On PHPMaster.com today, there's a new tutorial helping you get started with on of the most popular unit testing frameworks for PHP, PHPUnit. In this new article they help you write your first tests, run them and figure out what to do when they fail.

Most people know that testing your websites is a good idea, but after some time testing can become tedious. What if a lot of this testing process could be automated so you don't have to go trough every function manually, time after time, to ensure that it still works after updating your code? This is where unit testing comes in, to automate the testing process.

She starts with a simple, self-contained test - setting and getting a "name" value from a User class. The tests include an example of a setup/tear down and check that the result of the "talk()" method is correct with an assertEquals.

Rob Allen has a quick note for fans (or those just discovering) his "Getting Started with Zend Framework" tutorial - he's posted an updated version for ZF2 beta 1.

Getting started with Zend Framework 2 (beta1), creates the same application as my ZF1 tutorial, so it should be very familiar, but this time, it's in the context of Zend Framework 2. As usual, it's a PDF too.

This latest version gives you a gentle introduction to the framework and steps you through the creation of a sample music inventory system. It includes code and explanations of how set up modules, controllers, models and views and how to tie them all together. If you're new to the framework and want to get off and running quickly, I'd highly recommend his tutorial.

On Dzone.com today Giorgio Sironi has a new post looking at a relatively new release on the social networking scene for developers, the Google+ Api, and some details on how you get get started writing apps using the features it offers.

Google+ recently releases to developers the first version of its Api, which focuses on public data about profiles and their activities: status updates, resharings and links. I dived into the Api and wrote a small sample application to get a feel of how easy is to get started, and what can we do with the Api for now. All the code is at the bottom of this post.

He goes through the steps you'll need to get set up - registering an application, getting a library to help make the connection (here's a PHP one) and configuring it with your credentials. You can get "People" and "Activities" information from the API. He shows some sample output for each - basic user information (nested arrays) and some of his activities (again, nested arrays). He includes the source for his sample application that pulls a user's profile information and lists out their latest (public) activities.

In another in his framework series, Jason Gilmore has a new post on PHPBuilder.com about another popular framework - the Yii framework. He introduces you to the framework and shows the creation of a sample, basic site.

Frameworks have been the topic du jour here at PHPBuilder.com, with numerous recent articles covering DooPHP and Fat-free. In this latest stop on the framework tour, we'll check out Yii, a relatively new framework (less than three years old) that boasts an impressive array of features and an equally impressive array of users, among them the enormously popular Stay.com.

He walks you through the install (downloading the latest version) and shows how to use the command-line tool to automatically generate the basic website structure. He continues on showing how to update the main page and template, how to get it connected to a MySQL database and how to use the Gii tool to create basic admin forms for working with the tables.

In a recent post to the MySQL Performance Blog, there's a pointer to a few resources you can use if you need some sample datasets to run your application against - everything from airline flight information to energy usage data.

Sometimes you just need some data to test and stress things. But randomly generated data is awful - it doesn't have realistic distributions, and it isn't easy to understand whether your results are meaningful and correct. Real or quasi-real data is best. Whether you're looking for a couple of megabytes or many terabytes, the following sources of data might help you benchmark and test under more realistic conditions.

The sample data sets vary from fake movie information to sample site traffic data to the large data sets that Amazon provides (including the Human Genome and US Census data). Some of the comments also link to other sources.

Another community member has passed the PHP 5.3 Zend Certified Engineer exam (Sjoerd Massen) and has blogged about his experiences both before and during the exam.

Today I passed the exam to become a PHP 5.3 ZCE. Like everyone else I had to sign the non-disclosure contract so I can't go into detail about the questions that were asked, I can however tell my impressions of the exam and how prepared for it.

His preparations included going over some of the older sample tests and some additional study time on streams. He also mentions the PhpRiot iPhone/iPad application that helped him prepare as well as a few of the training courses he bought for certain topics. His overall impression of the exam was that it was more difficult, with plenty of open questions made for you to fill in an answer.

Hannes Magnusson has posted a few useless statistics about the PHP language including:

• Since PHP 3.0.18 (released October 2000) (no, php.net doesn't keep release records before that for some reason) 60 PHP releases have been made.
• There have only been 2 releases in 2009 so far
• The 89th, 121st, 122nd, 194th, 228th, 241st and the 349th day of the year have had 2 releases each
• The 18th week of the year is most likely to have an release, whole 8 releases have been made in that week!
• 26 PHP releases have been on Thursdays

He also includes a snippet of code that can be used to pull together some of these stats yourself (with only a few errors thrown).

In this new post to his blog, Manfred Webber shares an example he's put together to combine the PureMVC framework with the Zend_Amf component of the Zend Framework.

Since PureMVC is my framework of choice I could not resist creating a simple demo connecting PureMVC to the new Zend_AMF.

The sample application just responds to a button click by displaying a message inside of a text container. You can download the source that includes both the Flex and PHP sides.

Paul Jones points out a new system for the Solar framework that will help those new to using it get started - a sample application that you can grab from Subversion in the traditional "hello world" style.

In the spirit of some other framework projects, the Solar Framework for PHP 5 now offers a ready-to-use Solar system to get new users off to a quick start. It's not prepared as a tarball just yet, but it is available for checkout or export using Subversion from http://svn.solarphp.com/system/trunk.

The sample installation creates a front controller, an authentication system and a "bookmarks" application to give you an idea of how everything fits together. You can get more information on each of these parts and how they all work on the Solar manual/wiki.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted a sample chapter from a new book Packt Publishing has put out called "Pro PHP, Patterns, Frameworks, Testing and more by Kevin McArthur.

So today you get a double bonus. You get to check out Pro PHP, Patterns, Frameworks, Testing and more by Kevin McArthur. You also get a great tutorial on SPL!

The sample chapter looks (obviously) at the SPL, the Standard PHP Library - functions included with PHP5 releases to accomplish some pretty cool things.