Doing everything in just PHP can be a great thing when you're working with web applications, but what happens when a project comes along that was already using something like Ruby on Rails? You'd have to get in there and learn the language to get up to speed. One thing that can help, though, is a "transition" piece to show you what functionality matches up with the language you're familiar with - PHP. This new article (series) from LoLoCoJr aims for just that.

In recent weeks I was busy converting a fairly large PHP application to Rails. The existing PHP application is about 65.500 lines of intermingled PHP and HTML/CSS code. Yep, a classic PHP application without any database abstraction layer, no templating, no MVC.

This is just part one of the series, but it jumps right in to things - the list of deliverables to break out the application into easy to chew chunks and a look at a Ruby config and database connections (MySQL to PostgreSQL)