On PHPMaster.com today James Appleyard has put tother a tutorial for the beginners out there about working with strings in PHP, using the huge list of built-in functions to work with your values.

PHP has a vast selection of built-in string handling functions that allow you to easily manipulate strings in almost any possible way. [...] There is no way I can cover every string function in one article, and besides, that is what the PHP manual is for! But what I will do is show how to work with some of the most commonly used string handling functions that you should know. After this, you'll be working with strings as well as any concert violinist!

He shows how to use functions to: change the case of string, remove extra whitespace, get the length, slicing them up and doing replacing on some certain characters. You can find more information on these and the complete list of string functions in PHP in the manual.

In this new tutorial Smashing Magazine shows you how to create a mini "Christmas List" application with PHP, HTML and CSS (and a little bit of database help) to display a list of what you or your family wants this holiday.

'Tis the season to be jolly, and how much jollier could we make it than with a helpful Christmas wish list crafted for your family to ensure that you get maximum presentage this holiday? In this article, we will focus on creating a very simple system that allows you to add gift ideas to a Web page, and for your family (or whoever) to view the list.

They walk you through the setup of the basic PHP file structure, the HTML template for the list output, CSS to make it look nice and the actual PHP backend - working with a MySQL database to pull out product information and use a simple login method.

On DZone.com today John Esposito points out two CodeIgniter tutorials that can help you on your way to becoming a pro with this popular PHP framework.

As Codeigniter builds on its (already considerable) popularity, now might be a good time to think about using the massively community-supported PHP framework to its maximum potential, if you aren't already. Here are two tutorials to check out, depending on your level of familiarity with object-oriented PHP and frameworks.

Here's the two he mentions:

• Codeigniter for the absolute beginner
• Developing dynamic Web sites with CodeIgniter

The second tutorial is a little older, but the functionality of the framework hasn't changed dramatically since then so most of it should still apply.

On the AjaxRay site today there's a new review of an introductory book from Packt Publishing about unofficial wiki is a BIG try to help in this issue. Besides, recently Packt has published the first book on Kohana "Kohana 3.0 Beginner's Guide". Jason D. Straughan wrote this book for Kohana version 3.x.

The review includes an overall assessment of the book, a detailed description of how the chapters are laid out and some of the complaints he had about the book's contents - a lack of code examples in some places, demos/screenshots pointing out what the framework can really do and the inclusion of some deprecated methods.

Overall, the book is well organized, focused and will be helpful on it's purpose. I felt it's capable to teach Kohana to a new guy, in a smooth way. Yes, there have some printing mistakes, old (because they are changed in new version) function use and some other minor issues, but seems ignorable to me. I'd recommend it for Kohana beginners.

On his blog today Kowser introduces you to Kohana, an easy to use, lightweight PHP HMVC framework that can help you get applications up and running quickly. In his tutorial he walks you through the creation of a simple application - a typical blog.

Kohana is the framework I liked best among other PHP framework. Its an easy one also . To me it is organized, highly object oriented, having clear separation of model, view & controller. Autoloading of classes is nice feature here also. Here is the tutorial I prepared. [...] Probably you have downloaded the zip file from here.

He walks you through the initial setup and configuration first then jumps right into the code with an "Article" controller, a view to match and a simple model to hook into a "kohana_blog" table (creation SQL provided). Using this setup, he shows how to get a list of the current articles and update current ones/add new ones via a basic form.

On NetTuts.com today there's a new tutorial helping you get started with Zend Framework "from scratch". They outline the full process - from download to the creation of a first application.

Ready to take your PHP skills to the next level? In this new "From Scratch" series, we'll focus exclusively on Zend Framework, a full-stack PHP framework created by Zend Technologies. First in our tutorial series, is "Getting Started with Zend Framework."

The tutorial (executed in a Windows environment) is broken up into seven parts:

• Download Zend Framework
• Set up your Zend Framework Environment
• Create your First Zend Framework Project
• Learn about Zend Framework's MVC Structure
• Pass Data From a Controller to its View
• Create a Layout in Zend Framework
• Create New Controllers and Actions

They use the Windows version of Apache to host the site (installation instructions not included). If you'd like to get the source for this tutorial series as it evolves, you can find it on github.

On the PHPMaster.com site today, there's a good introduction to a basic data type in PHP - working with arrays. This tutorial is a low level look at what arrays are and how to work with them (briefly).

Tables organize data in such a way that we can easily find correlations or perform straightforward computations. A array is essentially a way to organize data in a table-like manner. The name "array" comes from the same Latin roots as the word "arrangement."

If you're anything other than completely new to the language, this post won't help you much. If you're new to programming, though, learning about arrays in PHP is key to your budding development skills. For more in-depth looks at using arrays, checkout these results.

Steve Francia has posted a follow-up to his "On Symfony2" post to his blog today with an introduction to the framework that helps you get everything installed you'll need.

In a follow up to my popular post on Symfony2, the open source PHP framework we use at OpenSky, I'm providing an easy guide to getting started using Symfony2. This isn't your basic "Hello World", but a practical guide to beginning a project with Symfony2.

He walks you through bootstrapping a sample application, applying a fix those on OSX might need and creating the application using the symfony command line tool to build everything you'll need.

If you've been looking to get involved in the Zend Framework project but haven't known where to get started, Matthew Weier O'Phinney has just to guide for you. It gives you the "short and sweet" things you'll need to know about contributing back to the project.

ZF2 development is ramping up. We've been at it for some time now, but mostly taking care of infrastructure: converting to namespaces, re-working our exception strategy, improving our test suites, and improving our autoloading and plugin loading strategies to be more performant and flexible. Today, we're actively working on the MVC milestone, which we expect to be one of the last major pieces necessary for developers to start developing on top of ZF2. A question I receive often is: "How can I contribute to ZF2?" Consider this your guide.

He talks about what you'll need to get started (including getting a CLA) and includes a few links to some resources to help you get the code you'll need and find some bugs to fix (or file one yourself). He also talks about the details of the project (like naming conventions), where it stands now and what sorts of things you can get started doing right away.

On the Zend Developer Zone today there's a new book review from Cal Evans covering a recent release from McGraw/Hill (by Vikram Vaswani, frequently posted on the ZDZ) called Zend Framework, A Beginner's Guide.

Vikram has been a long-time contributor to DevZone and is the author of our most popular article series, Zend Framework, A Beginner's Guide. [...] The language is easy to read, the examples are clear and there's even a joke or two in there that will make you groan. In short, I would recommend this book to any PHP developer with a firm grasp on object oriented programming in PHP. If you are not comfortable with OOP, this is not the book for you.

He gets "the bad" of the book out of the way first mentioning the book's tendency to jump from subject to subject and how he suggests models should be in Zend Framework applications (going with Doctrine over custom models). On the good side of things, he mentions the easy to follow writing style, the very complete code examples and the "complete" feel the book has.