O'Reilly Publishing has just released a new PHP book for those looking to get to the "heart of the language" the fastest - PHP: The Good Parts.

Get past all the hype about PHP and dig into the real power of the language. This book explores the most useful features of PHP and how they can speed up the web development process, and explains why the most commonly used PHP elements are often misused or misapplied. You'll learn which parts add strength to object-oriented programming, and how to use certain features to integrate your application with databases.

You can see the full table of contents on their page for the book including beginner topics like functions and variables all the way out to security, advanced goodies and PHP 5.3.

Rob Morgan has submtted a recent post from his blog that shows how to create and deploy a PEAR package for your application onto the new Pearhub repository.

You might be wondering what is Pearhub? From Pearhub.org - 'Pearhub is a pear channel and a pear package publishing platform. As a user, you can install packages. As a developer, you can publish packages'. You can read Troels Knak-Nielsen's introductory blog post here: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/01/08/introducing-pearhub.

You'll need an OpenID, an account on github and know how to use git on your system to get everything packaged up and ready to go. You create your app locally, make a github repository for it and set up a pearhub account to point to it. With all of that set up, it's as easy as doing a channel-discover on the pearhub server and running the "pear install" on the package. The rest is done for you!

Padraic Brady has posted about the art of deception that several publishers have involved themselves in - already publishing books about PHP6.

I was strolling around a bookstore today, Easons on O'Connell Street here in Dublin, when I found myself staring at a bookshelf in near shock. Kid, I thought, you've been out of the loop for only two months and somehow those crazy people have managed to release PHP 6 right under your nose! [...] The more I stared at the three youthful faces grinning at me from the cover, the more I convinced myself this was a publishing error. No way was PHP6 going to be released without me noticing. Google Reader would have been on fire with that news. So what the hell was I looking at? I was apparently looking at a big fat lie.

He goes on to talk about PHP6 (aka the "long standing grail" of PHP) and how publishers, apparently misinformed as to the release date of the version, preempted its release and assumed that it would be out as soon as or before the book was. Obviously this was the wrong choice and now they're paying for it with the egg on their face.

Sure these PHP6 books have a lot of the PHP 5.3 features mentioned in them, but they're mashed up with other features that won't be ready until PHP6 actually arrives. Oddly enough, upon looking at the contents of most of the books, Padraic discovered something interesting - their content is less about PHP6 and more about the PHP 5.2 series that was current. Seems they're only really PHP6 in name.

In a new post to his blog Matthew Weier O'Phinney shares a simple publish-subscribe system he's created based on a feature of the Dojo toolkit using the Zend Framework to create an easy notification architecture.

The system has elements of Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP), as well as the Observer pattern. Its power, however, is in the fact that an individual object does not need to implement any specific interface in order to act as either a Subject or an Observer; the system is globally available.

The script creates an object that publishes an event. This event then sends off messages to all of the other objects subscribing to it. A code example is included. You also can check out the code from its page on github (as a part of his Phly libraries) and play with it yourself.

We can expect big things from Davey Shafik in the coming months - he's been working on a book for php|architect about one of the more powerful bits of functionality in PHP - streams.

For about 6 months now, I've been itching to write a book on the PHP Streams Layer - one of my favorite features of PHP; and also one of the least known considering it's powerful abilities.

He describes his goal simply as this: to create the definitive resource for working with the streams later in PHP. It should be out sometime in the third quarter of 2008, so keep your eye out for it then.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted an announcement about a new book from php|architect (authored by DevZone's own Cal Evans) - Guide to Programming with the Zend Framework.

This is a project I've been interested in since it's very beginning, mainly because I'm the author of this particular tome. [...] The php|architect web site was a bit more helpful giving a breakdown of the contents of the book and a useful quote.

The book covers topics on the framework like the parts of MVC, web services, authorization, exceptions and even some tutorials to help you get started (including a look at the brand new Zend_Layout class).

Many congrats to Cal Evans on getting an article posted in the latest edition of the Dr. Dobb's magazine.

Wow, I wrote this article back in May/June and it finally got published! "PHP: The Power Behind Web 2.0". This was the very first version of the FNN that I wrote. I used the concept in "Flex and PHP: Party in the Front, Business in the Back".

The article shows how to create a site using PHP on the backend along with Javascript on the front end to build a "Flickr News Network" by combining it with information from a feed.

SitePoint publishing has released the Second Edition of their popular PHP Anthology book - "101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks":

Enter, The PHP Anthology a book that proves that you don't need a computer science degree to take advantage of the powerful features of PHP 5.

Save time, and eliminate the frustration of completing PHP tasks, with this comprehensive collection of ready-to-use solutions. If you're building web applications with PHP you'll never let this book out of your sight!

Authors for this edition are PHP notables Ben Balbo, Harry Fuecks, Davey Shafik, Ligaya Turmelle and Matthew Weier O'Phinney. The book covers a huge range of topics like using strings, dates and times, working with files, image manipulation and error handling.

Check out the book's main page for a link to get a free sample of the content, too! You can order the book for either $49.90 USD (PDF and hard copy), $39.95 USD for just the hard copy or $29.95 USD for the PDF copy only.

Check out some blogs from the authors: Matthew Weir O'Phinney, Davey Shafik and Ligaya Turmelle

Starting off the week on a light note, Hannes Magnusson has posted a few reasons why *not* to write for the PHP.net manual.

His tongue-in-cheek list includes:

• You get a free pass to conferences by converting your work into presentation
• You get a "trading card" and considered a star
• You can flame the documentations without needing to do anything about it
• You can license your work to forbid any commercial use or further improvements

Hannes also responds in a later comment to the post:

More and more people are thinking about themselves and publish their work on their blog or sell it. There isn't anything wrong with that, but its very annoying that user need to search for information on blogs, commercial websites or magazines rather than the manual.

Elizabeth Naramore points out the recent publication of the latest International PHP Magazine issue for July of 2007:

I was happy to contribute to their recently released June edition. I did an interview with the new PEAR Group on the future of PEAR. I'm glad to see such enthusiasm and collaboration among the newly elected group.

You can check out the issue and order your copy from the International PHP Magazine website (here's the table of contents too showing the rest of the articles/columns in this month's edition.