Dan Scott has posted an example of how to create a MARC record (machine-readable cataloging, more details here) from scratch with the help of the File_MARC PEAR package.

In the past couple of days, two people have written me email essentially saying: "Dan, this File_MARC library sounds great - but I can't figure out how to create a record from scratch with it! Can you please help me? Yes, when you're dealing with MARC, you'll quickly get all weepy and get help from anyone you can.

His example code is pretty simple - load the PEAR package into the script, create the record object and start adding fields to it. He shows various output methods ("pretty print", writing the raw data to a file, etc.) and the output to various other data structures like JSON and XML.

Adam Jensen has written up a quick tutorial about using Doctrine record listeners to link a Zend_Acl component with your database.

In previous Zend Framework apps I've written, I often handled access control at the level of the controller action. Each action was represented in the ACL as a resource, and the ACL logic was applied by a custom plugin just prior to any action dispatch. [...] As a result of these concerns, I decided on a lower-level, model-centric approach for this blog: my models are my resources. Each model class implements Zend_Acl_Resource_Interface, and the ACL specifies "create," "read," "update" and "destroy" privileges for each class (more or less).

Checking for the permissions with a setup like this can be time consuming, though, so he found an ally in the record listeners Doctrine allows you to set. He combines a Doctrine_Record_Listener object with a Zend_Acl one in a preInsert method with a getCurrentRole to add the user handling all in one place.

In the third part of the series dealing with using Doctrine in your PHP applications, ProDevTips has this third part looking at a method for extending the tool's current functionality.

I simply knew we would need the extension capability that the Mdl class allows for sooner or later, I didn't expect it to be this soon though. The main problem here is saving a many to many relationship straight to the database from the $_POST array, to do that we can extend Doctrine Record with a new function I have named fromArrayExt which adds something extra to the normal fromArray method.

He shows how to extend the classes to create custom handlers for a grouping of checkboxes. The new code automatically handles their submitted values and pushes them directly into the database (with a simple save() call).

DynamicWebPages.de has posted their new statistics for PHP usage in the community for this past month:

After the small decrease in the last month, PHP made it back up easily. For the first time since April 2006, the 20 million mark on the number of domains has been passed. In contrast to the previous month that means a jump of nearly 800,000 domains. The number of IP addresses, on which PHP is installed, also has numbers worth checking out. With 1,332,514 IP addresses on record, this month's numbers are the highest conditions since September 2004.

You can check out the graph and the statistics for the last year in their statistics page of their site.

On The Bakery, there's a new expanded tutorial (from this) that talks about how to check for duplicate records in your CakePHP model.

[Here's how to] validate a form field (such as a user name field), both in add and edit form and make sure that the selected user name does not already exist in the database [via a] function repeated only once (in app/app_model.php).

The example model they give defines an isUnique method that essentially runs an automatic check (a count() call) on the table to see if the given information exists. The example Model, View, and Controller are all given.

From the Inside Open Source blog (from APress) there comes a helpful tip for those working with Firefox and PHPMyAdmin on a lower resolution screen:

I'm currently working on an e-commerce project involving a relatively small number of database tables. However the clients table consists of 19 fields, making for difficult data review and debugging within PHPMyAdmin, even at 1280Ã-768 resolution.

The answer is simple, at least if you're using Firefox. Firefox offers three hotkeys for changing the text size, and resultingly, the amount of text you can see on one screen.

The keys for this easy little fix use the Control key and plus (larger), minus (smaller), and zero (return to default size).

Following up on yesterday's double release of PHP 4.4.4 and PHP 5.1.5, Ilia Alshanetsky has posted a few more details about the releases and about the release of PHP 5.2.0RC2.

I think we've set a new PHP release record today, 3 releases in one day, PHP 5.1.5, 4.4.4 and 5.2.0RC2. The first two are aimed at addressing a series of security faults that were discovered in stable branches.

The good thing is that the issues found are mostly local exploits, so upgrading should definitely be a priority to shared hosting providers or multi-user PHP systems. That said, I would still recommend that all users of PHP consider upgrading their installs to the relevant releases. For information about the exploits themselves go to php.net

He links to the downloads of these two new versions and includes more about the latest release candidate for HPP 5.2.0 - RC2. They're shooting for a final release of 5.2.0 sometime in September and asks that anyone and everyone out there help to test the code on their systems to ensure a faster, cleaner result when the final code comes around.

Jim Plush talks in his latest blog entry about being a "baker" with CakePHP, detailing some of his first forays into the CakePHP framework.

I've always dreaded frameworks. Ususually it takes longer to learn a framework than to actually code the project in the first place. Over the years I've checked out various frameworks and all fell short when I tried to do something that needs to be done in the real world. There's always some tradeoff that needs to be made.

Now Zend Framework will no doubt be successfull and most likely in a year from now should have a pretty good feature set but for today it looks like there is a king of the hill for PHP frameworks(for me anyway). CakePHP.

He talks about some of the major advantages that he sees for the project, including its documentation, built-in pagination support, and Active Record functionality. There was an issue with the last of them that he noticed as his code got a bit more complex - performance issues with the Active Record implementation. Outside of that, though, he only found goodness inside of this cake.