With the introduction of PHP 5, the PHP Data Object was introduced as core functionality. PHP 5.1 turned on a minimum level of support for SQLite, by default, and PDO supports most of the major database engines. PDO offers a number of enhancements and improvements over the various database libraries (e.g. mysql_*, mysqli_*, pg_*), the [...]

When setting up a web server with PHP, there are a number of settings that are critical to consider. PHP 5.3 contains both a development INI file and a production INI file; however, users of older PHP releases (or those who don’t have direct control over their INI files) will want to pay attention and [...]

When I first learned PHP 5′s object oriented syntax and rules, I didn’t see much of a point to the interface options. I felt that I could do more by defining abstract classes and at least filling in some of the methods with some details. Lots of people in the PHP world still aren’t 100% [...]

This entry is part of an ongoing series involving the review of a code sample and it’s refactoring. For the original code sample, see here. The topics discussed in this entry may be fairly advanced. Please feel free to ask questions, and discuss best practices. If you’ve been following this series from the beginning, take [...]

Recently, I’ve been getting more and more into community-supplied code, since it’s generally been getting better. Namely, I’ve been exploring the PEAR offerings, and seeing what pieces I can integrate into my personal framework for development. One of these packages is the package called Log, which allows for easy logging of application events.