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IBM developerWorks: 30 game scripts you can write in PHP, Part 1: Creating 10 fundamental scripts

PHPDeveloper.org — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:13:00 +0000

In a new tutorial from the IBM developerWorks site starts off a new series looking at creating some games, from start to finish.

PHP is an easy-to-use, easy-to-learn, widely accessible programming language. It's well suited for developing simple scripts you can use to help you in all kinds of games. Whether you play simple pen-and-paper games by yourself, complex tabletop role-playing games with a group of people, or online games of any kind, this series will have something for you. Each article in this "30 game scripts you can write in PHP" series will cover 10 scripts in 300 words or less (3d10 stands for "roll three 10-sided dice") simple enough for even a beginning developer, but useful enough for a seasoned game player.

The ten scripts they walk you through are things like a die roller, a name generator, a deck builder/shuffler, a poker dealer and a crossword helper.

WebReference.com: Administering RBAC in PHP 5 CMS Framework

PHPDeveloper.org — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:28:15 +0000

WebReference.com continues their series looking at user administration in content management systems. This time they look at the importance of user roles and some code to add to help manage them.

Although the operations are simple, it is vital that they be handled correctly. It is generally a poor principle to allow access to the mechanisms of a system rather than providing an interface through class methods. The latter approach ideally allows the creation of a robust interface that changes relatively infrequently, while details of implementation can be modified without affecting the rest of the system.

Their code includes methods to get all roles for a user, check to see which they are permitted to use, add a "permit" role and remove it back out. The tutorial is an excerpt from the Packt book PHP5 CMS Framework Development (Martin Brampton).

Douglas Clifton’s Blog: PHP Specificity (a Five-part Series)

PHPDeveloper.org — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:33:22 +0000

Douglas Clifton has put together a series of blog posts looking at several different types of categories that PHP applications and tools can fit into:

Rather than spending the time and effort to implement paging, I took another approach. And that was to get down to specifics. This was really a taxonomy problem, and the key was to break the page up into a top-level (general) category, and then divide the rest into sub-categories.

His series of articles covers:

PHPro.org: Class Hierachies And Overriding

PHPDeveloper.org — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:46:47 +0000

The PHPro.org website has this new tutorial posted today - a step further into the would of OOP in PHP with a look at abstraction, hierarchies and polymorphism.

The PHP Object Oriented method of programming brings many exciting possibilities to application code. Many of the theories surrounding PHP Object Oriented code comes from some simple concepts. To the new comer, some of these concepts seem a little abstract, and with good reason. Abstraction is a key concept on Object Oriented code, but to the un-initiated, may seem rather vague.

Kevin looks at creating abstract classes as a foundation for types other classes can work from, overriding built in classes (like extending the DirectoryIterator to make a DirectoryReader class).

Hiveminds: PHP is a skill not a profession

PHPDeveloper.org — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:55:59 +0000

In a new article on the Hiveminds website, one of their columnists, Carl shares his skewed perception of PHP - mainly that it's just not a profession (like .NET is).

I have to say that I am more in agreement with this line of thinking now than I was a couple of years ago. Regardless of how many Facebooks and Diggs show up on the web PHP will always only be given the same importance as HTML or JavaScript. PHP is something that is part of a skill set not something that you can say you do and be taken seriously as a web programmer. This was true 3 years ago is true now and quite honestly will be the case for many more years

He provides some results to back up his assumption, but they seem a bit tainted by his Microsoft slant on things (popularity rankings of 51.5% for ASP.NET but only 6.0% for PHP). He favors Visual Studio for development and suggests that there are no commercial CMSes for PHP.

Site News: Blast from the Past - One Year Ago in PHP

PHPDeveloper.org — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:00:37 +0000

Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:

Speaking at Conférence PHP Québec 2009

Paul Reinheimer — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:05:00 +0000

I will present two sessions at the Conférence PHP Québec 2009:

Of Lambda Functions, Closures and Traits
Lambda Functions and Closures allow the quick definition of throw-away functions (for use with array_map(), for instance) that are not used elsewhere. Traits reduce some limitations of single inheritance by enabling the reuse method sets freely in several independent classes. This session introduces the audience to the implementation of lambda functions and closures (which are new in PHP 5.3) as well as traits (which will be added in PHP 6).

PHP Code Review (together with Stefan Priebsch)
Attendees of this lab will learn how experts look at code, what good code and bad code looks like, and how to avoid the most common gotchas. They are invited to bring their own code for an anonymous code review for an increased benefit from the lab.

See you in Montréal next March!

Zend Developer Zone: Dynamically Generating PDF Files with PHP and Haru

PHPDeveloper.org — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:47:40 +0000

New on the Zend Developer Zone there's a tutorial written up by Wil Sinclair looking at building dynamic PDF files in PHP with help from Haru.

This incredible versatility also applies to the topic of today's article: the PDF, or Portable Document Format. Not content with just one, PHP actually comes with two different extensions that allow developers to dynamically generate PDF documents: the PDFlib extension, and the libHaru extension. Over the next few pages, I'm going to take a quick look at the Haru extension, providing you with a brief overview of its functions and demonstrating how you can use it in your PHP development.

The tutorial walks you through the installation of the extension and several examples of it in use - everything from simple text input out to text transformations, drawing shapes and adding annotations.

Jani Hartikainen’s Blog: Base classes in OOP programming languages

PHPDeveloper.org — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:10:58 +0000

Jani Hartikainen has followed up on a post from David Otten about standard classes in PHP and how they provide the base for much of what the language does.

David Otton posted a short but thought-provoking post about stdClass, which many think is the "base class" all PHP classes automatically inherit from. I have to admit that I had this misconception as well. [...] This [difference in PHP from other OOP languages] presents some room for analysis in how things are handled in dynamic and static languages, and how those differences affect things...

Jani talks about dynamic and static typing in languages and how that effects the base types things are extended from as well as some of the benefits that having a standard base class affords developers.

I’m programmer of the year!

Evert Pot — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:29:48 +0000

Last night the CNMA awards were held here in Toronto, and I turned out to go home with an award!

Although I still feel I didn't really deserve such a prize, I feel honored and proud of the team.

Thanks guys! Its been an amazing ride so far, and also thanks to the CNMA organization and judges.