Unsorted Thoughts

Just musings today.

Some things that cross my mind while I try to keep focussed on work...

Laravel provides a number of ways to interface with storage - generally via the phpleague's flysystem package.

However, interestingly I spotted that flysystem has a ZipArchive adapter. I was surprised to find that while laravel supports many other adapters from flysystem, this one isn't covered. It seems to me like it would be a really useful one to have, since we do occasionally need to programmatically work with zip files. It also had me wondering if it would be a viable way to store large text data in the filesystem with the benefits of compression, and maybe only some of the downsides of the additional processing required for a zipped file to be accessed again later. Heck, you could even add some kind of caching layer that would keep "hot" files in a local uncompressed location and clean them up if they're left unused for some time.

Anyway... Just a thought. Maybe I'll investigate - maybe I won't. I need to get back to work.

I had a quick scan of laravel/laravel + laravel/framework for issues + pull requests implementing and requesting ZipArchive support, but it doesn't appear to be a thing. Weird. Am I the only one thinking this?

New tangent: "What values can be used as a key in PHP?" I wondered to myself. I assume it can only be string and integer.

So I looked it up and that's right... But... Wait what?

Additionally the following key casts will occur:

  • Strings containing valid decimal ints, unless the number is preceded by a + sign, will be cast to the int type. E.g. the key "8" will actually be stored under 8. On the other hand "08" will not be cast, as it isn't a valid decimal integer.
  • Floats are also cast to ints, which means that the fractional part will be truncated. E.g. the key 8.7 will actually be stored under 8.
  • Bools are cast to ints, too, i.e. the key true will actually be stored under 1 and the key false under 0.
  • Null will be cast to the empty string, i.e. the key null will actually be stored under "".

Are you joking? So those are valid key inputs, but they're just going to be cast into working? Wow. I wonder how many people that's burned in the past.

Anyway, now I know that I can't simply typehint "int|string" for a function I'm working on, because that's not technically true... But it should be.