DevShed is wrapping up their series looking at benchmarking your PHP applications with the third part - a look at comparing execution times of scripts that can either pull from a database or from a flat file.

This large, complex subject offers numerous possibilities for experimentation, which means that you'll surely have tons of fun creating timing systems with PHP. [...] his article, then, will be focused on evaluating different scripts that fetch sets of records, first from a database, and then from flat files.

They use the Timer class they defined in a previous part of the series and wrap it around both a database class (pulling user information from a MySQL database) and a fetch to a flat file for similar information. General exceptions are handled as a part of the resource connection class.

DevShed has posted the second part of their series looking at installing and using web-based file managers written in PHP. This time they look at PHPfileNavigator2.

We are going to continue with the installation and configuration of web-based file managers. We'll present another freeware, open-source PHP-based file manipulation utility in the same way we explained bfExplorer in the previous part. This time, it's going to be the PHPfileNavigator2 (pfn2).

They cover the basics - installation (on a pre-existing Apache/PHP server), configuuration and some example screenshots of it in action when correctly set up.

DevShed has posted the first part of a series looking at the installation, configuration and usage of two web-based file managers - BytesFall Explorer and PHPfileNavigator. This first part of the series focuses on BytesFall.

Everybody knows how to use a conventional desktop application that acts as a file manager. And we all know how useful these manipulation utilities really are. They give us a hierarchical view of the content of our folders. They also have dozens of extra functions. [...] We will present two freeware PHP-based file managers. You'll find out how to install and configure them.

Part one handles the first steps with BytesFall - the installation and configuration (you'll already need a web server with PHP installed for this one).

DevShed has posted the final part of their series looking at the handling of file uploads in PHP5. This last installment shows how to take what yuou've learned so far and make things a bit more modular.

At this stage, you've hopefully recalled how to build an expandable file uploading application with PHP 5 that uses only one custom function to transfer a target file from a client machine to a predefined web server. However, in the beginning, I said that I was going to teach you how to develop a brand new file uploading application using an object-oriented approach.

The finish off the FileUploader class they were working on previously and show some testing examples of it in action.

Sebastian Bergmann has posted some details about an update that's been made to the test runner for the PHPUnit (3.3) unit testing suite - an allowance for directories instead of just files on the command line.

Given a directory, the test runner will recursively scan the directory for *Test.php files, build a test suite out of the *Test classes, and run it.

PHPUnit is framework that makes writing tests for your code easy and also includes functionality to run the tests and analyze their results.

On DevShed today, there's a new article in their series looking at creating custom functions to handle file uploads in your application:

I'm going to show you how to wrap the file uploading application built in the previous article of the series into a single custom PHP function. This will turn it into a more maintainable and reusable piece of code.

They review the source built in previous parts of the series and show how to update it with a uploadFile() function that takes all of the logic from before (exceptions and all) and wraps it up into a nice little package that can be reused anywhere.

Richard Heyes has thrown together some code for a simple thing that he's seen developers request over and over again - moving to/reading from a specific line in a file.

After reading something on the php-general list I decided that a) I'm bored, and b) I'll write something which handles it. So here it is.

His code is simple - looping through the lines of the file until it locates your desired target (with some error checking along the way). Plus, if it's already fetched, it keeps it in a cached array for future retrieval.

On DevShed today, they continue their look at uploading files in PHP with the addition of some error handling features for their current script.

In this third tutorial of the series, I'm going to show you how to incorporate a brand new error checking module into the file uploading PHP script created in the last article.

They show the basic method - uploading with no error checking - before showing how much help adding in an error checking component to watch for things like files that are too large, invalid file choices and problems writing the file on the server side.

DevShed has continued their series (here's part one) looking at the use of file uploading in your PHP scripts. They build on that foundation and add in some more useful features this time:

The initial script in the first tutorial of this series lacked some important features, such as the implementation of an effective error handling module and the ability to check the MIME type and size of the file being uploaded. In this second installment of the series, I'm going to improve the logic of the script from the first tutorial to provide it with the capacity to retrieve useful information concerning the entire file uploading process.

They look back at the previous tutorial to remind you of some of the concepts and then move on to show you how to get information about the file (like the MIME type, name and size of the uploaded file). The last page is just the full source code for the cut and pasters out there.

On DevShed today there's a new tutorial showing how to build file upload functionality into your scripts.

If you're a PHP developer who has built a certain number of web applications, then it's quite probable that you've already worked with HTTP file uploads. [...] First I'm going to teach you how to handle file uploads using a procedural approach, and then, with the topic well underway, by way of the object-oriented paradigm.

The introduce the beginners out there to the $_FILES array (a superglobal) that contains the details about the file(s) that have been submitted. Next comes the construction of a simple form and how to handle the submission on the PHP side.