A brief intro from me this week as we're away seeing clients. Hope you enjoy the links from this week and if there's anything you need let me know. We're looking to change some of the sections that we have and are hoping to do that by next week
All the best
Katie |
Articles
10 improvements in PHP 5.5.0 for web developers
PHP 5.5.0 has been released, bringing with it a host of new features and fixes. TechRepublic has rounded up 10 improvements that web developers should look out for in the new release.
PHP Application Development - Judicious Choice to Develop and Implement Vital Projects
PHP application development ensures a lot of flexible features while keeping project costs to a minimum. This is a huge relief for application developers, as it means they can offer the best for their clients.
You Use PHP Because You Don't Know Better
Adam Bard shares his opinions about PHP.
Selling Test-Driven Products
Sebastian Bergmann remembers the creation of PHPUnit.
The Future Beyond the 14 years of PHP Classes
The PHP Classes site has just turned 14 years of age. Many new features were implemented last year. Read about what's in store for this year.
Backwards Compatibility Is For Suckers
Yes, you read that right. If your project aims to provide backwards compatibility as a primary goal, you're a sucker. Tons of popular software projects from PHP to Microsoft Windows have stated goals of providing Backwards Compatibility between releases. And yes, I am here to say that they are doing it wrong, writes Anthony Ferrara.
PHP Interview With Phil Sturgeon, The Man Behind PyroCMS
This is the 34th PHP Interview to help aspiring PHP developers, and PHP fans alike, find inspiration by listening to those PHP guys who are already highly involved in the PHP community. |
Tutorials and Talks
From Procedural to Object Oriented PHP
This tutorial was inspired by a speech given by Robert C. Martin. The main subject of his talk was about the possibility of picking The Last Programming Language. He addressed topics such as why should such a language exist? And what it should look like? However, if you read between the lines, there was another interesting idea that caught my attention: the limitations that each programming paradigm imposes upon us programmers.
How To Use PHP 4.4.9 (FastCGI) With Apache & ISPConfig 3 (Debian Wheezy)
Since ISPConfig 3.0.5, it is possible to use multiple PHP versions on one server and select the optimal PHP version for a website. If you have some very old websites on your server, they might not work with PHP5, only with PHP4. This tutorial shows how to build PHP 4.4.9 as a FastCGI version for use with Apache2 on a Debian Wheezy server.
What Time is it Here?
Finding out what time it is, is often as simple as looking at a clock. But when you need to know the time on another place on Earth, you also need to know which timezone you are in. Timezones are a bit more complicated than the UTC-offset, or a timezone abbreviation (such as GMT or EST). In order to correctly identify a set of Daylight Saving Time rules (and other changes in UTC-offset) for a specific location you need to know it's Timezone Identifier.
5 Tips for Working with IPv6 in PHP
With IPv4, it was simple enough to use ip2long and long2ip. These two functions would translate a dotted decimal address to an integer and the reverse respectively. In IPv6, we don’t have such luxury.
How to Setup Recurring Payments
It’s likely that, at some point, you’ll want to implement recurring or subscription payments for a SaaS or other service. Thankfully, PayPal offers the tools we need to implement a fully integrated subscription payment solution.
Running Monte Carlo Simulations in PHP
One of the exciting things in the 1980s was programming simulations to solve complex analytical problems, and one of the most useful techniques employed was running Monte Carlo simulations. The approach repeatedly runs a simulation many times over to calculate the most likely outcome. Although PHP isn’t known as a scientific or research programming language, Monte Carlo simulations can easily be written in a PHP web app. In this article, I’ll show you how.
Understanding Streams in PHP
Streams are resources provided by PHP that we often use transparently, but which can also be very powerful tools. By learning how to harness their power, we can take our applications to a higher level.
3 Simple Steps to Boost Performance of a PHP Web Application
Developers care about performance of their software. The problem is that they don’t usually have enough time for a proper optimisation. Lukasz Kujawa proposes 3 relatively simple steps which won’t take too long and will improve a response time by at least 60%.
