SQLite is an ultra lite database replacement that comes bundled with PHP. Because of its light weight it lacks many of the features found in more robust applications such as MySQL, PostgresQL and others. One of the features that is lacking is the ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE that is often used to automatically UPDATE a record, should a duplicate field be found. Here a demonstration is provided to duplicate this behaviour using PHP Exceptions.

Their example creates a table of animals and inserts several to act as a base. They show insert method, how to get the information back out and what happens when you try add a duplicate value to the table. Normally this just results in an exception being displayed but, when caught with exception handling, it can be redirected into an update statement to change that animal's current information.

Zend framework is becoming a first choice framework for a large percentage of PHP developers. It's native support for advanced URL routing makes implementing search engine optimized URLs a breeze. Or not?

Because of the reserved words for the controllers and the multiple ways to access the actions below it (his example is case_studies, case-studies and case)studies) make three different ways to get to the same content - a SEO no-no.

This has been covered before, but I was just setting up a new force type on our servers and thought I would mention it for the fun of it. You see lots of stuff about using mod_rewrite to make friendly URLs or SEO friendly URLs. But, if you are using PHP (and I guess other Apache modules) you can do it without mod_rewrite.

There's three steps to the process - adding the directive to your Apache config, making the script able to handle the request, avoiding duplication of content and returning a 404 error when there's no matching data.

I have had to go through a php application recently which has given me more than one headache and has required me to use all my possible patience. While working with it, I thought This is good material for an article, so that nobody else does the same in the future, and nobody else will need to experience the same displeasure as I have had to.

So here are the signs your PHP application needs a serious refactoring, right now

Included in the list are things like:

• Uses global variables
• Everything's an array
• The neverending switch
• Interface inconsistency

It hits on one of the thing that bugs me too, the problem of "Brackets galore" - so many subarrays that you have to resort to three or more sets of bracketed keys to get to the value you want. It's bad enough trying to follow someone else's code without having to "trace down" an array to figure out which of the values they're talking about.