As spotlighted by the folks over on PHPClasses.org, there's a developer, László Zsidi, who has contributed several packages to the repository - including some that work to create 3D images with just the built-in functions PHP provides.

He has developed several pure PHP components that implement impressive 3D animated graphics, like a 3D objects rendering engine, emulate a waving flag or the reflex of an image near a lake. The generated frames are combined into a single animated GIF with another pure PHP component also written by László. All these components were nominated to the PHP Programming Innovation Award for the evident creativity, demonstrating that PHP can be used for non-trivial software applications.

Some of the libraries in the listing include:

• Animated GIF into images
• Image Flag Effect
• Text 3D
• FXLake effect
• Convex 3D

In this new tutorial from Developer.com, they take one of the popular PHP frameworks currently - CakePHP - and demonstrate how to make a simple form, complete with validation.

They start with a brief look at what CakePHP is and where you can get it from as well as the basics of input validation concepts. From there, it's on to the default validators that are included with the framework.

CakePHP offers several default validators capable of ensuring a value is a valid email address (VALID_EMAIL), year (VALID_YEAR), number (VALID_NUMBER), or non-empty (VALID_NOT_EMPTY).

Thanks to these built-in validation methods, some of the most common input validations are a snap. If you need a little something more, though, the framework has you covered there too with custom validators - as easy to implement as its preset counterparts. Finally, they show how to set custom messages in your form, both error and notification, and tie it all together in a simple form that validates the input for a "team name" field to ensure it's all alpha characters.

On Jason Sheet's blog, there's a new post that offers up a brief tutorial on implementing the soundex functionality in PHP.

He jumps right in, mentioning the steps the script will take (seven of them) before getting right to the code. He's written up his own soundex functionality packaged up nicely in a reusable function and has even compared it to the built-in PHP soundex function for accuracy.