg_replace('/^\-/', '', $text);
  return $text;
}

I create a new file called CustomHelper.php and store in under lib/helper/ and then update the model class for University to override the function setName($v) with the following function.

public function setName($v)
  {
    include_once('lib/helper/CustomHelper.php');
    parent::setName($v);
    $this->setStrippedName(stripText($v));
  }

That will ensure that the new column stripped_name gets updated.

Step 3:
Update your php template where you create the links to the following code.

<ul>
  <?php foreach($universities as $university): ?>
    <li>
      <?php echo link_to($university->getName(), '@university_display?stripped_name=' . stripText($university->getName())); ?>
    </li>
  <?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

and update the routing.yml to match the routing name used.

[yml]
article_display:
url: /article/:stripped_title.html
param: {module: home, action: article}
[/yml]
The routing rule reads out like this,
When you see the url containing /article/<something>.html redirect it to module: home to its action article and assign a request parameter <stripped_html> to <something>.

and that’s all you need to do to get your urls look all nice and clean.