Tanguay.at: Install PHP 5 on Windows Workshop
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Adding to his popular Install PHP 5 on Windows workshop, Edward Tanguay has just posted two new steps, which teach you PHP 5 object-oriented programming in a very practical manner: In the first step you download and set up a PHP 5 page which reads an XML file and displays book reviews linked to the Amazon Associate program. In the next step, Edward goes line-by-line through the code and examines the classes, properties, constructors, public methods, private methods and static methods discussing how each works and why programming in this fashion is better than procedural programming. There are dozens of screen screenshots which make this tutorial easy to follow. If you get stuck or want to discuss an issue, you can instantly post questions and comments on each step without registering.
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Latest PEAR Releases:Text_Wiki_Creole 0.5.1HTML_QuickForm_Renderer_Tableless 0.5.3PHP_Archive 0.11.0pearweb_phars 1.3.1PHP_Archive 0.11.1pearweb_phars 1.3.2Validate_FI 0.3.0Structures_DataGrid_DataSource_DBQuery 0.1.10Structures_DataGrid_DataSource_MDB2 0.1.10Structures_DataGrid_DataSource_DBTable 0.1.6File 1.3.0Tree 0.3.0pearweb_index 1.0.0RC1pearweb_index 1.16.2pearweb_index 1.16.1pearweb 1.16.0pearweb_index 1.0.0HTML_QuickForm 3.2.8
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Ilia Alshanetsky, release manager for the current PHP5 series, has announced the posting of the latest release canidate - PHP 5.2.0. RC4.   Huzzah! The final release candidate of 5.2.0, RC4 is out, which means the final release is just around the corner. Given that this is a final release, this is the last chance to identify major issues or regressions. So, please test your code against this release to make sure that everything is working, and if not, let us know.   You can grab the files here:  BZipped GZipped
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The highly controversial GoPHP5 project has come to his finishing mark (actually February 5th) and has been claimed a success by Robert Douglass, one of the creators of the project:   Congratulations are in order. Since the launch of GoPHP5.org, over 100 software projects and over 200 web hosts have come on board to support the adoption of PHP 5.2. As opposed to just a few months ago, it is now easy to find a hosting solution that supports PHP 5, and software developers can turn to the attractive new features that PHP 5 offers without the need to worry that they are leaving their end users without options.   He gives credits to Larry Garfield and Marc Delisle for their hard work towards making the project a success and notes that the project can stand as a successful effort that the community pulled together on to make development and the platforms we build on that much better. Be sure and check out the long list of projects and hosting companies that made the move to PHP5.
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An exploit for PHP's COM objects on the 5.x series has been reported by shinnai - an issue that allows for a bypass of safe_mode and disable_function settings.   The exploit has been published as a PHP file for easy testing on your Windows/PHP installation (it was tested on WinXP Pro SP2 on both the CLI and Apache). No additional modules are needed for this exploit - only the COM functions and a Windows system.   The issue comes from an overflow in the str_repeat function allowing for the execution of whatever applications the developer wants on the remote Windows machine (including the ability to create and remove files and directories). There is no path for this issue currently (should be corrected in the next minor PHP release).
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The HowTo Forge website has a new tutorial CentOS users out there might want to check out. It steps through the installation of a MSSQL database extension for PHP (it's not installed by default) from the yum repository.   As you might have noticed on Centos 5.0, there is no PHP-MSSQL module/extension available in the default yum repositories. So if you want to use it you can alter the PHP binary or you can compile an mssql module/extension. In this article I will explain how to compile the mssql module/extension.   It's a pretty simple process involving only a few downloads (RPM files) and altering the contents of some configuration files to make things work together happily. In the end, you'll have a dynamic extension you can load into your PHP installation whenever you want.
