On PHPMaster.com today there's a new tutorial showing you how to handle simple pagination in a popular PHP framework, CodeIgniter.

Pagination is particularly useful when you are coding an application that interfaces with a database. A large dataset might have hundreds of possible results for one query, and pagination creates a much nicer user experience. In this tutorial, I'll use CodeIgniter's pagination library to show you how you can create a paginated list of results from a MySQL database. Along the way, you'll also see how to fix a problem with the pagination links that the library might produce.

He starts on the backend, creating a model to work with Country information and includes a "fetch_countries" method to grab the limited/paged list. Next up is the controller with an "example1" method that looks to the URL to see what page it should be on. The view is simple enough - just outputting the results back without worrying about how many to show.

If you've ever wanted to start from scratch and wanted to build your own PHP framework, you might want to take a look at this list. It's a set of thirteen good resources to help you get started and introduce you to some of the basic framework concepts.

Frameworks serve as basics for developing a theory, condition and design in broader sense but in the world of web site development, framework means applications that help you in creating something new or something most popular around the web. We have listed top php framework tutorials for your convenience so that you can have a good idea of how to create a framework if you are not satisfied with one listed by us.

Tutorials in the list include:

• A three-part series on NetTuts.com
• A Framework in an Hour
• Tiny MVC Boilerplate with PHP
• Write your own PHP5 MVC framework

On PHPMaster.com today there's a new tutorial that wants to help you "untangle MVC" with the help of the CodeIgniter framework. The tutorial is an introduction to the Model/View/Controller design pattern and how it's implemented in this popular framework.

If you want to develop applications with sell-structured, readable code that you can quickly diagnose problems in, then MVC is for you. In this article I'll untangle the mysteries of MVC for you using CodeIgniter, a PHP framework based on the MVC pattern. I'll first present a high level overview of MVC, what it is and how it can help you to become a better programmer, and then guide you through writing a simple web form the CodeIgniter way so you can see how the pattern looks in action.

They briefly describe MVC (favoring instead for showing it later in the CodeIgniter examples) and help you get a copy of the framework installed. They show you how to create a first controller, the corresponding view and make a model that extends the base and inserts address information into a database table.

Karsten Deubert has a recent post to his blog looking at annotations in Zend Framework applications to enhance functionality already in the framework.

Recently I had the idea to influence Controller Actions with annotations but discarded it with thoughts like "In PHP I will have to use reflection and some black magic to get this working which will have insane performance hits for my applications"... until I set everything up to see that it costs just 1-2ms in average per request without any form of caching.

He includes a few bits of code to show a simple annotation example (setting a layout) and the controller plugin that performs the translation. In his case, it's hard-coded to look for the "@layout" annotation in the docblock comment, but it'd be relatively trivial to extend it to a more full-featured version.

On Reddit.com there's a new post that asks the question, "which framework has the best documentation and community?"

About to dive into MVC and wondering which one has the most wealth in terms of documentation/code comments as well as a decent community.

Suggestions in the comments include both old and new options including:

• Symfony
• CodeIgniter
• Zend Framework
• Yii

From Tutorialzine.com today, they've posted the first part of a series looking at the construction of a full mobile website using PHP, MySQL and jQuery mobile.

In this two-part tutorial, we will be building a simple website with PHP and MySQL, using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. Finally, with the help of the jQuery Mobile framework, we will turn it into a touch-friendly mobile website, that works on any device and screen size. In this first part, we concentrate on the backend, discussing the database and MVC organization. Next time, we will be writing the views and integrating jQuery Mobile.

Their simple application lets you browse products in a storefront with products and their categories. They don't use any particular framework and instead opt for a "include all" approach in their example. This makes it simpler to bootstrap, but shouldn't be used in a production-ready version of the application. There's simple frameworks (like CodeIgniter out there that can help take it to the next level without much more complexity). You can see a demo of it in action or just download the source to get started hacking.

On VideoPHPBlog.com they've posted about a screencast getting you familiar with MVC and how to create a simple model/view/controller application in three parts.

Beautiful new screen cast from #JREAM about creating the base essentials of your own PHP MVC application. High quality and good speaker.

The tutorial starts with the basics - making a front controller, some simple routing and making a few controllers to handle the requests. With this base in place, he adds some handy features like default actions, bootstrapping, views (with some jQuery fuctionality), templating and adding models. The last part of the tutorial set includes setting up database connections, autoloading, session handling and user logins.

These are a great reference for anyone wanting to see first hand how an MVC application (framework) is structured. It doesn't follow some of the best practices it should, but it's a good example of how it all flows. Note: do not use the end result from these examples in production - there's lots of other frameworks for that.

If you ever find yourself in need of a basic MVC structure for your application but don't want to get involved with a full framework to do it, you should try out this new screencast from NetTuts.com. It shows you the creation of a simple "tiny MVC" implementation.

It's important for me to note that I'm not advocating that you shouldn't use large frameworks. They absolutely have their places, and I use them often. That said, there are definitely times when they can be overkill for smaller projects. When your only requirement is code organization, it's typically better to scrape together your own MVC boilerplate.

The screencast's about 15 minutes long and it walks you through each step of the way - making the routing, setting up controller handling and working with views. For the impatient, you can also download the source and get started quickly.

On the Zend Developer Zone today they've published the latest of their "ZendCon Sessions" series of podcasts. In this latest episode Stefan Priebsch talks about why MVC isn't actually an application architecture.

Welcome to the ZendCon 2010 edition of the ZendCon Sessions. 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. [...] This episode of The ZendCon Sessions was recorded live at ZendCon 2010 in Santa Clara, CA and features Stefan Priebsch giving his talk: "Why MVC is not an Application Architecture"

You can either listen to this latest episode via the in-page player or you can download the mp3 of the session to listen at your leisure. You can also see the slides over on slideshare.

In a new post to his blog today Matthew Weier O'Phinney takes a look at micro MVC frameworks and how, with just a bit of lightweight code and pieces of the Zend Framework, creating one is dead simple.

My job is great: I get to play with technology and code most days. My job is also hard: how does one balance both functionality and usability in programming interfaces? [...] One interface I've been toying with is inspired by two very different sources. The first is PHP's own SoapServer API (which we use already in our various server components); the other was a discussion I had with Fabien Potencier (of Symfony fame) a couple years ago, where he said the goal of Symfony 2 would be "to transform a request into a response."

The result is a simple Dispatachable interface that acts as the lowest level to build the whole MVC on top of. He illustrates with a micro MVC example that uses the Dispatchable interface to create a Dispatcher class to handle the incoming requests and attach various endpoints for handling. An example of it in use is also included.