27 Tips for Freelance PHP Coders
Making a Freelance Coding Business Work in the Real World

By Elizabeth Naramore

Perhaps you have been contemplating doing freelance work for a while, but you're just not sure what it will entail. Or maybe you're already doing freelance work on the side, but it's not going as well as you'd hoped. With the 27 tips outlined in this article, chances are, you'll feel a lot better about going it alone.[Read More]

PHP 5 Tried for You
Precise XML Handling with DOM in PHP 5 – Part II

By Marcus Whitney

The DOM extension's incredible power was well thought out in its PHP 5 implementation. PHP 5 was designed to meet all of the enterprise developer’s needs with respect to XML. The new DOM extension is well integrated with both the SimpleXML and XSL extensions to give you a complete suite of XML processing tools at your fingertips.[Read More]

Elements
Feeding the Guests – Distributing Content with RSS 2.0

By Douglas Clifton

Modern markup languages such as XHTML, and the meta-languages that define them (in this case XML), are built from a set of nodes, or elements. The top level, or root element of any such language opens the document and is the container, or parent, for the rest of the elements that follow. In an HTML document, for instance, the root element is . So the focus of this column is the starting point of any development task. Bootstrapping, to use an operating system metaphor.[Read More]

A Very Useful Network Application
Building the App You Shouldn't Be Without – A PHP User Group

By Jon Ramsey

From n00b to guru, whatever our skill level with PHP, we still have plenty to learn. And there's nothing to beat one-on-one tuition. Likewise, most of us could do with hearing about jobs more interesting and rewarding than the ones we currently have. We need a receptive audience for our theories, our concerns with i18n or PEAR, as well as our gripes. Participating in a PHP User Group can fulfil all these needs and more. This article gives you some pointers on how to go about setting up and maintaining this most useful of programs.[Read More]

Inside The Zend Certified Engineer Exam
Bringing PHP To The Enterprise, One Test At a Time

By Robert Peake

This article takes you inside the Zend Certified Engineer Exam with practical, real world experience studying toward and taking the exam. Packed with useful tips and insights about not only the value of the exam, but also how to pass it, this article is a must read for anyone contemplating taking the exam, and really anyone interested in coding, implementing or managing PHP in the enterprise using a reliable form of assessment.[Read More]

PHP on Touch Screen Systems
Develop an Industrial Touch Screen System

By Frank M. Kromann

At intelleFLEET, we have been using PHP as the primary scripting language for all the web site development as well as a general purpose scripting language for automated tasks on the central servers. This article describes how intelleFLEET has extended the use of PHP beyond the central web servers to implement a new set of features for the data acquisition system. When we decided to extend our line of products and services – with a touch screen system – we evaluated several programming languages, but ended up with PHP, a local web server and a browser as the key elements in the new application.[Read More]

Queries That Submit Themselves
Using Triggers in MySQL 5.0

By Jon Stephens

Triggers are coming to MySQL, and with them the ability to guarantee the integrity of your data, update summaries and reports, and perform many other tasks independent of your application. This article shows you how to create and manage triggers, and gives you some ideas for using them to accomplish these things.[Read More]

Book Review: From the SAMS Stable
The Zend PHP Certification Study Guide

By Richard Davey

This book is both completely essential, but with a good measure of 'frustration' throw in. You literally have no other choice right now when it comes to reading about the exam contents, and you absolutely must read about them in order to stand any chance of passing. Blindly sitting down and trying to digest the whole PHP manual is whilst quite admirable, ultimately fruitless unless you’re blessed with a photographic memory.[Read More]