Nick Bartlett“Every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.” - Emerson

A challenge I’ve found being a PHP developer in the .NET and Java ruled Minneapolis and Saint Paul area is finding good PHP jobs.  I am building a list of companies in the Twin Cities that use PHP or have a need for PHP developers so when the time comes to find work, this list should be very helpful. If you’re willing to work for ten bucks an hour, you can find PHP work in craigslist any day. However, if you need to make a living, this list should help you out.  Please leave a comment with additional companies in the Twin Cities area you’re aware of that use PHP and need Developers.

Employ Full Time PHP Developers

1. VISI
   visi.com
2. Sierra Bravo
   www.sierrabravo.com
3. Ecreativeworks
   ecreativeworks .com
4. Colle + Mcvoy
   collemcvoy.com
5. National Bankcard Services, Inc
   nbs-inc.com
6. Internet Exposure
   iexposure.com/
7. Cazarin
   cazarin.com/
8. Star Tribune
   startribune.com/
9. Digital River
   digitalriver.com/
10. Artropolis
    artropolis.com/
11. The MLS Online
    themlsonline.com/

Contract or Temporary PHP Developers

1. Best Buy
   bestbuy.com
   They only hire contractors. Accenture is their main recruiting firm.
2. Dolan Media dolanmedia.com
   Various recruiting agencies
3. Regis regissalons.com
   Various recruiting agencies

I just implemented this cache class
http://www.phpguru.org/static/Caching on one of my sites.

The product detail page
ALR Hyperdrive 3.0 has eight or ten queries that run every time to pull the product info, nutrition info, reviews, manufacturer info, category info, etc…  This cache class provides the ability to store either output cache (html) or data cache (query results) in a file.  Each time the page is loaded, we’ll first check if there is a cached file of the output before running all the queries.  If there is a cache file, we’ll grab it and display.  If not, we’ll run the queries as usual and then save the output to a file.  We’re able to set an expiration on the cache file so it automatically refreshes itself in case the content has changed.

Example for caching output

    if (!OutputCache::Start("myGroup", "myID", 600)) {
 
        // Generate some output (as you do)...
 
        OutputCache::End();
    }

Example for caching data structures and query results

    if (!$data = DataCache::Get("myGroup", "myOtherID")) {
 
        $result = $db->query("SELECT BIG_ASS_QUERY()");
 
        DataCache::Put("myGroup", "myOtherID", 600, $result);
    }
 
    // Do something useful with $result

The page on my site ALR Hyperdrive 3.0 took on average 9 seconds from the time I clicked the refresh button until it was completely loaded.  I added the few lines of code for output caching on the page so it would skip all product related queries and it then averaged 7.5 seconds per page load and database processing and bandwidth in the meantime.  I was hoping the pages would load in two or three seconds, but this is a great improvement for the little effort it took.

Sorry to say, I don’t have the magic hidden PHP function to do this as the process is a bit more involved.  I built functionality today to download an Excel inventory file for my side business and then have my website automatically read it and update the inventory.  This has been the missing automated link for a while and I’m finally getting around to it.  I won’t go over how to download a file via FTP with PHP in detail, but basically you use the ftp_connect, ftp_login, and ftp_get functions built into PHP.  Below I describe the magic involved with converting an Excel file into a delimited file that your existing code (like mine) can handle.

1. Download Spreadsheet Excel Reader from sourceforge

2. I received an error when testing because the file OLERead.php could not be found.  The path is incorrect in reader.php on line 31. Update it to “require ‘oleread.inc’;” so it includes the oleread.inc file from the same directory.

3. Give my code below a whirl and you’re done.  You can save it to a file as I did or print it to the screen by just echoing the $output variable.

//path and name for inventory file after download
$localFilePath = 'inventory/'.date('Ymd').'_inventory.xls';
 
//init excel reader
$reader = new Spreadsheet_Excel_Reader();
 
//set output encoding
$reader->setOutputEncoding("UTF-8");
 
//read file
$reader->read($localFilePath);
 
//set field delimiter
$fieldDelimiter = "\t";
 
//set row return/delimiter
$rowDelimiter = "\r";
 
//set new file name
$newFilename = 'inventory/'.date('Ymd').'_inventory.txt';
 
//loop through all rows
for ($i = 1; $i <= $reader->sheets[0]["numRows"]; $i++) {
 
	//loop through all columns for this row
	for ($j = 1; $j <= $reader->sheets[0]["numCols"]; $j++)	{
 
		//set field
		$output .= "\"".$reader->sheets[0]["cells"][$i][$j]."\"" . $fieldDelimiter;
	}
	//end row
	$output .= $rowDelimiter;
}
 
//save new delimited file
file_put_contents($newFilename, $output);