Zend: PHP 101 - Intro to Databases
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As a part of their PHP 101 series, Zend has posted their latest section - PHP 101 (part 8): Databases and Other Animals.
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On the Developer Tutorials site today, there's a new tutorial posted that walks you through some of the useful features that PHP's CLI functionality can bring to your system administration.   In this tutorial, I'll show you how to use PHP-CLI, the command line interface for PHP, to get your maintenance under control using the technologies you're already familiar with. I'll also examine some of the By the time you've finished this tutorial, you'll be able to build human-assisted backup systems, automatic report generators.   It's a pretty basic introduction that talks about what the CLI environment is and what sorts of things PHP brings to the table. They include some sample scripts to do things like database cleanup and a method for taking in human interaction via the command line.
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On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new post pointing to the second part of their look at the Manning Publishing book "PHP in Action".   If you've been anxiously awaiting part two of this series then your wait is over. Here's a short introduction to the section part of this series written by the author of the book, Dagfinn Reiersol. I had the privilege of meeting Dagfinn at phpuk last week. Below the introduction is the link I know youâve been waiting for.   The new PDF they link to focus on two different patterns - the Decorator (a wrapper class) pattern and the Null Object (an object that works like the others but does nothing behind the scenes) pattern.
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Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:Matthew O'Phinney's Blog: svn:externals (and the Zend Framework)Mark Jaquith's Blog: WordPress 2.0.6: Feedburner issue, and fixJob Posting: Unborn Media Inc Seeks PHP/MySQL Developer (Boston, MA)Zend Developer Zone: Tutorial : Using Zend Framework Without PDONetmag.co.uk: Make your own SoapChristopher Jones' Blog: Duplicate Columns in "2 Day Plus PHP Developer Guide"International PHP Magazine: Poll Question: Which is the Best PHP MVC Framework?William Candillon's Blog: phpAspect alpha 0.1.0 is released!Community News: phpthrowdown Registration OpenZend Developer Zone:  AJAX Chat Part Tutorial 6 : Updating the User ListIBM developerWorks: U2 PDO Driver Tutorial, Parts 1 & 2Stoyan Stefanov's Blog: Reusing an existing database connection with MDB2DevShed: Introducing the Memento PatternNexen.net: PHP statistics for December 2006Sandro Groganz's Blog: Syntax Highlighting & Migrating Permalinks in WordPress
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Ivo Jansch is very happy to announce that it's official - he will be authoring a book for php|architect all about PHP in the Enterprise:   It will be one of the first books about PHP that will not cover PHP code. It is loosely based on my 'enterprise PHP development' talk at the Zend UK Business Conference last year. It will cover the entire development lifecycle of a software project, but targeted at PHP development teams.   He points out that the first version of the book will be handed in in March so ideally it will be released soon after that. He's also open to ideas/content suggestions/etc that you might want to post to his blog for consideration.
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Sebastian Bergmann posts about the tutorial he (and fellow developers Matthew O'Phinney and Mike Naberenzy) will be presenting at this year's Zend/PHP Conference & Expo - a look at PHP Development Best Practices and Unit Testing.   From the official description:   PHP development by teams of developers introduces challenges beyond the mere coding of great algorithms. Agreements are needed about tools, specifications, architecture, design patterns, coding standards, testing, documentation, source code control, staging and deployment. This tutorial session aims to introduce developers to a set of best practices that will help them deliver applications fast and move them to deployment with confidence.   You can check out some of the other tutorials for the upcoming conference as scheduled here.
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On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new tutorial looking at one of the unsung heroes of the web development world - one that, when you need it, it does what it does well - SQLite.   Is a full-blown database server even necessary for most PHP applications? What about a data-driven website like a blog or a simple family photo album or message board? In these and may other cases, the small, simple, and extremely powerful SQLite may be all you need. Let's take SQLite out for a test drive and see how it performs, find some of the quirks you might run in to, and how to get the most use out of it.   They talk about SQLite being a "staple" in PHP for a while now and how PDO plays so well with it. They move on to the code quickly, giving a simple example of how to create a database, and table, and inserting content into the latter.    Other more advanced features are discussed - data types, speed of queries, using transactions, and cleaning up the code to really make it fly. They even talk about "user defined aggregate functions", a method to make running a set of data through the same processes over and over a snap.
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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.