Creating and Verifying Hashes in PHP, The Easy Way
PHP 5.5.0 was released this week, and with it came a whole list of new features and functions. One of the new APIs available is the Password Hashing API. This API currently contains four functions, password_get_info(), password_hash(), password_needs_rehash(), and password_verify(). Let’s step through each of these functions. |
News and Announcements
CakeFest 2013: San Francisco, USA.
The CakePHP Conference 2013 will take place over the weekend of August 29th - September 1st, with two days of workshops followed by the conference. Limited number of tickets left, so book fast. The call for speakers is currently open! Don't miss your chance to speak at the one and only CakePHP conference.
Day Camp 4 Developers Virtual Conference 26th July 2013
Day Camp 4 Developers 6: Non-Programming for Programmers covers 4 topics that programmers ignore, don’t bother to learn, or like to pretend aren’t important…even though they are. Join us for a morning of learning as our 4 speakers talk to you about: Documentation, Agile development, Source code management and Estimating.
Web & PHP Conference Sep 16-18th 2013 San Jose, California
The people behind Web & PHP Magazine, the free monthly digital publication, invite you to our first ever conference. This three-day event in September is designed to immerse you in a world of continuously changing and evolving web technologies. Sticking with our ethos of open knowledge sharing, we have made all conference sessions, keynote presentations, hacks and Expo on September 17 & 18 FREE to attend! |
Reading and Viewing
Introducing PhpStorm Video Tutorials
A lot of PhpStorm users have been asking us to create a series of video tutorials. Today, we’re happy to announce the availability of about two hours of video tutorials around PhpStorm which Maarten has been working on for the past few weeks.
The Joy of PHP: Deep Dive into Sessions (by Alan Forbes, published 23rd June 2013)
This is a short, focused book. It covers one (rich) topic related to PHP and that is the concept of Session Variables, also known as 'Sessions'. We explain how to create a database table of usernames and passwords, how to encrypt the passwords using the md5() function, and how to create and process a login form. Once the user is logged in we can assign them session variables, such as Role, which will dictate which features of the web application will be visible and which will be hidden. Every line of code is explained in clear, easy-to-understand plain English.
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Interesting Projects, Tools and Libraries
A New Bridge Between PHP and FFmpeg
AV is a new PHP extension that let you make use of functionalities provided by FFmpeg, the popular open source video processing tool. Unlike the existing FFmpeg extension, AV is designed for both decoding and encoding.
Sabre Vobject 3 Released
Version 3 of the sabre/vobject library. The ultimate library for parsing and manipulating vCard and iCalendar files in PHP.
prusnak/addrgen
Deterministic Bitcoin Address Generator (for PHP and Ruby)
PHP 5.5: New Class Constant
Last week, the first stable version of PHP 5.5 was released. It introduced a class-level constant, aptly named CLASS, that is automatically available on all classes and holds the fully-qualified name of that class.
ticketevolution-php
A PHP 5.3+ library for the Ticket Evolution API.
php-mp4box
An object oriented library for easy file conversion with MP4 Box.
radiosilence/ham - Routing Library with Caching
Ham is also a lightweight routing framework but it utilises caching for even more speed gains. It achieves this by caching anything I/O related in XCache/APC.
ImageWorkshop – Image Manipulation with Layers
ImageWorkshop is an Open Source library that lets you manipulate images with layers. With it you can resize, crop, make thumbnails, add watermarks and more.
Underscore - PHP's Utility Belt
Underscore is a port of the original Underscore.js – the utility belt for JavaScript applications. The PHP version doesn’t disappoint and has support for nearly all of the original’s functionality.
mccue/Requests
Requests for PHP is a humble HTTP request library. It simplifies how you interact with other sites and takes away all your worries.
Respect/Validation
Input Validation Engine. Claims to be the most awesome validation engine ever created for PHP. But can it deliver?
leeoniya/dump_r.php
A cleaner, leaner mix of print_r() and var_dump() |
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