The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.2 and availability of PHP 4.4.7. These releases are major stability and security enhancements of the 5.x and 4.4.x branches, and all users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to it as soon as possible. Further details about the PHP 5.2.2 release can be found in the release announcement for 5.2.2, the full list of changes is available in the ChangeLog for PHP 5. Details about the PHP 4.4.7 release can be found in the release announcement for 4.4.7, the full list of changes is available in the ChangeLog for PHP 4.

Among the updates in these new versions many security enhancements and fixes were made based off of several bug reports from Stanislav Malyshev, Stefan Esser and Ilia Alshanetsky (among others). Updates based on Stefan's comments were largely issues found during the Month of PHP Bugs.

Besides other small enhancements, they've added to main features:

• a new bug tracking system to make reporting and managing bugs simpler
• the project page to help keep track of websites out there using the framework. If you are, submit yours to be included.

After a few month break since the last release, a new version of FUDforum is once again in the works. This is primarily a feature enhancement release with a slew of new functionality designed to improve the forum. Aside from the new feature a fair number of bug fixes is also available, so something for everyone.

This latest release can be downloaded from install script and and upgrade script to help you get up to speed as well.

Last night, I released version 0.24.0 of Solar, the simple object library and application repository. Solar is a PHP 5 framework for rapid application development.

You can read the change notes for a full run-down, but there are a few changes in particular that I want to highlight.

He points out changes in the form of two major packages:

• Solar_Request - a new class developed to handle the request information for a script (get/post/cookie/etc)
• Solar_Session - a new class to handle the sessions in an application, complete with read-once "flash" support

Rasmus Lerdorf wrote quite a nice article called The no-framework PHP MVC framework. In it, he demonstrates how to create a simple application by using the model view controller design pattern. Using this design pattern, he creates a basic framework to save some effort with common tasks.

Put your hands up if you were a PHP programmer who was writing python or ruby on the side due to the incomprehensibly naive design of PHP… Now put your hands up if you understand and have worked extensively with object oriented programming, functional programming and perhaps agile programming. You're the guys I'm talking to.

He continues, alluding to the lack of sophistication amung PHP developers (procedural over OOP?) and some comments about what he thinks PHP is really missing. He does, however, encourage those out there just getting into design patterns with PHP to check out the article if for nothing more than a good intro to MVC.]]> Fri, 03 Mar 2006 07:03:29 -0600