On DZone.com there's a recent post from Giorgio Sironi looking at running Selenium tests on the Android platform via the PHPUnit Selenium interface.

Testing web applications is not only based on unit and functional tests for the server-side (PHP, Java) and client-side (JavaScript) components, but also on end-to-end tests like the ones performed with Selenium. Selenium is capable of driving a real browser like Firefox in the same way a user would do, letting you express a test with a series of page to load, element selections, clicks and typed characters. [...] In this tutorial, we'll experiment with the Android Driver and set up a couple of tests to run inside an Android virtual device.

He walks you through the basic setup of an Android environment (based on the Android SDK) and how to start up the Android driver installed from the Selenium site. An example test is included, showing how to make a request for a test page and checking its title as well as checking that the input from the "keyboard" is successful.

On the AndroidHive site there's a recent tutorial (plus screencast) about combining PHP, MySQL and SQLite to act as the backend authorization for your Android application.

In my previous article Android Login and Registration Screen Design i explained designing the login and registration interfaces, but it has no functionality. In this tutorial i am explaining how to build complete login and registration system in android using PHP, MySQL and SQLite. Also this tutorial covers how to build simple API using PHP and MySQL.

The tutorial walks you through each step of the process:

• Creating MySQL Database and Tables
• Building PHP API Classes
• Starting Android Project
• Making the JSON Parser, SQLite Database Handler and User Functions Classes
• Designing the Screens
• Switching between Activities
• Finally Updating AndroidManifest.xml

If you want to get started quickly, you can just download the final result and go.

In a recent post to CodeForest Luka Peharda shows you how to create a JSON-RPC frontend for your application based on the Zend Framework.

XML-RPC rules, but the amount of data it generates is its big disadvantage. This is where JSON-RPC steps in. Data it generates is significally smaller, but this isn't suprising as JSON is known as fat free XML.This articles is based on my earlier Android XML-RPC article. Its PHP code and Zend Framework setup will be used so you should go through it if you haven't earlier (at least as far as XMLRPC Android client chapter).

You need to have some of the base code from the previous article in place to follow along, but if you're experienced with Zend Framework, keeping up won't be a problem. He uses this JSON-RPC client that was made for use with a ZF application and creates a basic jsonAction to handle the request. He then uses this Android JSON-RPC library to connect from the Android application and fetch some basic data.

On the PHPClasses.org blog today there's a new post from Manuel Lemos looking back at 2010 an the life of PHP - yet another great year.

2010 was an year full of interesting happenings for the PHP development and its community of developers. This article presents a balance of what were the most important happenings in the PHP community in 2010, as well a reflection of what we can expect for 2011 for PHP, as well for the PHPClasses site.

Among the important happenings of this past year he mentions the issues surrounding PHP6, HipHop and PHP running on the Andriod platform. He speculates on a few things that we can expect from PHP in the upcoming year(s) like the release of PHP 5.4. Also included are some updates that were made to the PHPClasses.org site itself.

Ivan Mosquera Paulo dropped me a line today about a project that's been gaining some traction lately - PHP for Android, an effort to make PHP development on the platform possible (and easy). This new post shows you how to get started.

Yes you read that correctly, PHP is coming (well it's here) for Android. Irontec is the company behind the project and their aim is to make PHP development in Android not only possible but also feasible providing tools and documentation.

The post gives you links to download and install the software you'll need as well as a screencast on how to get started on a test application. You can find out more about the project (and how you can get involved) from phpforandriod.com.

New on his blog today Jakob Westhoff describes a system he's created to let him keep all of his passwords with him (and safe) where he can get to them from his Android phone. He wanted to pull them from the local store of his Revelation password software.

I am really enjoying my new smartphone. However there is still something missing. A way to have all my passwords with me on my phone in a safely encrypted container.

The Revelation system pushes the passwords into subversion when they're updated and can be accessed from a desktop platform. He was missing the mobile branch of the access, so he decided to fill the gap with PHP by making a reverse transformer for the Revelation passwords. You can get the code here from github if you want to make use of it on your own systems.