Investing in Yourself – PHP Classes As Assets
Challenge the Status Quo in your Development Practices!

By Barry McKay

Are you ready to be won over by the elegance and potential financial benefits of applying a fully object oriented methodology of design and development in your own projects? If so, read on because in this article Barry look at exactly how we can turn a wonderful way to think about and provide solutions for complex programming problems into an endeavor that makes as much sense financially as it does from a purely technical standpoint. This article outlines how we can overcome some of the practical obstacles that stand between your business and a happier, richer, object oriented development policy. Looking at each of these obstacles we see that there is a lot less than we may imagine stopping us from a complete overhaul of our development practices, and a lot more than we may imagine that can be gained from doing so.[Read More]

PHP 5 Tried for You
Iteration with PHP 5.1’s Standard PHP Library

By Marcus Whitney

Everyone knows that PHP 5 introduced true object oriented programming to PHP. But did you know that one of the most popular and useful design patterns in object oriented programming is built right in to your PHP 5 installation? That's right, we are talking about iterators. In this edition of PHP 5 Tried for You, Marcus covers PHP 5.1's newly updated power of iteration packed in the Standard PHP Library (SPL). The SPL is packed with specialized iterators that are useful for file system, database, XML, object and array assess and mutation operations, in really neat for and while statements. In addition, these are all objects that you can extend for your own uses. The article presents examples of how to iterate over an objects properties as if it were an array, traverse through a file system using the RecursiveDirectoryIterator, and introduce you to the new SPLFileObject; a class for handling files in an object oriented interface.[Read More]

PHP From the Shop Floor
Bringing Environmental Monitoring to the Internet

By Elizabeth Naramore

It's always interesting to hear new ways PHP is being used, both in enterprise, and in small, interesting sites. In this inaugural article of the "PHP From the Shop Floor" series, Elizabeth meets two gentlemen who were able to use PHP to help monitor the earth's environment on a multitude of levels. They have developed ROADNet, a groundbreaking network of scores of collected data from cameras, earthquake and oceanic sensors, weather monitors, and the like. The greatest thing about the site is that you don't need a degree in Marine Biology or Geophysics to have access to the data. Heck, in three clicks of her mouse, Elizabeth can even tell you that in the last 5 minutes, the water temperature of the Pacific Ocean at the Los Angeles County's MDRWA station has gone from 14.048 to 14.068 degrees Celsius. And they say coders aren't creative. [Read More]

Dynamic Content Types
Using PHP 5, XML and XSLT to Create Custom Content Types On The Fly

By Thomas Myer

What's the most frustrating part about getting a new CMS? Not being able to add new content types – being stuck with the four or five limited content types provided by the developer. Let's face it: your job as developer is not to try to outguess or predict what your customer wants. Your job is to deliver good software. Let them be the expert when it comes to crafting the pieces of their publishing puzzle. In this article, Thomas shows you how to use PHP 5, XML, and XSLT to allow site administrators to create their own custom content types on the fly.[Read More]

Introducing Design Patterns – Part II
Practical, Reusable Solutions To Common Web Development Problems

By Robert Peake

Design patterns have become increasingly relevant to PHP. Initiatives like the Zend Framework For PHP underscore the importance of enterprise-class standards for application design, the theoretical foundation for which rests historically with design patterns. Furthermore, interest in developing rich, desktop-like applications via AJAX opens up considerations in design patterns that were formerly reserved for rich GUI environments. Developing rich web applications can be greatly aided by design patterns. So, in Part II of this two-part series, Robert examines the decorator, strategy, and observer patterns, bringing you to the front lines of the battle for rich, powerful, enterprise-class web applications.[Read More]

What's Really New About MySQL 5.0?
What's All The Fuss About?

By Jon Stephens

MySQL 5.0 is now generally available, with over a million downloads in the first four weeks since release. If you've been working with MySQL 4.0 or 4.1 and are ready to make the jump to the newest version, you're going to find that the 5.0 release is a rather different animal, with many features and some new ways of doing things. In this article, Jon tells you just what's so different about it, and provides you with a rundown of the most important changes.[Read More]

Making PHP an Intelligent Workhorse
Creating a Dynamic Sitemap by Following Links

By Allan van Hulst

Few people doubt that PHP is a powerful programming language capable of providing excellent solutions. But what is not often recognized is that PHP is a complete language, which can be used to solve challenging programming problems and to create intelligent applications. In this article, Allan tries to open the toolbox a bit by describing PHP's advanced features in relation to practice. To further explain the usage of these features, the article details the implementation of a dynamic sitemap tool, which uses a link following system to determine the structure within a set of HTML pages.[Read More]

Building a Weblog with PHP – Part II
Concepts and Technical Architecture Based on LifeType

By Oscar Renalias and Michael Erdmann

The second and final instalment of this series takes off from where we left in the last edition. In Part I, we dealt with the different categories of blogs, the various blogging tools available, and what you should look for in a blogging tool. In this edition, Oscar and Michael looks at what LifeType has to offer to bloggers and communities alike. The article also delves into the differences between a blogging tool and a traditional CMS, peers deeper at the concepts of a Weblog, based on the technical architecture of LifeType: the 3-tiered design, the object model and the database access and the presentation layer. The article also houses a simplified version of the real code used in LifeType to provide a better understanding of the major concepts behind its design. So what are you waiting for? Go grab your own blog on the Web.[Read More]