PHP Magazine has posted their results from a poll they took after the "PHP Developers Meeting" that happened in Paris about what developers would like to see in PHP6.

Following release of the PHP Developers Meeting in Paris (November 11th and 12th, 2005), the International PHP Magazine polled the community to find out What they were looking our for, the most, in PHP 6?

The results of the poll suggest almost an equal weightage to all of the points noted in the developer meeting minutes. Of the 809 members polled, 15-20% of the respondents were looking out for OO functionality changes, functionality cleanup, performance boost, Security enhancements, and unicode support, in that order. Only 7% were keen to see additions made to the PHP engine. Less than 3% clicked on the "others" option.

The votes were pretty close, with "Functionality" only barely edging out "Performance Boost". "OO Functionality Changes", however, topped the list with points to spare.

In a new post on his blog today, Michael Kimsal looks at an abnormality that he's disocvered with constants in PHP.

Chalk this up as par for the course in the world of PHP, but it doesn't behave as documented. I noticed today that @ work someone is creating database connections, then define()ing the result into a constant. I presumed this was failing silently and because we were generally connecting to only one database (or so I thought initially) that it was simply using the last open connection and still working.

This does *not* throw an error, but does in fact work. Even going back to PHP 4.3.2 (earliest I've checked). This flies in the face of my understanding of constants for years - well, since 1998 (perhaps earlier) or so.

the issue - that a resource can be assigned to a constant - seems to contradict what's listed in the manual, and he asks later if there are others out there that have seen this same issue...

PHPit.net has posted this new tutorial, an introduction to XML-RPC in PHP.

n this tutorial I will show you how to create your own XML-RPC web service, allowing other people to connect to your website. I will also show you how to create your own XML-RPC client, which means you can query other web services.

Although PHP comes with inbuilt XML-RPC functionality, we won't be using it in this tutorial, and instead we'll opt for the excellent XML-RPC Library by Simon Willison, available at http://scripts.incutio.com/xmlrpc/. This library includes both the ability to create a XML-RPC server and client, which is exactly what we need.

They start with the server, making a few simple functions to respond to a single request. They even include a bit more advanced code to allow the server to be "self-desciribing". Next comes to client - a simple, single call first, then on to making multiple calls. Included also are demos showing how they will look when working...

According to this post on the Utah PHP User Group's website today, there's been talk of adding JSON support to the Core portion of the PHP distributions.

There has been some recent activity on the PHP Developer mailing list about the addition of JSON into the PHP Core. After reading the thread, I did a little research on JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Here is a great website to read more about it.

You can check out the discussion over on the archived copy of the php-dev mailing list...

With a continuation of their previous article, WebReference has posted part two of their "How to Interact with Web Forms" series - an excerpt from the PHP Phrasebook (Sams).

They build on the previous code, showing how to:

• preselect items from a multiple select list,
• process image submit buttons
• checking the mandatory fields
• checking the values of select lists

They wrap it all up with two handy concepts - how to write out your data to a form and send it off in email form to the location of your choosing and working with the files uploaded via a form.

On Tim's blog today (Design by Tim), he has a new post that talks about "learning to extract()" - using this function to create variables based on $_GET and $_POST entries.

The days of explicitly declaring variables passed in from a form for use - or (gasp) using $_GET['varName'] in your code is no longer needed! Clear as well as clean code is the discussion for variable setting today, and we get to explore how easy it is to extract(), Typically you would have call the variable and then set it.

The world is changing. While that is not bad for small forms or simple tasks but what if your project is larger or lets just say after reading this article you abondon gathering all the $_GET data from your simple form?

He goes on to talk about the different flags that you can pass in for various options (like "overwrite existing variable" or "prefix variable names with this" sorts of things). Of course, this kind of methodology has to be used carefully so as not to create more security issues than it's worth...

PHPit.net goes "back to the basics" today with this new post - a look at the basics of how PHP handles arrays and how to use them effectively.

Lately the internet has been on a real fast track, and there have been many new developments, like Ajax, Web 2.0, Tags, and other interesting (and often hyped up) things. But this tutorial won't go there at all, and goes back to the beginning with the basics: using arrays in PHP.

If you're a seasoned PHP developer, who knows arrays like the back of his hand, this might be an article you'd want to skip. But if you're still unsure how arrays work, or if you're just curious about a few things, read on and learn more about arrays in PHP.

This is a very basic article, and doesn't give much in the way of any "array tricks" either. Array functions aren't even covered (mostly) - just how to create and update arrays in your code. But for a beginner, that's all you need...

In his latest blog entry, Robert Peake looks at something that PHP is certainly susceptible to, given that other languages like JSP, ASP, and Ruby are always being compared to it - the popularity of the language. Robert asks "Does Popularity Matter?"

Nexen recently posted a great survey on PHP usage (perhaps they beat NetCraft to the punch this time?). We've seen these trends before: PHP is on the steady rise for numbers of installations. Coupled with Apache, it is the most popular web development platform around.

My question is: does that really matter?

By "matter" I mean, "does it affect PHP's credibility in a positive way?"; and also: "does it prove anything?"

He wonders if the numbers that show on the surveys are PHP usage because people want to use it, or if it's simply that it's preinstalled in so many places these days (and has a low "barrier to entry") that it's being mistaken for popularity. He also mentions something that I think we all, as PHP developers and ambassadors, should think about:

So, rather than the community resting on its collective laurels for one more year of increased installations, I encourage us all to consider what can be done to promote PHP through education, standards, and best practices to its rightful place as much, much more than simply a popular web development language.

On the SitePoint PHP blog today, there's Harry's opinion on telling "when PHP5 is safe to use".

The answer is very simple - watch John.

When John migrates, to me it means two things in particular;

• If there is a performance hit vs. the older PHP version, it will be an acceptable one.
• There are no show-stopping bugs.

Don't believe me? Well the short proof is John's company have their future riding on it. A longer proof is to take a deep look at the code in adodb which is a great way to grasp John's mindset / experience. Otherwise browse the phpeverywhere archives...

It's an interesting standard to set for the adoption of something as beneficial as the move from PHP4 to PHP5, but it is one way to judge the effectiveness. When you see the major applications tailoring their setups for PHP5 environments, it might be time to consider jumping ship yourself...