Bryan's Blog: 5 (More) Ways to be a Better PHP Developer
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Following up on this article from Akash Mehta, Bryan has posted five more suggestions he has to help make you a better PHP developer.   I thought all of Akash's suggestions were good but a little broad and seemed to involve a lot of reading. And while any budding developer will jump at the chance to expand their burgeoning technical library, I thought there were a couple of items we could add to his list.  The recommendations that made his list are  Start a project that other people (developers and end users) will use. Learn another language. Teach someone PHP. Ask for suggestions not solutions. Use what you read.   I'm particularly a fan of the third one (teaching) - not only does it spread PHP out even more through the masses, but it can really test you on your knowledge (some of those "how do I.." questions can get a bit complex, even from beginners).
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On the PHP in Action Blog, there's a new post today that shares some tips for testing your web applications with some simple tests.   I just started listing the techniques I've learned when writing tests to exercise the web interface of a PHP application. This is from my experience and my personal preferences; it's not the final word or necessarily right for everyone.  He suggests:  Use SimpleTest's Web tester if you can Test the web output using regular expressions Use element IDs or names to test links, forms and fields Log HTTP requests in the application
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On the Zend Developer Zone today, Cal Evans has posted his look at the Phrasebook series from Sams Publishing covering Javascript, MySQL, Apache, and, of course, PHP.   I get a lot of books to review. Currently the stack is about waist high and UPS hasn't been here this morning. So in an effort to trim down that stack of books, I'm going to talk about books 4 in one review.   He looks briefly at the contents for each of the books, pointing out specific areas they seemed particularly helpful in. He doesn't recommend them to someone trying to learn the language right off the mark. These are, as their title implies, just clips and handy snippets of information to help you get to where you're going. You have to know how to get on the road first, though...
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Over on the Zend Developer Zone today, there's a newly posted interview with Chris Hartjes a developer and speaker in the PHP community.   I first met Chris Hartjes at php|works in Toronto where he was giving his What Can PHP Learn From Ruby on Rails talk. As I described him in one of my blogs from php|works, he looks like a biker with a laptop. He's large but he's always got a smile on his face and is always available to help if you've got PHP questions. Chris was kind enough to sit down with me and spend some time talking about PHP and his work at VerticalScope . Here's how our conversation went.   They talk about how Chris got into programming (including his first computer), his work with vBulletin, a little MySQL discussion, and some thoughts on PHP6.
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In his new post on PHPEverywhere today, John Lim shares some of the experiences he's had so far in making the move up from PHP 4 to PHP 5 in his applications.   The transition was relatively painless. [...] What's nice about PHP5 is that it caught some errors that have been lingering in our code: PHP5 no longer allows a function to be defined twice, and some basic variable referencing errors that we missed previously.   They made the move to PHP5 for the latest versions of their applications, but have still stuck with the legacy, PHP4 versions for the time being to give customers a buffer period to make the move themselves. He also mentions changes to the way they make Ajax calls. John is a lead developer for both the ADOdb and PHPLens projects.
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Nick Halstead has posted the winner of the PHP programming competition - Todd Pinel:   Where do I start with my praise for ToddÃ¢ÂÂs entry? So much effort has been put into this entry its amazing. As a starting point you should first go have a look yourselves, Todd has helpfully already hosted it here. Let the praise begin..   Nick goes through the presentation of the application, the documentation provided with it, some sample code of the main portion of the app (a priorityQueue class) and the rankings that each judge gave it.   You can download your application and try it out for yourself.
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The results from the latest poll conducted by the International PHP Magazine have been released. This time, they asked developers what they thought was the best way to do QA for their PHP applications.   Among the options were things like "Do API documentation", "Use code analyzers that check CS violations, XSS or SQL injection attacks" and the number one choice - "Do unit tests using PHPUnit or phpt". Three other options followed behind (using debugging tools, code analyzers and having a commit mailing list) with the API documentation falling down in last place.   They already started up this week's poll too. This time, they ask developers to vote on which of the options make for good PHP code. There's four options - structured, consistent, portable and secure. Get your vote in today!
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The International PHP Magazine has posted results from their latest poll conducted over this past week asking which, of their given options, is the best helpful hint for creating a web application in PHP.   Two of the options ranked higher than the rest with one (Page/object caching) coming out on top of the other (Don't save performance testing for the end of the project). The remainder of the votes were divided pretty evenly between the last three options: "Use multi result set queries to your database", "gzip compression", and "Tune your web server".   While you're in the polling mood, you should check out this week's new poll that wonders which of their options might be the biggest hindrance to PHP5's adoption in the community.
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For those of you anxiously anticipating the results of the PHP programming competition put on by The Programming and Management blog, Nick Halstead has posted an update to help keep you up to date.   The judging of the PHP competition is taking a lot longer than I first thought! I started with 40+ entries which I reduced down by trying them one by one (very slow!) some of them quickly stood out and I got the list down to 12 entries. [...] I then went through those top 12 and re-tested more thoroughly trying out further words/dictionaries plus quick checks for robustness and quality of presentation. This then left me with 6 entries which I would then email out to the other Judges.   The final judging of these last six is dependent on how each of the judges rank the applications overall. Nick also includes some of the comments made by the judges already about the applications they're reviewing.
