I found the new way to do it …on Windows Vista! Now, the name of the folder becomes invisible but also the folder itself. A great way to create a (more or less) secret folder on your desktop!

The original post:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/create-invisible-folder/

There is no big changes since PHP 4 except the visibility. Now variables can be public, protected or public. This is not a big behavior as every object-oriented language has defined this. Basically, you simply declare your properties like this:

class MyObject {
public $myProperty;
}

If you look carefully in the PHP documentation, you will find you can access your property simply writing $myInstance->myProperty where $myInstance is an instance of the object (as for any other language).

Which is interesting is the capability of PHP (same for Ruby, I do agree) to be fully dynamic. Then you can retrieve all the properties available (and their values) through the get_object_vars($myInsance) call. Then you get all your properties in an array (which is a hash table or a Map for Java developers).

This is good, then you know how to get the properties dynamically: if you have the name of the property stored in a variable, you get its value as show above. What about setting the value of a property?

Well, I try to find the answer in Google but I failed. No way to set dynamically a property (except using the __set() method but this one do not work on declared properties!). I looked for a set_object_vars() method, but nothing!

In fact, it is VERY simple: $myInstance->$propertyName is the solution. Simply note the “$” sign after the “->”: it means $propertyName is not the property name but a variable having the property name stored inside. That’s all. Very simple but no way to find it in a blog or in PHP documentation.

To be clear: $myInstance->$propertyName is equivalent to $myInstance->myProperty when $propertyName = "myProperty". See the code below (I changed names), at the end, the code will display “It works!”:

<?php
  class TestIt {
  	public $hook;
  }

  $o = new TestIt();
  $varname = "hook";
  $o-&gt;hook = "Initial value";
  $o-&gt;$varname = "It works!";

  echo $o-&gt;hook;
?>

Impressive (and amazing), isn’t it?

Then I should be able to create a fully dynamic library to manipulate data between the database, the entity as an mapped object/relational and a simple form to input the data. If I have to write something in PHP, I will publish the code.

As a conclusion of the article: “Although MDM is still very important, it’s becoming increasingly more effective to approach deployment of enterprise mobile Apps from the very start of the development process.”

The complete article from Chris Shroeder at Mobile Orchard: click here.

Strings switch

It is new (even C/C++ does not include this feature) and very useful. From now, You can directly use the strings as arguments for the results of a switch:

switch( cheese ){
  case "Camembert" : return FRANCE;
  case "Cheddar" : return UNITED_KINGDOM;
}

It is a revolution. I hope they use the hash code of the strings to optimize the switch (I don’t know) but in any case, it is a very useful way to work with simple text analysis.

A complete example can be found at http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/nutsandbolts/examples/StringSwitchDemo.java  (see also the end of the page of the Java tutorial).

Multiple throw

Another frustrating syntax was linked to the try/catch. Especially when you want to catch multiple exceptions related to the same stuff (XML parsing for example can generate several type of exceptions, same when you use introspection).

Now, you can catch several exceptions by using the pipe (“|”) character. You can then write:

try {
...
}
 catch( DOMException|ParseException ex ){
...
}

OpenJDK

OpenJDK is now available in version 7. Then open source is not yet broken by Oracle. Note the OpenJDK is not available for Windows where the official Sun release is the only available.

I am sure now you will buy one.

A more complete article at http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/16/google-maps-5-0-hits-android-includes-new-3d-map-view-and-offli/

Of course, the appointment is in the room 404.

More information (in French): http://www.unige.ch/presse/archives/2011/web.html

I recommand two articles:

• The first one is about IPv6 privacy.
• The second one is also about the IPv6 but discussion includes the replacement of our old-fashion DNS.

I think freedom of Internet is included in the low-level protocols. Do you share this idea?