The ThinkPHP blog points out a milestone for one of the libraries that help set PHP on its current course - PHPLIB (from Kris Koehntopp).

This great collection of classes was in my eyes the first real useful library which delivered the solution to most of the basic / standard problems in PHP based software projects. [...] The easy implementation of DB-abstraction, template engine, authentication, permissions, session management and others made it easy to handle these problems in a standardized way. The strict object oriented code gave the developer the necessary flexibility to customize and extend the code where he/she needs it.

This year is (about) the ten year mark for the existence of the language and several commentors on the post remember the "good ole days" of PHP3 sessions, permissions and even the first version of Zend's website.

Stefan Mischook points out in this new post on the KillerPHP blog about an article he has published in the latest edition of the Web Designer Magaizne covering the creation of a contact form in PHP (a beginner look at working with forms and sendmail).

You can find out more about the magazine and the other contents of the issue from their website.

DevShed is continuing their "using builder objects in PHP5" series today with this new article, a look at implementing the builder objects in a simple, common bit of functionality - forms.

Mastering some of the most popular design patterns with PHP 5 can be sometimes an overwhelming process that requires hard work and experience. However, if you want to tackle the challenge and expand your existing background on them, this article might eventually find a place on your quick reference list.

They start by defining the basic form element class, helping to build out the different elemnts like inputs, selects, and submits. They extend and implement this class with their example, making a complete form with working elements inside.

KillerPHP.com has posted another new video targeted at web designers today, explaining the basics of how form processing works with PHP.

In this video, I review a few key aspects about forms that relate directly to form processing with PHP. I cover these three attributes:

• The 'action' attribute
• The 'method' attribute
• The 'name' attribute

In part 2, we will get into practical examples.

This video is a part of a series he's producing to provide a foundation for the non-programmer types in PHP (without scaring them off).

Paul Jones, in response to a question about his Solar framework concerning the creation of forms using table definitions, has answered "yes!" and shows us how in this new post.

Here's an example: 2 lines to start Solar, 2 lines to connect to an existing Solar_Sql_Table, 2 lines to create a Solar_Form using the table columns, and 2 lines to display it with Solar_View using the associated form helper. (The "Solar_Model_Nodes" table is part of the existing Solar_Content domain model.)

He gives the code needed to make it happen as well as a brief explaination on how it all works.

The O'Reilly OnLamp.com site has a tutorial posted that takes a look at a simple way to "auto-fill" HTML forms with a little help from PHP.

I hate typing, but I like writing code. A while ago I started to dread all the rote typing required to handle forms in PHP, and began looking for a Better Way. This article describes how I used PHP's regular expression functions to do most of the heavy lifting required to process forms properly, saving lots of typing and giving me time to do stuff I don't hate, such as writing code (and playing NetHack).

He sets it upJeff Cogswell, have had) to display the form, validate the input, and display the results of this validation (or a success message).

He takes a little bit different kind of method behind it than several form packages out there - he grabs the HTML output of the form with output buffering and does replaces on that with the previously entered values.

Jim Plush has released the latest version of his Ajax/PHP library, MyMic, as dscribed in this blog post.

My-Bic Ajax Framework hits 1500 downloads in its first week! http://www.litfuel.net/mybic - DOWNLOAD

My-Bic 0.3 was released today adding two major features...

• Easy Forms
• Debug Data on Screen

He gives examples and more description for each of them. The debugging information is simple, but can be a life-saver in certain situations.

With a continuation of their previous article, WebReference has posted part two of their "How to Interact with Web Forms" series - an excerpt from the PHP Phrasebook (Sams).

They build on the previous code, showing how to:

• preselect items from a multiple select list,
• process image submit buttons
• checking the mandatory fields
• checking the values of select lists

They wrap it all up with two handy concepts - how to write out your data to a form and send it off in email form to the location of your choosing and working with the files uploaded via a form.

On WebReference.com today, there's this new tutorial with an introduction to getting PHP to interact with web forms.

HTML forms are one of the key ingredients of any dynamic website because they can enable the users of a site to interact with it. Otherwise, websites are more or less static:They may be driven by a database and, therefore, regularly changing, but they look the same for each and every visitor. HTML forms can change that; therefore, using data from forms from within PHP is very important.

They give examples of how to send data back to a script from a form, reading that data (using superglobals), and what data will be returned from each form element type. From there, they get into specifics like dealing with magic quotes and saving the form data into a cookie...

Over on PHPMac.com today, there's two new beginner tutorials posted - an Introduction to PHP and Writing Form Data to a MySQL Database using PHP.

The intro tutorial starts at the very beginning, showing you how to put PHP code in your HTML pages. They show how to use variables and echo statement to make some simple output.

In the MySQL/Form tutorial, they assume that you have a bit of experience with PHP under your belt (though it's nothing a little searching through the manual couldn't fix). They create a form/script combo that checks to make sure you've entered in information and then, on submit, creates the correct SQL to put it into the database.

Neither of them include anything on installation, so you'll have to either set it up yourself or have a host that already has it installed to work on - though it's pretty easy to find those these days...