• Strategy and Bridge - The Strategy and Bridge patterns provide solutions to apply polymorphism in more flexible way than you can accomplish with only inheritance.
• Value Object - The Value Object pattern has, just like the Singleton, to do with referencing and instances. In a way, the Value Object is the opposite of the Singleton: it's goal is to ensure NOT to use the same instance, under certain conditions.
• Singleton and Singleton Registry - The Singleton pattern ensures that you are always dealing with the same, single instance, wherever in your application. The Registry pattern usually utilizes the Singleton pattern (hence "Singleton Registry") to make the same 'globalness' apply to objects who's classes weren't necessarily designed to

Keep checking back to their tutorials section for more design pattern tutorials.

The WebSphere sMash environment enables rapid development of interactive Web applications based on popular Web technologies such as PHP, and it lets you reuse existing Java assets from PHP scripts. This article introduces the Java Bridge and shows how to access Java classes from PHP.

They create a sample project to work with in sMash and show how to implement and create a new the Java object that automatically loads and makes available to PHP the functionality inside. They look at accessing static methods and fields, catching exceptions, type conversion, and working with SQL connections.

The PHP/Java bridge allows you to quickly access Java classes from within your PHP classes without having to know Java and vice versa. Because of this two-way flexibility, you can access hundreds of pre-built Java classes from PHP, and hundreds of pre-built PHP classes from Java opening up your applications to greater flexibility and enhanced functionality.

The post includes an introduction to the bridge's functionality - its functions/methods, how to make a new instance of it, catching exceptions and the type conversion it automatically does (like lang.java.String directly to the PHP String type).

They also mention the Zend Platform bridge functionality for a more commercial solution.

Rails for PHP Developers is a new site for PHP developers who are also interested in Rails and Ruby. PHP and Ruby are great complementary tools that are sometimes seen as adversarial, which is really unfortunate. We use both and we'll be writing regular articles to help cross-pollinate ideas and promote collaboration between the communities.

There's already some good content there - useful perlisms in ruby, a look at PHP object attributes and some information about the release of the site itself.

If you're looking for the easiest way to install the PHP Java Bridge in Ubuntu, follow these simple steps...

The basic steps are quick and easy - be sure you have Java installed on your system (commands to install are included), download the Java bridge from Sourceforge and issue the commands (again, included) to install it into your apache2 package.

I've had some code hanging around on my laptop for the better part of a year (feels like two, but I don't think I've had my MBP that long), that implements a bridge between PHP and the Objective-C runtime.

Yesterday I debugged the last portion that I regarded as a total showstopper for anyone else that might want to use it, and added a script that pulls in your PHP installation and dependent libraries (such as Fink or Mac Ports libraries) and generates a "Bundle" and optionally a DMG containing the Bundle.

He had a fellow developer try it out on Leopard too (things broke, but most are fixed) who also created a simple ping example to show off this project in its (very early) alpha stages. He mentions in the post how to get to the code, but if you can't locate it, just wait a bit - he'll have it posted up soon enough.

Also check out Sean Coates' and Joseph Crawford's comments on the project too.

Last week, in a meeting with my boss and another developer, we've decided to test the PHP/Java Bridge. As the project that we are currenlty working (a manager for PLC networks) has grown a lot, we have noticed that we need to do some things that PHP can't do by itself. We often use shell_exec() to execute some shell commands. But it wouldn't fit in this case, as we need some specific things.

He goes through the decision process on with implementation to use (they went with the Java bridge) and the process of getting it set up and working on a Ubuntu system. Sample code to test that everything's in working order is included.

Our special guest today is Kevin Schroder. Kevin is a technical consultant for Zend Technologies' Professional Services Group. He has wide range of experience from large scale system administration to software development in multiple languages. Based out of Dallas, TX, he travels throughout the country for Zend providing consulting, programming and architecture services centered on PHP.

Topics mentioned include the Java Bridge (obviously), the Zend Platform and Zend's Professional Services.

You can either grab the show directly from here or subscribe to their feed and get this and other great shows in the PHP Abstract series.

In the time since I wrote that post [talking about PHP with WebSphere], and particularly in the past month, there have been several items published which demonstrate the value of this technology. I still need to delve deeper, but here's a quick summary of what's going on.

He looks quickly at this combination, breaking it out into four parts - what the technology is, how it allows PHP and Java to work together, where you can download the needed software from and some resources where you can find out more information on implementation and examples of it in action.

So yesterday I was reviewing a code sample that a job applicant had written during a test and I encountered the following line of code: It's not hard to guess what his background was :), but I was initially stunned that this actually works in php.

After a little investigating (and ruling out the Java Bridge), Ivo found that the line was being interpreted literally and was just being handled as a string instead of a constant. He gives two other examples to help with clarification.