Artur Ejsmont has a recent post to his blog showing how to get a MongoDB PECL extension to compile in a 32bit OSX environment (Snow Leopard).

Here is a quick step by step guide on how to get mongodb and PHP5.2 mongo pecl extension going on your MacOSX in 32bit mode! NOTE: 32 bit mongodb binaries have 2GB address space limit so you wont be able to process too much on your laptop. You will still be able to code and connect to remote instances just fine.

His process includes five steps - well, eight if you count the optional "install MongoDB" ones too - complete with the commands you'll need to get things compiled, ready for copy and paste. You can find the MongoDB PECL package here.

In this new post to PHPMaster.com today Ahmed Shreef continues on from his previous introduction to MongoDB and gets into more detail on things like cursors, query operators, queries on embedded documents and the sort/skip methods.

In my previous article Introduction to MongoDB I discussed installing Mongo, its PHP extension, and how to perform simple insert and find operations. Of course there are many, many more features than what I mentioned so I wanted to write another article to show you some of them.

Other topics mentioned include queries on arrays of data and running queries with indexes to improve their performance. Code is also included for each example.

PHPMaster.com has a new tutorial today for those wanting to get into the MongoDb document-driven (NoSQL) database but haven't known where to start. This tutorial walks you through some of the basics including setup and configuration of both the server and PHP client side.

There are a lot of implementations of the NoSQL concept, but one of the most famous and widely used NoSQL databases is MongoDB. I think it's one of the most interesting NoSQL databases available currently, and it's considered by many to be one of the easiest to use (which has helped it gain widespread adoption). In this article I'll introduce you to NoSQL with MongoDB. You'll learn how to install the MongoDB extension for PHP, and how to add, update, and retrieve document objects.

He starts with an introduction to MongoDB and links to their site to grab the latest version of the database. A few simple steps later (including a call to install the mongo PECL module) and your PHP install is ready to go. Code snippets are included showing how to connect to the server and insert/update/select document records.

For those that will be in the New York City area tomorrow night (10/25), Daniel Krook has something you should consider attending - the New York PHP User Group is having a meeting with a talk on MongoDB (and a ZendCon Recap).

PHP on IBM System i consultant ZendCon. 10gen MongoDB evangelist Steve Francia will provide an overview on using PHP with MongoDB.

You'll need to RSVP to get a spot or, if you can't make it in person, you can always watch the live stream starting at 6:30pm.

Have a user group meeting you'd like to let the community know about? Let us know!

Christian Schaefer has a recent post pointing out a common frustration among developers of applications with NoSQL backends, specifically with Doctrine, MongoDB and PHP DateTime objects - timezone conflicts.

I really like Doctrines way of dealing with dates and times. Instead of passing timestamps around or strings with ISO date format it simply makes use of the PHP native type DateTime which provides all you really need to work with. PHPs interface to MongoDB however comes with its own MongoDate type which provides hardly any functionality compared to DateTime and it's not compatible with it. So what's the difference?

In some of the comments to the post, readers mention that the problem is bigger than just the tools used to work with the database, it's that databases usually don't care about timezones when working with date/time. There's also an interesting mention further down about the timezone support MongoDB does have and an example snippet ofo code that uses the support.

Chances are by now you've heard about some of the NoSQL document-based database alternatives to the usual RDBMS systems like MongoDb or CouchDb. In this recent post there's an introduction helping you get started with PHP and MongoDb.

Web development industry is moving so fast and new solutions like NoSql is getting popular day by day. Most of the web developer and software engineers are familiar with db like Mysql.And there are specific use cases when to MongoDb and when to use Mysql. You can check this interesting discussion from here to be clear.

The post takes you through a three-step process to getting the MongoDb extension for PHP installed, installing the MongoDb database instance and getting it running and a sample script to connect the two. They also suggest two books if you'd like to get more in-depth with MongoDb and its use.

On the PHP on Windows section of DZone.com today Giorgio Sironi has posted about a different sort of object mapping than is usually thought of with databases - object-document mapping.

The Data Mapper pattern is a mechanism for persistence where the application model and the data source have no dependencies between each other. [...] But everytime we talk about the Data Mapper pattern, we assume there is a relational database on the other side of the persistence boundary. We always save objects; we always map them to MySQL or Postgres tables; but it's not mandatory.

He talks about two projects, MongoDb_ODM and CouchDb_ODM, that the Doctrine project is working on to help make working with document-driven databases as simple as the usual ORMs. He includes a brief code snippet showing how the feature will work (hint: a namespace of Document instead of Entity). He lists some of the features - including the usual ORM capabilities, support for collections, cascade of persistence - and where you can get the latest code for it (from github and PEAR

On DZone.com there's a new post linking to a screencast from Jon Adams about using Lithium, MongoDB and PHP 5.3.1 in IIS (Windows 7).

A screencast demonstrating how to quickly get up and running with PHP 5.3.1 and MongoDB on Windows 7 and IIS 7 and getting started with Lithium, the most RAD framework for PHP 5.3+.

The actual screencast is about a year old, but the topic is interesting enough to bring back up. Lithium has been called the "framework for people who hate frameworks" and focuses on using standardized design patterns in an aspect oriented environment when possible.

On PHPFreaks.com there's a new tutorial posted to introduce you to using MongoDB with your PHP applications.

Most of us grew up on the concept of LAMP(Linux apache mysql and php) but there are times when that basic setup can become a real pain to maintain and scale. Generally the hardest part to scale out of a LAMP setup is MySQL. When running a large site with lots of data and traffic optimizing/scaling MySQL can be a really complicated undertaking. That is where NoSQL comes into play.

You'll need to have a Mongo instance installed to follow along with some of the examples but that's simple enough with the help of a package manager. They show you how to create the connection, insert documents, query them, delete them and work with GridFS to split up files across multiple documents.

New from the Ibuildings techPortal there's this article from Paul Matthews about using MongoDB in PHP applications. It's an introductory level tutorial that uses the MongoDB extension for PHP to interface with a local database.

This tutorial will show you how to incorporate MongoDB into new or existing object-oriented applications, by showing how to interact and integrate with applications and how to deploy applications using MongoDB. [...] If you've implemented MongoDB into many of your systems, then maybe this tutorial will, open your eyes on a new way of integrating it. Whatever your background, if you understand object-orientation and want to start using MongoDB, then this tutorial is for you.

He links you to the resources you'll need to get things set up - the extension and a MongoDB - as well as some "first steps" creating a sample Link and LinkPeer objects. There's code examples of how to pull in collections, insert data back into the database and update/delete too. You can grab the full source of his examples from his github account.