Over the last few days I have been trying to use the Zend_Rest_Controller along with the Zend_Rest_Route to make a RESTful application for an API that I am working on. It is very easy to get things setup with these components and I will cover that now. You might be asking yourself why do I have to use both components, why is it not rolled into one nice component. The answer is really basic and if you look at the source code for the Zend_Rest_Controller you will see that it is solely an abstract class that defines the methods required for use with the Zend_Rest_Route. When your controller extends from the Zend_Rest_Controller it just forces you to implement the indexAction(), getAction(), postAction(), putAction() and deleteAction() methods. Technically you do not have to extend from Zend_Rest_Controller so long as you implement these methods in all of your RESTful controllers. It is good design to extend the class though as it will throw exceptions for developers who forget to add one of these methods. Without the methods the Zend_Rest_Route cannot route the request to the matching RESTful methods.

In order to get started you have to add a method to your Bootstrap file. This method can be named anything you like however it has to start with _init.

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If you have read anything on my site you know that I have the Palm Pre. I have had it for quite a while now and did an extensive review of the device. Through the short time that I have owned this device I have had quite a few problems. At first it was the Oreo Effect and the Volume Key sticking. These may seem like small problems to you but once you experience them they are not. When the volume key is stuck you cannot get the device to do anything because it constantly interrupts you to show that the volume is increasing or decreasing.

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If you have been following my blog the last few days you know that I lost almost a years worth of data. I could have paid the web host $75 to recover the data but being that this is solely for my blog I opted not to do that. Rather I have recovered most (if not all) of my missing posts by using Google Cache. I did this by searching Google for my site and then the /YYYY/MM/ string and clicking the cache link in the search results. I do regret that all of my meta data such as comments/views etc for all of my posts have not been nor can they be recovered. I apologize but at-least the content is there so that when people click web links they are not confronted with a 404.

If you have seen my resume you will be saying (^*&%$%*&*(* and pulling out your hair asking why I would add yet another employer to my resume. I feel the same way! I have been trying to find the employer where I could be with for years and count on the stability. In 2008 I was working for Castle Communications and had been with them for over a year before getting the layoff e-mail. However starting Feb. 22nd 2010 I am glad to announce that I will be starting with Nokia after my trip to Florida next week. I am looking forward to working with the highly intelligent team that they have built and I am very excited to start with a company as large and stable as Nokia.

I am afraid I will not be allowed to really talk about what I am doing at work due to confidentiality agreements etc. however I will make posts updating you of things I have worked on once they have launched and are out of the reign of the agreements.

Last week at the request of my web host I started cleaning up my files in my directory. I was also trying to get rid of old stuff that was not in use any more. This led to me accidentally deleting my database for my blog. I have lost everything since March 2009. I guess this is a reason why you should make at-least weekly backups of your website.

I know the host could restore it for me but for them to restore my database to the prior day they were going to charge $75. While that is not a lot of money I am just not in a position to pay this price. I opted to lose the last year of posts (there were not that many anyway) and go on with life. Had this been more than my personal blog I would have opted to do the backup restore.

I am trying to pull my content from google cache and add it back into place however this does not include the comments left by users or user accounts that have been created since then.

Most of you probably do not yet know but I have resigned from Tatto Media and have moved back to Namespace, Inc.. While I am under a confidentiality agreement I cannot state what I was working on at Tatto Media however what I can say is that I was working with the latest technologies such as CakePHP, JQuery, CSS, etc to work on the products that Tatto Media has to offer. Since I have moved back to Namespace Inc I have been reading up on a completely new framework. Most of you are probably thinking oh another PHP framework under your belt… That’s not the case at all. The new framework that we are using is a Java based framework called Wicket.

So far Wicket seems to be a very nice web framework and Java is very appealing to me from a developers standpoint. I guess the good part is that PHP is based on Java quite a bit so picking up the language has been rather easy. I have also applied for an editor account on Wicket by Example so you will find anything I write about Wicket on that site. I may or may not publish the articles on this site as well I am just not sure yet. Regardless I will post something here stating that a new example or article has been posted by me.

If you know me and are reading this then you know that I am not racist or anything like that. My sympathies go out to all of the families and victims in Haiti. Now that I have said that I also want to state that my thoughts and feelings are in no way associated with Haiti.

The things I do not understand is when we go to war and bomb a country we spend a ton of money building back the city we destroyed. Why does America take on this financial position when we are already so far in debt to China? Why are we providing aid to other countries when things like earthquakes, tsunami’s etc take place? I am not saying that we should not be helping but where is all of this money coming from? Are we going further and further into debt doing this? Is the US getting aid from other countries when things like this happen? What are the odds that China will buy more of our debt or that the debt will just go away?