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Ivo Jansch has posted a reminder about a webinar he's going to be hosting for Zend about taking the leap to move from PHP4 to a PHP5 production environment.   Tomorrow I'm doing a webinar for Zend: I will be talking about migrating from PHP4 to PHP5. I won't go into the technical details so much, but I will talk about why to migrate and how to migrate. I will talk about both the benefits and the risks.   If you'd like to sign up, check out Zend's webinars page and enroll in the "PHP4 to PHP5 Migration" event. It happens Wednesday, Oct 24th at 9am Pacific (PDT) and will last about one hour.
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Zend has a new download for those out there interested in using PHP on a Sun Java System Web Server - the PHP Enabler for the Java System Web Server.
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DevShed has started a new series looking at working with PHP and databases with this new tutorial posted today, an excerpt from the O'Reilly book "Programming PHP, Second Edition".   We focus on the PEAR DB system, which lets you use the same functions to access any database, rather than on the myriad database-specific extensions. In this chapter, you'll learn how to fetch data from the database, how to store data in the database, and how to handle errors. We finish with a sample application that shows how to put various database techniques into action.   In this first part of the series, they look at what kinds of things are possible with the database connection, some of the basics of using the PEAR DB class and working with data source names to help with the connection.
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DevShed continues their series looking at some of the fundamentals of working with PHP in this new tutorial posted today. It looks at one of the flow control statements the language has to offer and a very useful data structure - the switch statement and arrays.   In our last exciting adventure (back in early November), we braved crocodiles, ravenous editors, most of the PHP statements, and beginning loops. In this edition we'll cover the final statement, the Switch, and discuss arrays. So sit back, order your R2D2 robot to bring you a cold, frosty Jolt Cola, and let's get cracking.   They start with a simple example of a switch statement (to echo out strings) and follow it with a detailed description of the different sorts of arrays - numeric indexed, associative and multidimensional versions.
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This week, Cal Evans is reporting live from this year's php/db|works conference in Toronto. Since today is "Tutorial Day", the schedule is a little lighter, and he makes to time to catch Rob Richards' talk on PHP and Advanced XML and Web Services.    Rob Richards is the author of Pro PHP XML and Web Services. He literally wrote the book on using PHP and XML together. At php|works, he is leading a tutorial on using XML in web services using the DOM extension.    If you ever get a chance to hear Rob do a presentation, let me warn you, it is not for the faint of heart. As I learned last night when I sat down with Rob to record an interview, Rob likes to speak on leading edge and advanced topics. This tutorial is an excellent example of that philosophy.    Cal talks more about the content of the talk - its simplicity despite the complex topic, how much info is jammed in, and the fact that it's not just one giant pitch for Rob's book.
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Zend has pointer to a new article today from the Oracle Technology Network - PHP 5, Oracle, and the Future.
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P&aacute;draic Brady, looking ahead to the work he will be doing over the next few months, is proposing on his blog about a new Zend Framework component - Zend_Service_Currency.    I did a quick check on what PHP classes are available for the purpose. There's really not a whole lot out there. There's a PEAR class along the lines I need, but it's released under the PHP License and, not to be too argumentative, I prefer non-PEAR solutions where the end-user may have no access to update PEAR.   So since the project is planned to use the Zend Framework, I shot off a mail to the Framework's fw-general mailing list to see if it would be a worthwhile contribution.    He sees that someone else had already opened a proposal for the same idea and decided to join with that group to work up the module. He also links to his original proposal and gives a brief overview of the goals of the package.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted their latest podcast in the PHP Abstract series. This time, it's a focus on planning in your programming projects - how to get the most structure out of the simplest planning.   Davey [Shafik] is going to talk to us about one of the most neglected areas of software development, planning the project.   Grab the podcast directly here or subscribe to the feed to get this and other episodes of this quality podcast.
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Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:PHPClasses.org: File upload progress meter for PHP 4, at last!Zend Developer Zone: Zend Framework Preview Release 0.6.0 AnnouncedIBM developerWorks: Generate Flash movies on the fly with PHPMike Bernat's Blog: Creating a Simple Registration Script using PHPphp|architect: An overview of the CakePHP frameworkPHPBuilder.com: Reading RSS feeds in PHP: Part 2The Bakery Blog: SwiftMailer Component TutorialPHP-GTK Community Site: Merry Christmas (A Holiday Widget)Ben Ramsey's Blog: Installing the Eclipse PHP IDEZend Developer Zone: Zend Studio 5.5 WalkthroughCommunity News: Vancouver PHP Conference 2007Edin Kadribasic's Blog: BenchmarksJSLabs Blog:  phpBB 3...is it worth the wait?Christopher Jones' Blog: Installing Oracle XE on Ubuntu with PHPChris Chabot's Blog: phpSocketDaemon