PHPBuilder.com has another in a series of book excerpts posted on their site today. This time, it's a look at Ajax and PHP as pulled from the Apress book "Beginning Ajax with PHP: From Novice to Professional".

The ability to make a call to the server without a page refresh is one that is quite powerful, if harnessed correctly. With the help of the powerful PHP server-side language, you can create some handy little applications that can be easily integrated into any web project.

They take some time to explain what an Ajax connection is before getting into the code - a basic example that just shows/hides content. They include both the HTML/Javascript to handle the front end and the PHP to handle the backend creation of the calendar (the content) itself.

On PHPBuilder.com, there's a new tutorial, an excerpt from the APress book "Pro PHP Security" by Chris Snyder and Michael Southwell talking about how to prevent SQL injections in your web applications.

They take a complete look at SQL injections, including:

• What SQL injections are
• How they work
• Why it's an issue with PHP
• The types of user input

This is just the first part in the series, so stay tuned for even more great security content from the new APress book.