Blog
Compressing Serialized Objects in GET Parameters
by Jeremy Usher, Co-Founder, President
Many web applications face the common problem of parsing GET parameters to render a page. Most often, those parameters drive some sort of database operation that delivers the correct records or view; a process that might include pagination, searching, sorting or programmatic transformations of one kind or another. Regardless of whether you are using tools like Doctrine, ActiveRecord or the like to simplify and standardize this access, there is inevitably a step of sifting through parameters, sanitizing them, and structuring them to be compatible with the programming language that is ultimately responsible for the real maneuvering. It's a little like the object relational impedance mismatch applied to the structure of the Web vs. the structure of applications. If you have one or two parameters this is of little consequence, but sometimes it is useful to maintain more complete and structured information.
How Search Engines Work
by Jeremy Usher, Co-Founder, President
Search engines are complex, but it takes only a little knowledge and common sense to succeed.
Making the most of developing on Mac OS X.
by Jonathon Duckworth, Co-Founder, Director of Technical Services
Many people like using Mac OS X as their development platform, and for a good reason: modern versions of OS X already include a number of useful software packages — Apache, php, python, ruby, etc. — as part of their standard installation. But sometimes you need software that wasn’t included, or want a newer version of something. That’s where Homebrew comes in.
First Post
by Jeremy Usher, Co-Founder, President
Welcome to the Firefly, LLC blog. We’ll be using this area to discuss daily developments as well as store various insights, snippets and tutorials involving PHP, HTML, Actionscript, jQuery, MySQL and other technologies we use everyday.