This new PHP extension is called "GObject for PHP", so, my main concern, obviously is building comfortable bridge between GObject objects and PHP's objects. It starts to work, but there's a lot of stuff to be done. Please join the project, if you are interested. We need more hands!

He describes some of the features already in the library - counterparts for parts of the current GObject world in PHP including GType, GSignal and GParamSpec. This is all on the master branch. In his "introspection" branch he's working on the introspection idea the GNOME community has been working towards too.

PHP is the widely-used, free, and efficient alternative to competitors such as Microsoft's ASP. If you are just starting up trying to learn PHP then this post is just what you're looking for as it list 10 really good books that will get you started well.

Books included in their list of ten are things like:

• PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition)
• PHP Cookbook : Solution and Examples for PHP Programers
• Head First PHP & MySQL
• Beginning PHP and MySQL
• PHP Objects, Patterns, Third Edition

Obviously these books are for developers at different levels in their skillsets, but you can pick out the ones from this list that might suit you best. My personal recommendation is for "PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice" by Matt Zandstra.

• Use PHP Only When You Need it - Rasmus Lerdorf
• Never, ever trust your users - Dave Child
• Invest in PHP Caching - Ben Balbo
• Make Better Use of PHP's Filter Functions - Joey Sochacki
• Use Batch Processing - Jack D. Herrington

Check out the rest of the post for helpful hints from other masters in the community such as Josh Sharp, David Cummings and Chad Kieffer.

I need to get a list of databases from SQL Server for the currently logged in user. Initially, I found a built in function sp_databases. This looked promising, until I discovered that it didn't work for my user. I'm pretty sure that it's related to permissions. The user just has db_owner on a specific database and nothing else.

He ended up selecting from a sys.database table where the name wasn't in a grouping of standard SQL Server databases (like "master" or "msdb"). He wrapped this in a foreach with a try/catch to catch errors thrown and drops all of the names into a regular array.

The ZendCon Sessions are live recordings of sessions that have been given at previous Zend Conferences. Combined with the slides, they can be the next best thing to having attended the conference itself. In this series we will be releasing regular sessions from ZendCon 2008 as we lead up to this year's ZendCon.

You can check out his slides as you listen to the episode either through the in-page player, downloading the mp3 directly or subscribing to the podcast's feed.

If you want to tell me I'm crazy, you can post it in a comment here, it makes me happy. I had some reasons to dislike bind9 which finally made me write my own DNS daemon, and I'll explain that here. My need was to have a stable dynamic DNS server working in most environments, with an easy to configure master/slave relationship (with realtime synchronization), and a way to change records instantly from PHP...

Rather than using the (slightly unstable) dlz technology to pull the information from a MySQL database, he opted to roll his own that includes support for:

• RFC 1035 standards
• realtime data update
• slave/master relationship (with a keepalive connection)

Want to try it out for yourself? Drop him a line and ask about it!

He's also run some statistics on the performance of the daemon as compared to the standard BIND installation and come up with some instructions on how you can install and configure your own instance.

They talk (briefly) about how the call to the page is passed off to the controller's action and how you can get more information into it via POSTed values.

There's also a look at redirection, from action to action in a controller (or even to another one) and a look at a very handy method of sharing functions between the child controllers - a "master" parent controller (in their case, AppController).

At the end, they throw in a bit about components - module and reusable bits of functionality that can be passed around from controller to controller, action to action.

This series of articles are excerpts from the Packt book CakePHP Application Development.

With Solar, you connect to SQL databases using the Solar_Sql factory class, which returns a Solar_Sql_Adapter class for you. Most developers only need to connect to a single MySQL server. [...] However, when you get into a situation where you need to scale up, you might need a replicated MySQL database setup. In such cases, there is one "master" server that handles reads and writes, and there are one or more "slave" servers that are read-only.

The Solar_Sql_Adapter_MysqlReplicated adapter does all of the switching for you, making it as simple as dropping it in and changing your configuration to point to the master and slave servers (examples included).

• Use PHP Only When You Need it - Rasmus Lerdorf
• Use Many Tables With PHP and MYSQL for Scalability - Matt Mullenweg
• Never, ever trust your users - Dave Child
• Invest in PHP Caching - Ben Balbo
• Speed up PHP Development with an IDE, Templates and Snippets - Chad Kieffer
• Make Better Use of PHP's Filter Functions - Joey Sochacki
• Use a PHP Framework - Josh Sharp
• Don't use a PHP Framework - Rasmus Lerdorf
• Use Batch Processing - Jack D. Herrington
• Turn on Error Reporting Immediately - David Cummings

Some of them are conflicting, but that just means that you'll have to do what you've always done - take advice with a grain of salt and ultimately decide what's best for you and your application.

For the past four years, I have put a lot of work into executing a strategic plan that is tangentially connected with our conferences. [...] Instead [of trying to force interaction], I decided to try and slowly steer things in a direction that would have made our conferences closer to a family reunion than a dry business meetup.

He mentions the steps in his "evil plan" (for conference domination?) - community participation, setting the right atmosphere for the exchange of ideas, the oh-so-secret choosing of the speakers and their leadership by example through participation with the speakers and other conference goers.