The mystery has been relealed - the php|architect folks have posted about their secret today - a discount on single issues of 30%.

Seasons greetings everyone! The first of two surprises from us today is a great opportunity to combine our recent drop of all DRM protection on our PDFs with an awesome 30% discount on our single-issue prices to stock up on all your favourite past issues of php|architect.

This means that single issues are priced at (about) $3.49 CAD for a few days - all you need to do is pick your favorites from their archive, even their most recent issue.

Hasin Hayder has a quick tip for users of SimpleXML - a handy way to access a node in an XML document that has unsupported characters in its name.

I was finding a way to refer that element as a SimpleXMLElement and found a nifty note in PHP Manual. It says if you have unsupported (unsupported in PHP Lexicon for a variable name) characters inside the name of a node, you can access it using a special pattern {'name'}.

In his example, he shows how a popular phrase ("i can have cheese burger") can be used as the variable name despite having spaces in it.