One of the most common reasons people write extensions for PHP is to link against an external library and make available its API to PHP userspace scripts. Often the external library is written in C or C++. If you are tasked with writing such an extension that links against an object oriented C++ library, you will probably want to wrap the C++ classes and make them available to PHP userspace scripts. This is pretty easy to do once you get over a few initial hurdles. […]

Looking forward to getting your hands sticky with all manner of PHP 5.3 goodness? Well, you can get started early: IBM developerWorks has posted the second part of John Mertic's article on what to expect in the upcoming version of PHP. Part 1 focused on changes in the PHP object model; Part 2 discusses closures and lambda functions. Essential reading for all developers engaged in developing PHP applications!

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Douglas Brown has discussed the advantages of using a PHP framework in his blog. If you're new to the world of PHP frameworks, his post provides a concise list of the benefits you will gain. One of the key benefits he finds is: "MVC or Model- View- Controller is a well-known design pattern that demarcates the database and business logic from the presentation layer. This results in simple, clean and understandable code". Of course, not everyone agrees! A spirited discussion is currently under way in the comments section of his post. Take a look, and put in your $0.02! […]

Just four months after the 1.1 release, the symfony team is proud to announce the immediate availability of symfony 1.2. As always, it comes with a lot of exciting new features like full Doctrine support, or a new admin generator that takes full advantages of the form framework introduced in symfony 1.1. […]

"Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5" is aimed at beginning or mid-level programmers that want to expand their knowledge of object-oriented features in PHP. Although basic OOP support was present in version 4 of PHP, it wasn't until the introduction of version 5 that they caught up with object-oriented implementations of other popular languages, such as Java or Python. The book does a decent job of covering the main OOP topics in PHP; as well as, touching upon some of the peripheral ones. Hayder devotes whole chapters to such topics as unit testing, design patterns, XML, SPL, and working with databases. […]

For the last 10 years of doing web development with PHP I have been searching for a proper way to build my domain model and represent it with a relational database and a set of PHP classes. This has not existed until recently I came across a young open source PHP project named Doctrine. […]

Fellow Zender and all around nice guy Matthew Weier O’Phinney recently posted an article on his blog encouraging PHP developers to “Start Writing Embeddable Applications”. […]

Padraic Brady has been posting a fascinating series of articles on his blog about complex views in the Zend Framework. If you are working with the Zend Framework or you are interested in a deep discussion about M-V-C then you’ll want to spend a lunch hour digesting these four articles. […]

Gregory Szorc recently posted a blog entry in which he laments the fact that many big PHP open source projects don’t utilize the features that he thinks are the strengths of PHP. […]

Back at PHPQuebec, I was standing in the back of the room for the closing ceremonies when Laura Thomson of OmniTI announced that they had officially opened OmniTI Labs. Somehow, I passed over this fact in my PHPQuebec roundups, so let me correct that oversight now. […]