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Ligaya Turmelle has relayed some great news in her latest blog entry, something that the web's been needing for a long time - a new group from the W3C created specifically for enhancing the HTML standard.   Now I have to admit to being curious about what is going on - after all anything new dealing with the web affects me as PHP coder. Since the W3C is supposedly interested in input from the Web community and content developers, I decided to see who from PHP would be there. Granted it is very early for the formation of the group so it didn't really surprise me to see no one from PHP that I know or heard about in there, but I wonder if anyone from the PHP Group will become a "invited expert" somewhere down the road.   The group is looking for members to help define this next generation of markup on the web. Check out their page for some of the qualifications needed to participate and for some of the upcoming events.W3C Launches New HTML Working Group
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Marco Tabini's weblog has a new, quite extensive posting about the state of PHP, it's "enterprise readiness", and what's missing in the PHP world to really get developers up to where they need to be.
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Nick Halstead has started up another programming competition today - this time it's a bit broader in scope and doesn't focus so much on just PHP.   I have a couple of licenses for Zend Studio Professional that I have been holding back to give away for a competition. So after writing yesterdays programming 'tips' I thought perhaps I should get my readers to submit their own tips and then give away one copy for what I think is the best 'tip' and then I will also hold a online vote for the second copy.   The basic process is to submit your favorite tip to Nick and he'll pick his favorite of the day. This happens each day and at the end of the week, there'll be a drawing for the licenses from each day's top tips.   Submit your entries via his contact form.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:DeveloperTutorials.com: Writing an Email Autoresponder Script with PHPJaybill McCarthy's Blog: 10 PHP Myths DispelledIBM developerWorks: Mastering regular expressions in PHP, Part 1Job Posting: OmniTI Seeks PHP Talent (Brooklyn, NY)Zend Developer Zone: php|architect Announces 'Programming with the Zend Framework'DeveloperTutorials.com: Create a Facebook Application With PHPRob Allen's Blog: New Zend Framework Blog/WebsiteMichael Kimsal's Blog: Ecommerce system ideasJob Posting: Buildersite.co.uk Seeks PHP Programmer/Web Developer (Central London)Zend Developer Zone: Debugging PHP applications with xdebug
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Over on the Zend/PHP Conference and Expo site, they've formally announced the official schedule of events for the conference, giving times and dates for each of the talks.    Day One will see talks on: XML/Web Services, Best Practices, Extending PHP, and Security talk. You'll also be able to take the "Crash Course" before the Zend PHP5 Certification test in a two part series. Day Two is jammed with even more PHP goodness with talks covering: Scalable PHP Applications, eBay Web Services, a PHP case study, a great Panel Discussion, Ajax and Web Services, working with the Zend Framework, and Speeding up PHP with Oracle. Day Three has talks covering: Moving to PHP5, Moving an Enterprise to PHP, PHP/Rich Internet Applications, PDO, and PHP Lifecycle Management. Day Four (finishing things up) is shorter with talks on: Unicoding with PHP6, Consuming Web Services with PHP-GTK2, Testing with PHPUnit, Developing PHP on Windows, and the closing keynote from Robert "r0ml' Lefkowitz   And, of course, any time after the first day, you can take the PHP5 Certification Exam instead of attending one of the sessions.   Haven't signed up yet? You can reserve your spot today and get in on all of the PHP goodness a presented by some of the best speakers around. Unforutnately, the Early Bird Special as passed, but check out the Registration page for all of the details on prices.
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In a new post to his blog today, Danial Krook shines a spotlight on a the technology that bridges the gap between two different languages - Java and PHP.   In the time since I wrote that post [talking about PHP with WebSphere], and particularly in the past month, there have been several items published which demonstrate the value of this technology. I still need to delve deeper, but hereâs a quick summary of whatâs going on.   He looks quickly at this combination, breaking it out into four parts - what the technology is, how it allows PHP and Java to work together, where you can download the needed software from and some resources where you can find out more information on implementation and examples of it in action.
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Rob Richards has posted his own review of the Packt Publishing book "PHP Oracle Web Development" to his blog today.   Overrall I would have to say that PHP Oracle Web Development is a good book for a PHP developer needing to get up to speed quickly working with an Oracle database. [...] The only place I found the book lacking was the initial setup of the environment.   The environment they chose to go with was a Windows setup which caused him problem when he tried to compile with the oci8 extensions - libraries weren't found where they were needed. His solution? Setting his ORACLE_HOME to the right location then all was well.
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Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone has posted a new book review of one of Packt Publishing's latest PHP-related offerings - "PHP Programming with PEAR".    For those who have been living under a virtual rock for a while now, PEAR is the "PHP Extension and Application Repository". In a nutshell, it is a collection of classes, it's a framework, and it's a distribution system. Most importantly though, it's an excellent place to find the classes you need so you don't have to re-invent the wheel. (Ok, beginner's time is over, I promise).   PHP Programming with PEAR, written by Stephen Schmidt, Carsten Lucke, Stoyan Stefanov and Aaron Wormus, takes a look at some important PEAR classes and how you can use them.     He mentions what the book covers (which packages) and highlights some of his favorite bits, including the chapter on web services.