Today we will talk about migrations, yaml files and CakePHP and in particular I’ll introduce you to the latest shell I’ve written for CakePHP. Migrations allow you to define changes to your database schema, making it possible to use a version control system to keep things synchronized with the actual code.

One of the things I like best about PHP, is its support for a diverse array of technologies and formats. Take, for instance, YAML. I’ve been using YAML for a while to manage configuration data for a Ruby-based application, but I recently needed to use it for a PHP-based project for the first time. Although PHP doesn’t come with built-in support for this format, a quick Google search revealed a PECL extension, ext/syck, that allowed me to quickly add YAML parsing support to my PHP build and begin reading and managing YAML-formatted files through my PHP application.