Here is a short tutorial about my discovery of the new YAML parsing library that comes with symfony 1.1. As you may know, YAML files are a place symfony developers spend time writing configuration, it is very important they have a good tool to manipulate data and debug files.

They include code showing how to pull in a sample file, access the properties inside of it and how to take a multi-dimensional PHP array and push it back out (automagically) into a new YAML formatted file.

Recently, I have to output the age of a date in words and didn't have a framework to work with. The first steps were to parse the given date into an array and create a timestamp with the individual parts. The difference between the timestamp of now and the created timestamp yielded the age in seconds. The result can be used to compare with seconds of a day, week, etc.

The code snippet in the post outputs the difference between two timestamps (then and now) it a bit more friendly way (ex. 4 months, 2 weeks, 2 days).

It creates the number formats used in AVM2 swfs, as described here. I created these functions for the SWX project and am releasing the code under the MIT license so it can be used in other projects too.

You can download the file directly from his blog. You can find out more about the native data format (SWX) for Flash on the SWX Format website.

• Image creation with PHP - Image Tools
• Image creation with PHP - Text rendering
• Image creation with PHP - Integrating bitmaps
• Image creation with PHP - Gradient rendering
• Image creation with PHP - A first shape
• Image creation with PHP - Formats & Libraries

Each of them can be read separately, but they're all part of a series and make more sense when read together.

I found it incredibly difficult to find any form of time_since function in php so to save anyone else the trouble to hunting through hundreds of useless websites here is the function you may want to use, written by Natalie Downe (you don't want to know how long it took to hunt it down).

The function takes in the value, subtracts the two timestamps and loops through an array of "time chunks" to each other to show nicely formatted output of how long the difference it.

This article explains basics of content syndications and demonstrates how to use Zend Framework Zend_Feed classes for consuming a news feed of your site.

His format of choice is Atom, slightly different from the RSS most sites use. He includes a sample document to show some of the differences (assuming you know the RSS format, of course) - both complex and simple versions. Also included is a UML layout of the Zend_Feed class, showing all of the methods and properties therein.

With the groundwork laid, he starts on the sample application - creating an Atom feed from a PHP array of data. He grabs the information from the database and pulls it into the controller where it's parsed and massaged into the array format the output needs. Then it's just a matter of passing it to the view and voila - an Atom feed worthy of consumption.

As our chat application gathers pace we return to the server side of the application. At this point we have setup the Zend Framework with an IndexController class to handle server requests. When we receive a new chat message from the user, we will need to store it. For this tutorial I've selected a file based solution using XML.

They start with a look at the storage method - XML on the backend, pushed into a MySQL database (along with the message format). There's a quick refresher on SimpleXML before they show how to integrate this storage method into the current system.

A friend asked "How do I calculate start (monday) and end (sunday) dates from a given week number for a specified year?" Instead of having to come up with your own algorithm you can simply do the following in PHP 5.1 and higher.

The (technically) three-line code uses ISO format for the date to tell you which day is the starting day of that week and which is the end. He only explains this format just a bit, so if you want more information, check out the strtotime function page.

I've been playing with this tonight. Feel free to follow along as I go. The first thing you want to do is create an ordered list from the code you want to format ($code in these examples).

He gives an example of a listing using his system and explains how it all works. It's a mixture of:

• PHP for parsing the data inside the 'code' tags
• CSS to correctly style the information, whitespace and all
• Some ini settings to set parameters for...
• ...the use of highlight string on the PHP code contents