I’m cur­rently wri­t­ing a library of PHP stuff for our inter­nal use. I’ve been able to make it do a few fun tricks.

To express a query with a sub­query, I can now do this:
$sube = new Expression('subtable');
$sube->setResultField('id');
$sube->beginGroup('and');
$sube->addTerm('field1','=',$valueA);
$sube->addTerm('field2','< =','expr:now()');
$sube->endGroup;
$e = new Expression('table');
$e->addTerm('field2','not in',$sube);

$XQDB->getObjects($e);


I like that!

While wri­t­ing the code to handle a small form in PHP, I just rea­li­zed that I have a very bad habit — and many just do the same.

When I write a new file, I place all the includes at the very top, before anything else hap­pens. But in my cur­rent script, there are many code paths that do not require the major part of all those inclu­des. Only in one spe­ci­fic instance do we require the bulk of the code. Pre­viously, any invo­ca­tion of that script would have got­ten all the code drag­ged in. Now, I’ve moved the include to just where I need the code (basi­cally, going into a spe­ci­fic case of a lar­ger switch state­ment … And the load on the web ser­ver has just been redu­ced, wit­hout any change to the functionality.

So why do we all put the inclu­des on top?