The August 2009 issue of php|architect is out—this month, our editorial team has trained its collectively keen eye on Non-relational Databases.

Contents

Here’s a quick overview of the contents of
this month’s issue:

• Non-Relational Databases by Russell Smith
  This overview will show you the basic use of some alternative styles of databases, more specifically the non-relational databases SimpleDB and CouchDB. These can have distinct advantages over more typical relational databases.
   
• A Tour of the Doctrine ORM  by Ciaran McNulty
  Nearly every PHP application has to solve the problem of Object Relational Mapping (ORM), but most developers roll their own solution and end up reinventing the wheel. This article explains some of the exciting new features of Doctrine 1.1 and shows how using it can lead to faster development and easier deployment.
   
• Architecture of Adminer by Jakub Vrána
  Adminer is a feature complete MySQL administration tool with the aim of compactness. The whole application consists of a single file that is as small as possible.
   
• Exceptions and Autoloaders by Michael White
  Have you ever tried to throw PHP exceptions inside anautoloader expecting to catch the exception gracefully or, at least, have your custom exception handler function spit out some juicy error statistics? I did and the results surprised me. This article is a walk through my discovery of the problem and search for a solution. Lucky us, I found two answers that do not use eval().
   
• How to Build Your Own Survey Engine by Philippe Randour
  While there are many providers of online surveys, sometimes you have specific requirements or integration needs that could be better served by your own custom development. This article will show you how easy it can be using popular technologies like PHP, MySQL, and jQuery.
   
• Step-By-Step Regex by Darren Cook
  This article is for anyone who has heard other people rave about how useful regexes are but has just never gotten past the initial learning curve. We’re going to take small steps and get you past that first barrier.
   
• Security Roundup:   You’ve Got Mail  by Arne Blankerts
  It’s a tough world out there, but there are ways to secure your forms against bad e-mail addresses.
   
• exit(0): The Value of Bad Code by Marco Tabini
  Learn more about the positive side of bad code.

Our CodeWorks 09 Summer Webcast series, sponsored by Microsoft’s
Interoperability Labs, continues with a new presentation by php|architect’sGuide to Date and Time Programming author Derick Rethans, who will present on his favourite topic: date and time programming!

Today’s webcast is completely free (registration on the webcast system is required to secure your spot, however). You can sign up through our Summer Webcast Series page.

Sean Coates has been developing Web applications professionally for over a decade, and is currently a Web Architect for OmniTI. In the past, he has worked in various
positions, from developing payment code that processed over one million dollars per day, to working as the editor-in-chief of php|architect magazine, and organizer of php|tek and php|works conferences. Sean has been a contributing member of the
PHP community, from working heavily on the PHP manual, to maintaining PEAR code, speaking on the topic of PHP, and contributing to open source projects, including (most recently) the Habari and Phergie projects.

Some little known facts about Sean:

• Sean’s first computer was a Tandy Colour Computer III with Extended Colour Basic. He wrote a whole address book app at the ripe age of 10, complete with telephone line art and “realistic” ringing sounds that he tuned after dozens of calls to his buddy’s phone number so he could hear his phone ring.
• Sean is an expert in all things beer-ish and has been known to be inundated with Twitter DMs for spur-of-the-moment beer advice. You have a question about beer? @coates is your man.
• He strongly dislikes weddings. At his own wedding, he wore a custom tailored suit… with sandals. (He also dislikes socks.)

Sean will be giving a talk on Stupid Browser Tricks and another entitled Out with Regex, In with Tokens. You won’t want to miss these!

Matthew Weier O’Phinney is project lead for Zend Framework ( http://framework.zend.com). He is a vocal advocate for best practices and standards in PHP development, including version control, design patterns, and unit testing. While blogging is his normal communication medium, Matthew
is also a regular speaker at PHP conferences, has articles published on Zend’s Developer Zone ( http://devzone.zend.com) and in php|architect ( http://phparch.com), and was a contributor to SitePoint’s second edition of “The PHP Anthology”.

A few things you may not know about Matthew:

• A course in Artificial Intelligence while in college ultimately led to him getting a degree in comparative religion.
• After learning OOP in Perl 5, OOP in PHP was an easy paradigm to learn.
• His typical social networking avatar is a Celtic Knot, and was used by his wife and him on their wedding stationary.

Matthew will be presenting a tutorial on Zend
Framework, and we highly encourage you to take part in this interactive and informative learning experience!

We’re back! After a long hiatus, the php|architect Podcast is on the air again with news, gossip and opinion on what’s going on in the PHP community.

We’ve got a whole new theme music and we even hired a “professional voice guy” to a voice intro for us (we figured we should avoid scaring off potential listeners in the first thirty seconds of the broadcast).

In this episode, which shall henceforth be known as the one where Marco speaks… really… slowly…, our host and guests cover a few different topics:

• Joe Stagner’s PHP vs. ASP.NET benchmarks
• Marco’s gripes with the SXSW submission process (he likes to complain, but still wants you vote for his talk)
• PHP 5.3: what’s so cool about it?
• Beth’s php|architect minute: what’s coming up in this month’s issue

Subscribe to the Notes

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