The Bakery (the CakePHP programmer's resource) has a few new articles, tutorials and components that have been posted lately. Here's the list:

• Preview and alter the SQL generated from Model::find()
• After 3 years, looking back and moving ahead
• Encrypted Cookie Component
• Open Flash Chart Helper: draw charts the Cake way
• Maintaining an Application-independant Code Library
• Rolling you own Gallery2 component
• DarkAuth v1.3 - an alternative Auth
• Easy AJAX Pagination Using JQuery

Be sure to check out the rest of The Bakery for more great CakePHP-related content.

The IBM developerWorks website has a new article/tutorial posted today about the new features and functionality that's included with the latest release of the Zend Framework, version 1.5.

The popular open source Zend Framework just got some slick enhancements. Learn what's new in V1.5 and how upgrades, including Zend_Form, Zend_Layout, and Zend_View, enhanced support for GData Web services, and improved Ajax support can help PHP developers easily roll out cutting-edge Web applications.

They walk through each of the new components (or features in them) like Zend_Form and Zend_Layout/Zend_View with examples included. There's also mention of other miscellaneous updates like the addition of OpenID and InfoCard support, a LDAP authentication module and an interface with Google's GData service.

On his blog today, Matthew Weir O'Phinney offers some helpful advice about using the placeholder functions of the Zend_View component (like headScript or headLink) to make coding in the Zend Framework that much easier:

Somebody asked for some examples of how I use the headLink(), headScript(), and other placeholder helpers, so I thought I'd take a crack at that today.

He looks at the different categories of placeholders and illustrates with examples of each: Doctype Hinting, Content Aggregation, Capturing Content and finally, putting them all together into a custom layout that uses docType, headLink, headStyle and headScript.

The Bakery has posted several new components, tutorials and articles recently. Here's a list of the most recent:

• Polymorphic Behavior
• LastRSS CakePHP Component
• SMS Text Component
• Automagic JavaScript Validation Helper
• ACL Behavior
• Prototip Helper
• SimpleAcl component tutorial

Check out The Bakery for more great CakePHP-related content.

On his blog today, Stefan Mischook compares two of the popular component libraries out there - PEAR and the Zend Framework (yes, it can be considered a grouping of components too).

Now that the Zend Framework is ready for 'prime time', I've been considering the Pear framework with regards to how it now fits in the PHP world.

He suggests that not could both be considered component libraries, but might also both be frameworks (based on a definition that a framework is a "consistent set of components that are designed to work together in a unified manner"). He also asks about the need for something like PEAR now that the Zend Framework has come along, getting Jonathan Lebensold's opinion too.

In a quick new blog post to the NorthClick blog, Soenke Ruempler points out that, due to some updates made by Rob Richards, the Spread extension for PECL is back in working order again.

Yesterday I got an e-mail that two of my PECL bug reports for the spread module have been fixed. It seems that it gets some recent love from Rob Richards who commited some fixes and cleanups.

The Spread functionality allows developers to create messaging services by acting as a message bus between the clients and between the client/servers.

According to the O'Reilly Port 25 blog, there's been a new release of the FastCGI component for Microsoft's IIS web server - FastCGI 6.0 - and how it works with things other than IIS7 and Windows Server 2008.

f you read Sam Raimi's How open source has influenced Windows Server 2008 and Dominic Sartorio's Dominic Sartorio on SpikeSource and Open Source Interoperability blog entries on Microsoft's Port 25 site, you might wonder if FastCGI for PHP only works with Windows Server 2008 and IIS7. Fortunately, that is NOT the case. Head over to http://iis.net/php where you can find and download FastCGI for IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003.

He also points out a video tutorial from Microsoft that can help you get this latest version og FasctCGI up and running on your system.

The Developer Tutorials blog has an interesting perspective on the whole framework front today - use whatever framework you choose, but be sure to "add a little Zend" when you need it.

The Zend Framework is a fairly standard, (optionally) MVC PHP application framework. It comes with all the usual functionality; request routing, database access, templates (through view files) etc. [...] But here's the kicker: it works entirely standalone. The classes and their methods can, generally, be used statically in any context, or at least independently of the framework.

They point out that the components of the Zend Framework, while able to happily live in their self-contained MVC bubble, can also break "out of the box" and live their own happy, separate lives. He even points out another blog entry looking at using the Zend Framework right along side CodeIgniter in a web application.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted a new look something recently added to the Zend Framework - support in the Zend_Auth component for OpenId connections.

Since there have been numerous tutorials written regarding Zend_Auth, I won't attempt to make a full tutorial on it. If you are curious, google around, you'll find them. Today though, I'd like to show you a cool new piece that has been added to Auth in Zend Framework 1.5, the new Zend_Auth_Adapter_OpenId.

Cal explains what the OpenID system is all about before getting into the code that uses it. He suggests MyOpenID as a provider to register at and includes the code to make a request to them to authenticate a username/password combo. The actual authentication check is only about three or four lines of code.

In this new post to his blog today, Tony Bibbs asks a question that pops up every once and a while surrounding the Zend Framework - why don't they use the PEAR package distribution methods to handle the releases of the framework? (Specifically as pertains to PEAR channels)

Why hasn't Zend provided an official PEAR channel? In my search for an answer I found this response from "bkarwin": No, we have no plans to offer ZF under a PEAR channel or other piece-by-piece distribution method. Assuming bkarwin was working in some half-official capacity at Zend I'd simply ask "Why not?".

Tony wonders why, if the PEAR group (and project) has such a good thing already in place, it can't just be adapted to make releases of the various components of the framework simpler than having to wait for a whole new release to get the fixes the users need.