Welcome to Deanspot.org...

Yesterday, I installed the Seagull PHP framework, and ran into an odd problem. I grabbed the latest source, untarred it on my web server, and browsed to the installation script. (seagull/www/setup.php). All went just fine until I hit 'Submit' on Step 4. The 'Step 5' page presented an ugly PHP error message.

Fatal error: Call to undefined method HTML_QuickForm_hidden::HTML_QuickForm_element() in /home/alex/public_html/seagull-0.6.0RC1/lib/pear/HTML/QuickForm/input.php on line 50

This struck me as very odd, because it's an error reported not by the Seagull code, but by the PEAR HTML_QuickForm class, which is used by Seagull. QuickForm is a stable product, has been around for a while, and is widely used. Even stranger, the very method which is reporting an error was used in all previous stages of the Seagull installer. How can it exist on the previous pages, and then 'disappear' at stage 5?

I don't know the precise answer to this question, but I can say I'm pretty sure I know where the problem lies. The APC caching system. I had installed it earlier in the day, as it's recommended by Seagull. I'd heard good things about it previously, so I figured it was worth a try. The APC install went smoothly. After installing, I decided to browse the deanspot.org site to see if I could notice any speedup due to the caching.

Given that I'm about 20 feet from the web server, I didn't expect to notice anything dramatic. But, I also didn't expect to start getting errors from our photo gallery. That problem appeared when I tried to view a photo. Instead of an image, I got a PHP error :

Fatal error: Call to undefined method GalleryPhotoItem::onLoad()

Due to the similarity between my Seagull problem and the Gallery problem, I got suspicious that they might be related. Sure enough, disabling APC allowed the Seagull installation to proceed as normal. I've even re-enabled APC since then, and everything seems fine. Oh well. I just thought that if someone else out there is scratching their head trying to figure out why a method which clearly DOES exist is reported as undefined might appreciate this little tidbit.

Happy Seagulling!

Update (14 April, 2006) : I found an error report on this issue in PECL's bug database. Looks like this is being addressed, but it's not resolved just yet.