Zend Developer Zone: PHP Security Tips #8 & #9
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The Zend Developer Zone has the latest two of their security tips posted today - numer #8 and #9 - in their "PHP Security Tips" series.  In tip #8, they restate and reinforce a topic that's worth repeating - validating user input. They use the filter_var function as a simple, light way to start filtering your user's input. Tip #9 suggests that you keep anything sensitive, anything at all that needs to be kept away from prying eyes, outside of your document root of the site.   You can check out more on these tips and lots of others in their full list of tips.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted their latest podcast episode in their PHP Abstract series today. The show i shosted by Chris Hartjes again (see his previous show) and discusses the difference between "glue" and "full stack" frameworks.   Today's special guest is Chris Hartjes. Chris has been building PHP applications since 1998. Currently employed as a Senior Developer for the Cake Development Corporation, Chris has been labeled as an "agent provocateur" within the PHP community. [...] Today Chris is going to talk to us today about Glue Frameworks vs. Full Stack frameworks.   The show can be downloaded directly from here or, as always, you can drop the url to their feed into your favorite aggregator and get this and other great episodes of PHP Abstract.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted their latest episode of the PHP Abstract podcast hosted by Cal Evans himself covering ways you can attract quality talent to your organization.   Along the way I've picked up a few truths, mainly stolen from people like Joel Spolsky. Some of these ideas can be found in an article I wrote a while ago titled "Nerd Herding", a link to which can be found in the show notes. Recently, I've had many people ask me variations of the same question, "How do I find talented programmers?" So today, I'm going to share with you some of the things I've learned.   The latest show is available for direct download or, as always, you can subscribe to their feed to get this and lots of other great shows.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest episode of their PHP Abstract podcast series with a focus this time on screen scraping (as recorded by Matthew Turland).   Matt has been building PHP applications since 2002. He joined the ranks of PHP-Oracle developers in 2006 when he became a programmer for METHODS Technology Solutions. He contributes to open source projects such as the Zend and Forkr frameworks. [...] We are going to veer off the beaten path today as Matthew talks to us about Screen Scraping.   You can download the mp3 directly or you can  to get this and the most recent episodes.
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Zend has a new tutorial posted in their PHP 101 series - PHP 101 (part 9): SQLite My Fire!
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest episode of their PHP Abstract podcast hosted by Rob Richards and covering service oriented architectures in PHP.   Our special guest today is Rob Richards. Rob is an author and maintainer of many of the XML-based extensions of PHP 5, as well as one of the maintainers of libxml2. He is also the author of Pro PHP and Web Services, published by Apress. Rob is going to give us an overview of Service Oriented Architecture and what it means to us as PHP developers.   The direct link to grab the show is here, but you'd be doing yourself a favor to subscribe to the podcast feed and get all of the great content on a wide variety of topics presented by the experts.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted their latest PHP Abstract podcast today hosted by Ed Finkler and focusing on security and development environments.   Topics discusses include:   Ruby on Rails Security Blog Top Ten Security Vulnerabilities: Part One SQL Injection @ .Net Developers Journal CERIAS home page   As always, you can directly grab the show from here or subscribe to the podcast feed to keep up with the latest articles.
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For anyone keeping up with the PHP 5 Programming Contest that Zend hosted - the final results have been posted!
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On the Zend Developer Zone today, they've posted the latest PHP Abstract Podcast covering the PHP-Java Bridge:   Our special guest today is Kevin Schroder. Kevin is a technical consultant for Zend Technologies' Professional Services Group. He has wide range of experience from large scale system administration to software development in multiple languages. Based out of Dallas, TX, he travels throughout the country for Zend providing consulting, programming and architecture services centered on PHP.   Topics mentioned include the Java Bridge (obviously), the Zend Platform and Zend's Professional Services.    You can either grab the show directly from here or subscribe to their feed and get this and other great shows in the PHP Abstract series.
