The NETTUTS.com website has posted this new tutorial (complete with demo and source download) showing the creation of a simple blog in PHP (object-oriented style).
Today we are going to take our knowledge of PHP and MySQL a step further by creating a simple blog. While there are countless excellent free blog platforms, the purpose of this tutorial is not to make a "better" blog but to use the process of making a blog to learn about advanced database structure techniques and how to use data more efficiently by utilizing objects in PHP.
They start from the backend - creating the database first to store the post information for the blog. On top of that they create a "BlogPost" class to interface with each of the posts. This is then use to fetch the entries from the database and display them out in a simple list (which they augment with a little CSS).
The NETTUTS blog has another WordPress-related post today that looks at "context includes" - changing the look and feel of the postings based on the content type they're tagged with.
The great thing about WordPress is that it doesn't limit how content is displayed, but provides a 'framework' of ways to do so. Even better, it's possible to change the display according to the content. When writing this tutorial it was hard to explain what's going on... But the best way is this: the post will be displayed within the loop according to its content - or contextual differences. Either way, it's including specific files that match up to the category of the post.
There's plenty of code to go around introducing you to the parts of the typical WodPress install you'll be working with and some CSS to help you style the resulting changes. You can download the source and check out a live demo of the end result.
The NETTUTS.com website has a new tutorial posted that combines PHP and AJAX (using the the jQuery library specifically) to create a simple dynamic poll.
When you combine some neat functionality courtesy of PHP with the cleverness of jQuery you can produce some pretty cool results. In this tutorial we'll create a poll using PHP and XHTML, then make use of some jQuery Ajax effects to eliminate the need for a page refresh, and to give it a nice little bit of animation.
The PHP handles defining the question, answers and the functionality to load, submit and return the current results (number of votes) back to the javascript. The communication between the PHP and javascript is a JSON message made simple thanks to PHP's json_encode function.
Andy Frey dropped us a line to tell us about a method he's come up with to make a remoting interface between Javascript and PHP5.
This is a demonstration of a very fast and easy way to build AJAX-type applications where communications between JavaScript on the client side and PHP5 on the server side is ideal. This library makes development of such systems fast and very simple.
In his example he shows how to create the PHP and Javascript functions that let the service talk back and forth. He defines a simple "Hello World" style application to show how it would be structured. He also includes a bit of more complex that has other functionality - getting a value out of an array and returning a property/private variable from the backend class.
Padraic Brady has noted that the latest release candidate of the HTMLPurifier software has been posted for download:
HTMLPurifer is possibly the most understated underpublicised quality library in PHP today. I consider it a fundamental standard library that is automatically included in every PHP web application I start these days.
This latest release candidate (their first!) includes updates on two major features - the use of autoloading and a change to the way you use the filters. Check out a demo of it in action or just download this latest release and try it out for yourself.
Daniel Crookpoints out the next meeting of the New York PHP Group where Dan Gisolfi will be talking about some of the latest things that IBM has been up to in the mashup arena.
Centered around the concept of "situational applications," IBM's work with mashups targets a growing trend in Web site development. [...] IT specialists should embrace the model as a foothold for PHP in the enterprise.
Some of Dan's presentation is outlined as well - a demo of IBM's Mashup Starter Kit, a look at best practices, and talk on the collaboration of IBM with Zend and ProgrammableWeb. If you're wanting to attend, be sure you RSVP as soon as possible (before the 21st @ 3pm) to reserve your spot.
On his blog, Tomas Petricekshows how to create Silverlight applications inside of PHP using the Microsoft development tools.
Shortly Silverlight is a cross-browser platform that can be used for developing client-side components that run in the web browser and contain rich media, graphics and can interactively communicate with the user. The language that can be used for writing Silverlight code can be in general any .NET language, so our goal is to allow using PHP by making Phalanger compatible with Silverlight.
He has two demo applications - a simple car app and a helicopter game - he uses as examples. He focuses on the simpler of the two, the car demo, and gives the XAML source, the code for the PHPX file and talks some about the method of deployment that'd need to be used to get the app out to others.
As pointed out by the Zend Developer Zone and severalother blogs/community sites lately, the latest version of the HTML filter HTML Purifier has been released - version 2.2.0.
Because it uses whitelists and a comprehensive knowledge of the HTML specification, it is bullet-proof against XSS, fixes malformed input rather than reject it, and is open and extensible. The 2.0.0 release lets users customize HTML Purifier's tag sets easier than ever before.
You can check out the official release announcement for of the updates in this release (including a comparison to other similar libraries). There's also a demo they've posted so you can give it a try.
In this new blog post today, Richard Thomas shares a simple helper he's created to help tie PHP and Javascript together via jquery - Pjq.
This is a simple php handler, it doesn't try to generate javascript for you, honestly if your using jquery you better already be able to write your own javascript ;).
The goal is to provide a extremely simple way to call php functions from within javascript and either get data back, inject php generated html or call jquery functions from php.
You can check out his demo here - three simple examples showing how to get JSON values, inject HTML, and some more complex work with Javascript and CSS.
Ajaxian.com has pointed out a new tool that combines PHP and jQuery to make something similar to the Rails helpers (in relation to Prototype/Script.aculo.us).
PQuery is a set of helper classes for JQuery JavaScript library.This library allows you to easily integrate AJAX , Effects and other JQuery functionality into your PHP scripts.IT has a small foot print and is compatible with PHP4 and PHP5.
They've also included an example of the code to show how simple it can be as well as links to download the library, check out some other demos (including an Ajax demo, two Effects demos, and two simple applications - a chat and to-do list), as well as pointing you to the complete documentation for the project.