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The Hiveminds Magazine has pointed out a new effort that's been kicked off today to try to get the PHP community (and providers) to finally make the leap and drop PHP4 support all together:   The idea is to make a unified, concentrated effort to drop PHP4 support and drive PHP5 adoption in the year 2008. Think of it. All CMS, forum and framework projects going completely over to PHP5 on a set date! This would be like a bomb dropping on the web hosting world and cause ripples throughout the open source world.   They point out some of the projects that are leaning either way from ezPublish hanging on to PHP4 and apps like Drupal that have embraced PHP5. In fact, it's the Drupal group that's written up the proposal on how it would all go down - the "Go PHP5 Effort".   It is a dangerous cycle, and one that needs to be broken. The open source PHP developer community has decided that it is indeed now time to move forward, together. Therefore, the listed open source PHP projects have all agreed that effective 5 February 2008, any new feature release will have a minimum  required PHP version no older than PHP 5.2.0.   There's tons of comments to the proposal in both parties (and some in between noting that there are already several PHP4 applications that run quite happily on PHP5).
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There's a new posting on PHPEverywhere this morning pertaining to Parrot - what it is, and how it can be good for PHP.
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The latest release of PHP in the PHP 5.2.x series has been posted for download to the main PHP website today - version 5.2.3.   The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.3. This release continues to improve the security and the stability of the 5.X branch as well as addressing two regressions introduced by the previous 5.2 releases. These regressions relate to the timeout handling over non-blocking SSL connections and the lack of HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA in certain conditions. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release.   Updates in this new version include many security fixes and enhancements - check out the Changelog for complete information.   Check out other comments on the release from Ilia Alshanetsky and Stefan Esser.
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Edin Kadribasic has released another build of the latest MySQL libraries to couple with the latest PHP release in the PHP 4.x series (4.4.6).   PHP 4.4.6 was released to fix a serious problem in the session module. Here, you can download the Windows build with updated MySQL libs.   The download contains two files that should be dropped into your existing PHP directory.
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This month's issue of php|architect has been released and includes articles such as:  PHP5: Beyond the Objects The Ultimate PHP 5 Shopping Cart PHP and Databases Error Handling with PHP 5 and PEAR
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Edin Kadribasic has released the latest update for his Win32 builds in the PHP 4.4.x series - PHP 4.4.5-win32 with the MySQL 5.0.22 drivers.   There's a direct download here which contains two files. Drop these top files into your current install folder and you should be good to go (it will overwrite one file and insert another).   Previous versions can be found as tagged on his blog.
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Pierre-Alain Joye takes a look at building Cairo (a vector-based graphics library for PHP) on a Windows system.    While trying to get the cairo (and pimp) PHP binding ready to be released, I finally sit down and port Wez build cscript to cairo. It still needs some cleanup, a nice summary message but it works already. I tested it with Visual C++ Express Edition but it should work with other versions as well.   My next goal is to add the tests (nmake tests) and fix the nmake instal    He describes the process he went through to try to get things up and running, but is still having a few issues and has required a few tweaks to get it working. He also links to two resources: a ZIP of the development libraries and a ZIP ready to use package.
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From SitePoint.com today, there's a new piece entitled Introducing PHP 5's Standard Library. It goes into some detail about an extension that snuck in the back of the PHP world - the Standard PHP Library.
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On the "Blond R" blog, there's a first posting that shares some of the knowledge that the author has gained from working to get IIS7 installed with MySQL and PHP 5.   As all of us are talking about the new coming Windows Vista, I decided to dedicate my first post to guide you all on how to setup IIS 7 along with MySQL and PHP 5.   He hadn't found a tutorial that covered getting all three working well together, so decided to create his own - complete with screen shots for each step of the way. First, IIS is set up, then PHP, then, finally, the MySQL installation is completed and all three are tied together. All downloads are linked as well to make it even easier to set your system up.
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PHP Magazine has a new posting today titled "How To: Install PHP 5, Apache 2 and SQLite on Windows". Obviously, it instructs you on the correct way to install these pieces of software correctly as well as how to interconnect them.
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PHPBuilder.com has a quick tutorial posted today about getting Apache and PHP installed on your Windows machine easily.   If you are on this site, we're sure that you already know that PHP is a server side web programming language. Its purpose is very similar to ASP, but in my opinion, it's better. There are more databases available to use with it and ASP can only communicate with Access and SQL servers. PHP can communicate with SQL Server, MySQL, mSQL, and several others, but that is not the topic of this tutorial.   The tutorial is broken up into a few simple steps:   Installing and configuring Apache Installing PHP Configuring Apache to work with PHP   And you're done - test it by making a sample PHP page (like a phpinfo() one) and see if everything's up and working.