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Continuing on with his look at his OpenID library and its implementation, Padraic Brady has two new posts with more of the story.   From the first post:   As a follow on from my previous entry about OpenID in the Zend Framework, I've been in brief contact with Dmitry Stogov across a scattering of emails. Dmitry posted his OpenID proposal for the framework over at the Proposals Wiki earlier in the week. [...] It's actually very hard to comment constructively rather than simply handing over my code which probably says a lot more all by itself. [...] Anyway, I've agreed to port my OpenID library to PEAR as a PHP5 package. I checked with the mailing list, and the approach I've taken in splitting the library across a number of freestanding components hasn't seen any objections. On the flipside, it does help by providing upgrades to existing PEAR Encryption packages which are not yet migrated to PHP5 versions.   And from post number two:   Over the weekend, I managed to grab a few hours to dig around my OpenID library with the ultimate development tools: patience and experimentation. [...] What I've refactored towards is a splitting of the OpenID process based on three categories: Request, Redirect, Response.
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Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone has posted a new book review for one of Sams Publishing's latest PHP-related offerings, "PHP 5 In Practice" by Elliott "Eli" White III (Senior Programmer over at digg.com.   First let me say, if you are new to PHP or programming in general, skip this book. This is not a how to or even a cookbook for simple concepts. To get the most from this book you need to have a firm grounding in programming.   He sets the tone for the rest of the interview right there, noting that most of the book is made up of little examples, helpful bits to fill a need rather than teaching you the basics (or more advanced features) of PHP as a language. Cal spotlights this kind of content by talking about the "binary tree implementation" section. Check out the rest of the review for the full story.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted an announcement about a new book from php|architect (authored by DevZone's own Cal Evans) - Guide to Programming with the Zend Framework.   This is a project I've been interested in since it's very beginning, mainly because I'm the author of this particular tome. [...] The php|architect web site was a bit more helpful giving a breakdown of the contents of the book and a useful quote.   The book covers topics on the framework like the parts of MVC, web services, authorization, exceptions and even some tutorials to help you get started (including a look at the brand new Zend_Layout class).
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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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DevShed is continuing their series on PHP security with this new tutorial focusing on the security surrounding user authentication.   So far we have covered security vulnerabilities that involve form data, databases and file systems. In this article we are going to look at authentication and the security issues around it. We will also look at some of the most common attacks in this field.   They start things off by describing two of the usual authentication methods - via a login form and through HTTP authentication. They start poking a few holes by looking at some of the common attacks for these approaches including two popular ones - brute force attacks and password sniffing.
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Scott Mattocks, like so many others, has just reciently recieved notification that he's been accepted as a speaker for the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo this fall. He talks more about his speech in his latest post.   My session, "Consusming Web Services with PHP-GTK 2&#8243; will be a look at how to turn a web services API into a desktop application. I only have fifty minutes so it won't be very heavy on implementation details. Instead it will look more at representing different data structures, collecting different types of data and how creating a desktop application can make life easier for the company and the end user.   Scott joins other speakers for this great event, including speakers like Ilia Alshanetsky, Wez Furlong, and Zeev Suraski. Be sure to check back on the Zend site soon to see when Scott and others' talks will be held.
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Christian Wenz, back from the php/db|works conference and at a break following the conference, has posted some of his thoughts about this years conference over on his blog.   My schedule was crammed right after php|works 2006, so I could not find an earlier possibility to blog. Anyway, the extended entry contains my short report on php|arch's second conference this year.   He talks about some sightseeing before-hand, Tutorial Day, XML Security demos, Unicode in PHP6, a "slight problem" concerning his laptop, and his role on the Zend PHP5 Certification Panel. Check out the full entry for all of the details and "expect a separate blog entry later" on his experience on the panel.
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Cal Evans has posted his final wrapup from this year's php|works conference up in Toronto on the Zend Developer Zone today.   This last look at the conference includes mentions of:  Joe Stagner's keynote talk,  Cal presenting his talk - "Debugging PHP without cursing...mostly" Wez Furlong's PDO talk Derick Rethans' and his "Ranting Hour" The panel discussion on the Zend PHP 5 Certification PHPers winning at trivia Accordian cover solos John Coggeshall's "Apps Made Easy on Zend Framework" talk    Check out the full post for the rest of the story (especially the accordion music selections!)