Isn’t it time to get our country out of debt before we go deeper and deeper into debt?

Again none of this is directed at the latest act of god but really how are we ever going to get out of debt?

Over the last few months I have been working at Tatto Media as a Software Engineer. Unfortunately things were not working out too well and I had to provide them with my resignation. I was able to work with some extremely talented people from several different departments and I will miss working with them. Starting tomorrow however I will be working with the team at Namespace. I have missed working with this small team of people. I am not sure what they will have me working on however I am sure that it will be interesting.

Once the AppStore opened on the Palm Pre I put my card in place so that I could order apps that I may want. In the past I have had no problems while purchasing apps. I have bought Tweed, Spot the missing pieces, JogStats, Air Hockey, Spot the Difference, and Conmigo. However while on the train this morning I decided to buy an app and as an end user it seemed like everything went smooth. It asked for my palm password, asked if I wanted to purchase the app and then it downloaded the app. Nothing out of the ordinary happened during the transaction, however when I got to the office this morning this is what I found in my in-box.

Transaction Failure Notice

Your previous transaction could not be processed. Please contact your financial institution should you have any questions.

You will still be able to purchase more applications in the Palm App Catalogue in the future. To do so, update the payment information in your account before placing a new order.

We appreciate your patience and hope you continue to enjoy using the Palm App Catalogue.

Best regards,
Palm App Catalogue Team

It seems like Palm is allowing all transactions failed or not to actually download the app as if it were paid for… Let’s hope they fix this problem real soon, I have already reported this to the palm app catalogue support team.

** UPDATE **
On a side note Palm, I suggest that you look into other live chat applications for your website. Using something that is Windows only is not very smart since there are a lot of Linux / Mac desktops out there now. I had to load up Vista in a Virtual Machine just to contact your support reps. At the very least provide an email address where your support staff can be contacted. I searched for support and all I came up with was the Live Chat with your reps.

If you have never heard of DropBox then you have been missing out. It is a file synchronization service which allows you to have 2GB of free space on their servers. The BEST news is that it has clients for Windows, Mac and Linux. When you install DropBox on your computers it reaches out to their servers and synchronizes your computer with the server. I am not exactly sure how all of the internals work this is just from my perception. The more computers you add the better things get. For me I have both computers at home linked and also my work computer. When I add a file to my DropBox at work it is synchronized with my other computers so when I get to them the files are just there.

There are many reasons why you would want to use this service. What if you wanted to have all of the books you bought that came with digital copies accessible by you from any computer you install DropBox on. What if you have files that you need both at home and on the go? A mock-up for a client that you created at home or work and when you go there with your laptop you don’t have to worry about making sure it’s on the laptop, no fumbling with cd’s etc. The files are synchronized and you are all set to go and show the client on-site.

There are a few things I think they could do better with the service and I will outline them here. You can share folders with other DropBox users however you cannot share a sub-folder. This should be corrected, if I wanted to share a single file with another user I have to create a folder and share that folder with them. Why did they not make a shared folder under your user account that would have sub-folders for the users who are sharing with you? I could see something like /Shared/User1/[files here], /Shared/User2/[files here]. When you share a folder with another user they also have the ability to delete the files. I don’t want to share a lot of files with a friend to find out they got mad one day and deleted all the files now I don’t have them. They could work on this sharing system and I would hope that one day they will implement a permissions system. UserA has the ability to read/write and UserB has the ability to read only. Something like this would boost my interest in the system even more.

When you share files with a friend it also consumes space in their DropBox account. So let me get this right the files are stored on the server once but if you share the folder with 5 people all 6 of you are taxed for the space those files take up on the disk. This seems bad to me because the files are in my account. I shared them with the other 5 users, why are they getting billed for the space as well?

Even with the few things mentioned above they have the VoteBox which is where you as a member can go vote on features that you want the developers to work on next. Whatever features are ranked the highest is what they work on next. I love this idea as it brings the community into the development process.

I have personally been using DropBox Since March of 2009 so I am not just blindly asking people to sign-up for a useless service. This is a service that I really find useful and would like to have all of my readers at-least try out.

If you have not tried DropBox yet I urge you to get an account and install the software. If you don’t like it I would love to hear why. I love using DropBox personally but even if you don’t please at-least install the software and link it to your account. I will get 250MB of free space for each person that does so. YOU will also get 250MB extra free. Sign-up and invite your friends you can increase your storage space up to 5GB from the 2GB that you get for free.