In a new post, Greg Beaver talks about a few things, the main one being a new release of the phar extension he's made - phar version 2.0.0a1 - a reworking of the previous functionality with loads of new features including:

• Phar now supports tar and zip archives with the same API that is supports phar archives.
• Phar has a front controller for web applications that fully handles MIME types, supports mod_rewrite-like functionality with far more flexibility
• Phar supports phar:// stream wrappers in include_path for PHP 5.2+
• Phar supports creation and modification of data-only tar and zip archives (no executable phar stub) via the PharData class.

There've also been updates to the manual for the project to reflect this new version of its API. You can download this latest version here: source or Windows DLL.

Chris Hartjes has posted about a new resource that he "cannot stop recommending people to use [it] when searching for answers to their CakePHP problems" - the CakePHP Cookbook.

With a ton of help from Andy Dawson (AD7Six) the documentation for CakePHP 1.2 has moved forward immensely with the unveiling of the CakePHP Cookbook. It's a combination of manual and wiki, where people can flesh out the manual and make comments on the methods in there.

With the wiki in place, anyone can add to the communal CakePHP wisdom (or correct where others might have strayed) to make it a bigger and better resource for the whole range of CakePHP developers.

Finishing off their series on destructors in PHP5 applications today, DevShed has posted this new tutorial showing how to manually run the destructors of your class (in case there's ever a need).

In this final tutorial of the series I'm going to show you how to manually trigger a destructor, and in addition you'll learn how to emulate the behavior of this magic method when using PHP 4.

They not only talk about how to call the destructor manually but they also show how to call multiple destructors at the same time to destroy lots of objects at once. And, as promised, they include a method for being able to use a destructor-like bit of functionality in a PHP4 app as well.

New on the Developer Tutorials blog today is this post offering up a few ideas (five of them) on how they think you can become a better programmer.

In this post, I'll outline five ways to be a better developer, improve your productivity, write less code and achieve more with your web applications.There's always more to learn when it comes to PHP development. New core functions, new frameworks, new design patterns, new code documentation styles. Here are some of the best ways you can become a better PHP developer.

His five suggestions are:

• Read the manual
• Browse through some code
• Learn a new framework
• Research
• Learn OOP

I can understand where he's coming from on all but the third one - frameworks are nice, but it's more important to get the fundamentals down first before making a framework some of your first experience.