In this new post to his blog Till Klampaeckel shares a Zend Framework "base" controller that makes it easier to do the usual CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations in an application.

I think it took me (or us) a couple attempts to get this right - let me introduce you to Zf_Crud, a CRUD controller for the Zend Framework. [...] Zf_Crud aims to provide you with an interface for any table possible - think of it as a phpMyAdmin more tailored towards your data and (thanks to Twitter Bootstrap and the Easybib_Form_Decorator) prettier!

He shows how to install and use it (via PEAR or Composer) and an example of a controller extending it. You can find the code here on github, ready to clone and try out.

Christopher Kunz is trying out the new web acceleration tool Google recently released (SPDY) when his site is served under HTTPS (warning, self-signed cert).

The reason this posting lands in the PHP category is that I want to have a playground testing PHP applications with mod_spdy. Currently (and probably also in the future), this machine uses mod_php instead of php_(f)cgi(d) - this is not recommended for interoperation with mod_spdy. To test the real-life impact of the possible thread safety issues, I am using my private pages as a sandbox.

He has two other PHP-based applications running with the accelerator - a Gallery3 install and a WordPress site. SPDY ("speedy") was released by Google and is similar to HTTP but with a focus on minimized latency and heightened web security.

As a part of the move to git/github that the PHP project recently made, a reminder was posted that the PHP-GTK project has also migrated.

PHP-GTK is a PHP extension that enables you to write client-side cross-platform GUI applications. This is the first such extension of this kind and one of the goals behind it was to prove that PHP is a capable general-purpose scripting language that is suited for more than just Web applications.

The full source can be found and forked/cloned over on github and is just waiting for you to contribute!

On the PEAR blog today there's an update about the migration over to github that 5 million lines of code has already made:

Since October 2011, 5 million lines of the PEAR codebase has shifted to github. Hand in hand with this shift has been the tireless work of Daniel C - someone who brazenly said "I will fix the failing packages!" in the tail end of last year.

As a result of his efforts a list has been created of known good packages to use with PHP 5.4. Other results include:

• All test infrastructure upgrading to PHP 5.4 release candidates
• All database driven test suites executing properly, catching a variety of simple bugs
• Hitting a point of "near zero" patches to be applied to unmaintained packages
• Increasingly, the PEAR QA team is delivering PHP 5.3+ friendly forks of existing packages

On the PEAR Group blog there's a new post welcoming all new contributors to the project and pointing out that the PEAR account on Github has officially passed the 200 repository mark in the move from SVN to Git.

PEAR is about providing the PHP community with reusable, effective components - this has been our mission since day 1. If there is anything we can do to make that goal happen, to assist you as an individual or company, I would strongly encourage you to let us know - we're here to help.

They mention the work of two individuals that have done good work on a specific package, meldra and Gemorroj - perfect examples of how the move to Github has made it simpler to implement changes that have been "waiting in the wings" on the XML_Feed_Parser and Image_Barcode2 packages.

If you've had changes you've wanted to make to a PEAR package in the past but haven't ever gotten them submitted, there's not a better time than now.

PHPBuilder.com has a new tutorial posted about interfacing with GitHub in PHP, using their API to hook into and pull down information about users and repositories.

The Git-based project hosting service GitHub is certainly the belle of today's technology ball, having attracted more than 1 million registered users and amassed more than 2 million hosted projects in less than three years. [...] GitHub High Scores and GitHub Badges are two examples of third-party services created using the GitHub API, which is capable of carrying out any task you might wish to perform via GitHub.com. With it you can create, edit and search repositories, learn more about fellow GitHub users, and manage repository issues.

Jason shows how to use the php-github-api library to connect to the API, search repository information, get user details, finding their repositories and accessing restricted resources (things only available for the authenticated user like updating your account or working with your own repositories).

On the PEAR blog today it's been pointed out that many PEAR packages are moving to github as their standard place for development and repositories under the pear and pear2 accounts are available for anyone wanting to make the move.

While the existing PEAR packages will continue to use the pear.php.net distribution and bug tracking capabilities; it's never been easier to contribute to a PEAR package - simply fork; add your changes and send us a pull request. If your preferred packages aren't yet on github, please feel free to drop us a line on the pear-dev mailing list.

Here's more about the process to get the repository set up and how to migrate your package's current code from SVN over to github. The transition's pretty painless and can make the social development and improvement of your package a lot simpler.

Fabien Potencier has made an announcement on the Symfony Blog today about all the availability of previous Symfony versions on github.

symfony1 is well and alive and many developers are now using it for projects hosted on Git. But as the official symfony 1 repository is hosted on Subversion, it's not always easy to get things versioned easily. As of today, this becomes much more easier. If you are using Git and symfony1, you can now use the official symfony1 Git clone.

There are branches for each of the major 1.x releases as well as tags for some of the minor releases. You can, of course, still access the latest packages directly via the symfony website.

Ken Guest has a new post today talking about a PEAR package he's been developing, Services_Openstreetmap, to interact with the OpenStreetMap service to make it simpler to work with OSM data, adding new locations and working with users.

So over the last while, I've been working on a PHP package imaginatively named Services_Openstreetmap, for interacting with the openstreetmap API. I initially needed it so I could search for certain POIs and tabulate the results; it's now also capable of adding data to the openstreetmap database - nodes and other elements can be created, updated and so on. It will even access the details of the user that is being used to modify that data, which is one difference between it and the other single purpose OSM frameworks.

He's submitted it to PEAR for official inclusion. Until then, you can download the package from github. The OpenStreetMap project is a community-driven mapping tool that allows users to provide new map information or make updates in an effort to keep things more up to date.

As mentioned on the Web Species blog in this recent post, they've developed a "Windows Azure done right" platform (Azure++, name pending) that makes deploying to an Azure platform a much simpler process, pulling from something like a remote code repository (maybe github) and deploying in less than five seconds.

Azure is just impossible to use for PHP today. This is a fact. Doesn't matter which way you look at it, it just su.. isn't particularly good. The amount of steps you need to make, the knowledge you need to have and the fact that you can only deploy from Windows host are some of the things which make it a very painful experience. I had enough of this pain.

The service helps you make quick and easy Azure deployments. Features include multiple datacenter support, your choice of PHP versions (5.2 or 5.3) and the ability to deploy in "production" or "development" environments. You can find out more about the service here.