p. In part 4 of this tutorial we take a look at adding a new MessageAction method to our current Controller. This will expect one piece of information: a new chat message.

p. As our chat application gathers pace we return to the server side of the application. At this point we have setup the Zend Framework with an IndexController class to handle server requests. After the initial loading of our HTML interface, we will expect all further server requests to be issued via AJAX (courtesy of Prototype and the XMLHttpRequest object) on the client side. We’ll see this in Part 5.

p. This weekend I found an interesting article over at anyexamples.com on using AJAX and PHP to do asynchronous file uploads. Click on inside and I’ll give you the details.

p. In this week’s installment, we setup the HTML and JavaScript for our AJAX Chat application.

p. This tutorial is a step by step introduction to creating a lightweight chat application using XML as a storage medium.

p. Sams publishing has release 4 “Phrasebooks” for developers. They were kind enough to send me copies for review. Come on inside and kick your shoes off. Let’s talk about these 4 books for a while shall we?

When building a web site, sooner or later you will need a form. Forms are the best way of gathering data from visitors. Your forms can be as small as a login form, or as large as a membership subscription form asking for lots of input. Obviously, the bigger the form, the more information there is to process, and the greater the challenge.




When inspecting form data, the two most important issues you have to worry about are intrusion,and gathering as much useful data as possible
from your visitors. Although these issues appear to lay on just opposite sides – you want to collect lots of data, but you have to put restrictions against intruders – it is actually possible to do both. By taking a few precautions you can eliminate 95% of intruders while forcing visitors to supply the data you want.




You have tools for optimization of form’s inspection process, both client side and server side. Client side, the most important of
the tools are scripting languages, particularly Javascript. Utilizing
Javascript, you can limit and check form data while it’s still on the client side.




On the server side, you need nothing but PHP. But, you should be aware that some common coding mistakes in PHP may become deadly. Have a look
at zend.com’s articles titled Coding Mistakes Part I, II, III for more details.

Debugging in a scripting language can be problematic. There are several PHP debugging options that are growing in both functionality and popularity. However, these options generally require server access and special configuration. Most programmers revert to simply printing variables to the browser via clumsy print() or print_r() statements. Neither of these solutions is ideal. Both can interfere with page layout and the results can be interspersed throughout the page and be difficult to find. With this tutorial, you will be able to create a library that will alleviate these issues.