The PHP Grind

PHPied.com: The PEAR book is on it’s way

To prepare the way for the upcoming PEAR book from Packt Publishing correctly, Stoyan Stefanov has posted this info about the book and where to find the latest details on it.

Here’s the link to publisher’s page dedicated to the PHP Programming with PEAR. Guess who wrote the chapter for MDB2?

It’s an honour to me to be in the company of the other authors, people who have done a lot for the PEAR community

He also mentions some of the topics that the book will contain, including accessing databases with MDB2, creating and parsing XML documents, and accessing web APIs. The book is coming out in September, so keep on the lookout for it at your local bookseller soon.

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Turn of the Crank: PHP 5, Sqlite, and Windows

Sometimes, a technology sounds like a great, simple answer to all of your problems. That, however, was not the experience of this blogger when checking out SQLite on Windows.

My first task at my new job was a simple enough one. All our customers have a review site that has a list of contacts. The file was contacts.html and it was just a static html file.

Since there are already 100s of sites using the static html, I wanted to avoid any kind of complex migration or external database. I decided to give SQLite a try since the db files are so portable. Each site would have it’s own database with a single contacts table. Simple right? Let me go over all the problems I ran into.

He starts off with the fact that SQLite 3 doesn’t work with PHP (different client drivers in PHP) and that PHP doesn’t like SQLite 2 all that much either. His third and final experience? That SQLite isn’t the brightest when it comes to working with directory permissions.

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Community News: PerlCoders and PHP Labs Marge (with Promotion)

According to this new press release, PerlCoders and PHP Labs have joined forces and become one and, to share the love with others, they’re offering discounts on their offerings.

Over the last week, PerlCoders and PHP Labs have merged to offer even more professional scripts to their clients. To celebrate this merger, they are now offering a one-time special promotion for webmasters, which can save them over $300. As a small incentive for new members, PHP Labs is also offering free installation for the first script of your choice.

The press release goes on to talk about what each is bringing to the table and what they’re offering from now on. The $300 promotion goes towards a membership for the site, giving you access to all 44 scripts without paying extra. Examples of the scripts include GalleryMaker, ProxyCheck, FileMailer, and CashMail. You can get more information from the promotion’s page on their website.

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Zend Developer Zone: Live Blogging From php/ab|works 2006

This week, Cal Evans is reporting live from this year’s php/db|works conference in Toronto. Since today is “Tutorial Day”, the schedule is a little lighter, and he makes to time to catch Rob Richards’ talk on PHP and Advanced XML and Web Services.

Rob Richards is the author of Pro PHP XML and Web Services. He literally wrote the book on using PHP and XML together. At php|works, he is leading a tutorial on using XML in web services using the DOM extension.

If you ever get a chance to hear Rob do a presentation, let me warn you, it is not for the faint of heart. As I learned last night when I sat down with Rob to record an interview, Rob likes to speak on leading edge and advanced topics. This tutorial is an excellent example of that philosophy.

Cal talks more about the content of the talk - its simplicity despite the complex topic, how much info is jammed in, and the fact that it’s not just one giant pitch for Rob’s book.

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Tracking Website Statistics with PHP

If you have a website especially one that sells products or services it can be useful to track the visitors to your site. This article explains how to write a program that will do just that….

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