In this new post today Gonzalo Ayuso shows how to make "pivot tables" (at least the concept) in a PHP script to modify a data set and transform it into something else.

It's not very difficult to handle pivot tables by hand but the work is always the same: groups by, totals, subtotals, totals per row... Now I want to write a class to pivot tables in PHP with the most common requirements (at least for me).

His examples takes a few rows of records from a MySQL result and shows how, with the help of a library he's developed, he can make a few commands and fetch just the data he needs including the column to pivot on. A few more examples are also included.

There's been a lot of controversy around the PHP Standards group that was formed around May of 2009 and how they've handled the decision making process. They want to provide a standard that frameworks and other applications can follow to help making them all play nicely together a much easier process. Unfortunately, they decided to go the "closed source" way. Greg Beaver has posted some of his thoughts on their approach.

The idea is a wonderful one, and at first things looked like they were nothing but good. [...] At this point, signs of trouble began to crop up, and the good intentions began to result in a chill on the openness with suggestions of reducing input through moderation and discussions of who was a "member" of the standards group. [...] Since then, I have made several pleas, off-list and some on, to open the discussion and move things back to the way open source and specifically PHP works.

Greg's comments are shared by several in the community who wonder why something that could be such a key point for so many applications only involved a handful of the community. Be sure to check out the comments to hear the community voicing some of their own opinions on the subject, both for and against the way the standards group has been handled so far.

According to this new post on the PEAR blog, the new PEAR Group has been officially elected:

I am more than glad to announce the arrival, the announcement of the new PEAR Group for 2009 and 2010. With a few fresh faces in the Group, this year looks very promising with the mix of both new blood and experienced PEAR Group members.

Those selected include Chuck Burgess, Ken Guest, Christian Weiske and Brett Bieber. The PEAR Group helps to guide the PEAR project as a while and push out initiatives like the updated package manager - Pyrus.

The PEAR blog has a quick note about this year's elections - specifically that they have been extended due to some communication issues.

As every year, the elections for the PEAR Group and PEAR President are happening. This year due to a few factors and messages lost in translation, we decided to extend the elections period by 10 days so more people would have time to vote! So remember to cast your vote at http://pear.php.net/election/ and you have until the the 5th of August 2009.

There's both group elections and an an election for president that all PEAR developers can vote on. Hurry! The deadline is Wednesday, August 15th!

On the echolibre blog there's a recent post looking at the recent meeting of the (Recommended) Standards Group at this year's php|tek:

This post will briefly discuss the formation of a Recommended PHP Standards Group, as put forward by a meeting of PHP developers at the conference. As would be expected, a bit of controversy surrounds this proposal, but my hope would be that it would be accepted and grow within the global PHP community in the coming years.

He talks about those in attendance and a sneak preview of some of the standards they're talking about - like those dealing with namespacing and exception naming.

Travis Swicegood, a member of the Standards Group that has formed in the PHP community, has posted some of his own thoughts about the group and what kinds of goals he sees it having.

A few weeks ago at php|tek, I corralled developers from all of the major PHP frameworks into one of the conferences rooms. The idea was simple: in the PEAR Group we've been discussing our new PEAR2 Coding Standard and have come to some conclusions on how PHP 5.3 code should be handled moving forward. A standard is only a standard if people use it, though, and PEAR is not entirely representative of the community at large. That's where this group comes in.

He mentions resolving namespacing issues around naming structures, classes/interfaces/abstracts and for Exceptions. He also sums up his thoughts on the openness of the group well:

I'd love to see an officially sanctioned standard come out of our work. All of us are too busy, both with real jobs and our various projects, to fight the battles that come of trying to make this a completely open process where anyone with an email address can contribute. Sad as it may be, pear-dev has demonstrated that coding standards *must* go the way of sausages and laws lest they devolve into a constant "but I think is better, and this is why..." followed by pages of well meaning, but generally irrelevant content.

Lukas Smith has voiced some of his own opinions on the Standards Group from an outsider's point of view (Lukas is a well-known member of the PHP community but not a part of the Standards Group).

There is currently a heated debate spawned with the creation and subsequent announcement of a more or less final decision made by a select group of people at php|tek. Now I am a friend of openness, but I have a hard time remembering any significant existing project within the PHP community that actually changed its coding guidelines.

He goes on to talk about PEAR, its implementation of its own coding standards and, in his opinion, one of the major mistakes made by the Standards Group - publishing their mailing list under the php.net groups. Check out the comments for more great thoughts from other community members.

Stefan Koopmanschap has posted some comments of his own (as a participant of the Standards Group) about the group, its purpose and why they're handing things the way they are.

Much has been said already in the past days and weeks about the PHP standards initiative that was started by a group of PHP developers at the php|tek conference two weeks ago. As I was there but have not really given my opinion on this in public, I will do that now.

He breaks it up into a few different topics - the history of why the group was formed, the purpose and goal of a unified standard developers have the option of following, who the target audience for these standards are and where the group wants to go from here. He sums it up well with a quote from Michael J Burgess when he said:

Let's cut the bullshit, stop discussing purpose and form, and start moving on to form some good and useful standards.

Following up on the announcements of the standards group being formed and meeting at this year's php|tek conference, Keith Casey has posted some of how own thoughts about why he thinks that the group's approach might not be such a bad thing.

Something happened at php|tek 2009. Okay, lots of stuff happened. I mean something big happened at php|tek 2009. A group representing a number of different frameworks got together and agreed to... well, they agreed to talk. What came out was the PHP Standards Group.

He lists three things about the group that have stuck in his mind and wanted to share - that the group is lead by amazingly smart people, that they're dealing with a problem that's been taken on and lost many times and that he doesn't think they're being elitist (without cause) about who is in the group, just selective on the grounds of necessity.

Besides the usual fun times and great sessions that happened at this year's php|tek, a group was formed with a single (complicated) purpose - defining some development standards for PHP frameworks/applications. Cal Evans (of Ibuildings) was able to sit in on the first meeting of this group. Here's some of his observations:

This group was not my idea and it's only by a quirk of fate that I was even at the meeting. As far as I can tell, the group was formed when representatives of several of the major PHP projects got together and decided that if they can find areas of cooperation within their own spheres of influence, it would be a win for all of them, and the PHP community at large. To paraphrase the goal of this group, we are saying "Hey, we are all agreeing that we are going to code this way and we'd like you to do it to."

He mentions some of the other members of the group - leaders of projects like CakePHP, Agavi, PEAR, the Zend Framework and Symfony. If you're interested in the group, you can check out their mailing list here and keep up with the latest discussion and decisions. The group isn't open for new members at this time.

The PHPClasses blog has also posted some comments on the subject.