Kevin Schroeder has come back around and has posted a new tutorial to his blog showing how to connect PDT to the Zend Developer Cloud (the "PHP Development Tools" extension for the Eclipse IDE).

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a series of blog posts on how to connect to the Zend Developer cloud with various IDEs. Except one that I missed... PDT. The deployment plugin is already installed in PDT 3 and so you already will have the ability to push to the DevCloud instance.

The process is pretty simple thanks to that plugin - just create the project (or use an existing one), set up a new target for deployment then launch and deploy the PHP application directly. You can find out more about the "PHP Development Tools" on its Eclipse project site.

On the XPertDeveloper.com blog today there's a new post sharing four handy debugging tools you can use to make finding those elusive problems in your code simpler.

PHP is very well used scripting language in now a days. But PHP does not have any inbuilt debugging tools or extension. But we have some extensions and tools available which serves the debugging purpose of the PHP.

The tools on their list involve both the backend and frontend:

• XDebug
• Zend Debugger
• FirePHP
• PHP Console

On the Web Builder Zone (a part of DZone.com) Giorgio Sironi take a high-level look at some of the tools you can use for automated code reviews in your projects without you ever having to lift a finger (well, once it's set up, of course).

I'm exploring an approach to automated code review: it's not as precise as the human-based one, but it scales better. [...] All in all, automated code reviews, performed with tools instead of with human intellect, can be a starting point to search for the problematic zones of a codebase. Then the human may come in, since they also have to clean up the code: their intervention was already scheduled.

The tools he mentions (and, in some cases, shows how to install/use) are:

• PHPUnit
• PHP_Depend
• PHP_CodeSniffer
• PHP Mess Detector (pmd)
• the Jenkins job template

In a new post to his blog Lukas Smith has a list of PHP projects that have popped up around the Symfony2 framework and are following some of the framework's standards for development.

Here is a short overview in alphabetical order of libraries that have spawned around Symfony2 (and just to clarify not at all focused on just Symfony2). Common to all of them are that they require PHP 5.3 and follow the PSR-0 for class loading.

Among the tools mentioned are things like:

• Assetic
• Imagine
• Snappy
• Twig
• Sismo

In a recent post to his blog Marco Tabini talks about what he calls the lost art of using your brain, the fact that people seem to be relying more on the contents of other peoples' brains instead of their own.

The world of technology is riddled with inhabitants who treat tools as if they were religions. OOP, unit tests, patterns... these are all instruments that are supposed to make some jobs better, and not theological formulas that will magically make every single line of code written on the face of the Earth better. And yet, the vast majority of people treats them like they are, sparking everything from language wars to endless-and pointless - discussions on whether a particular technique is better than another.

He goes on to say that the tools developers use every day aren't just limited to the technology that makes them up. They're there to make things easier, but if the developer using them doesn't take the time to engage their minds to use them correctly, they're practically useless (100% code coverage, for example). He shares his three reasons why he thinks this issue is so wide-spread and the steps he suggests to push out of this way of thinking and back into a more mindful, thinking sort of development path.

Brandon Savage has a new post to his blog today with a list of five tools he can't live without in his day-to-day development work. These range from the physical hardware under his fingertips down to software that helps get the job done.

Every developer has a toolkit of favorite tools and applications that help them develop more effectively. Being individuals, developers often differ (and in some cases, argue) about the tools they use. One of the most frequent questions I'm asked is "what are the tools you use?" and that was the genesis of this blog post. While there are many tools that I would feel lost without, I have listed the five that I see as most crucial to my ability to effectively develop software.

His list includes the physical - a fast machine with dual monitors - and less physical - bug tracking software, an IDE he feels comfortable with and a few Firefox plugins to make debugging simpler. There's a few comments on the post from other developers sharing their "must haves" in their development too.

Brian Swan has a new post today looking at how to use the Eclipse tools for Windows Azure with your PHP applications. The tools allow you to more directly interface with your Azure instance without having to do much outside of Eclipse.

Following on the heels of announcements a couple of weeks ago, the Interoperability Team at Microsoft is announcing the availability of another update to the Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse. In this post, I'll use the updated Eclipse plug-i to walk you through creating and running a project in the Windows Azure Development Fabric, readying a project for deployment to Windows Azure, and deploying a project to Windows Azure.

He walks you through the basics of getting the extension for Eclipse installed and how to create a fresh development project to hook into your Azure instance. Then you select the PHP runtime you want to use, set some debugging and create the project. Then running the PHP instance is as easy as selecting the "Run Windows Azure PHP Project..." from the "Windows Azure" menu. He also includes some instructions about running a custom PHP version and project deployment - all with screenshots to help along the way.

On the PHPClasses.org blog today there's a new book review posted about a recent release from Packt Publishing - "Expert PHP 5 Tools" by Dirk Merkel.

"Expert PHP 5 Tools" is a book for every developer, beginner to expert. Even experts will find useful information between the lines. You do not really need to have much experience with PHP. If you are really beginning with the language, this book can boost your programming skills very quickly.

He mentions some of the topics in the book including continuous integration, deployment and some howto on debugging. The book won't teach you PHP, but it will introduce you to many of the tools offered to developers.

On the Security Musings blog today there's a new post from Anurag that walks you through the process, step-by-step, of how he exploited an image gallery written in PHP (including the tools he used).

I always read, PHP applications are a security guy's nightmare. Always thought why, Coming from a world of packets and frames code made lesser sense. Until I stumbled upon this application. The application was an Image gallery, with a lot of nice cool pics and an option to share and upload pics. This was a PHP application. Oh, it was fun! I thought of playing with it. As soon as I checked the Image upload option, the security freak in me took over.

Using tools like BURP, Extplorer and Fgdump he was able to find a hole that let him upload whatever he wanted including full access to the machine and the Windows admin password.

On Developer.com today there's a new article talking about some of the PHP-related improvements in the latest version of the PHP Development Tools (PDT) extension for Eclipse including template assistance and improved debugging.

Among the 39 projects included in Eclipse Helios is the PDT (PHP Developer Tools) 2.2 release. The PHP Eclipse project was first announced back in 2005, with version 1.0 coming in 2007. With the PDT 2.2 release, the project has continued to evolve with new features as the project's popularity has grown.

New features include a template content assist feature that will help make it easier for developers to get an application up and running quickly and better debugging support via a new inspection tool to help evaluate PHP expressions. The post also includes some quotes from Andi Gutmans of Zend on the progress PDT has made and some thoughts on one of its competitors, Netbeans.