On PHPMaster.com today there's a new article emphasizing something that lots of developers forget to make a part of their process when writing code - creating useful documentation to help make your code that much clearer.

If you're writing code that will be shared with others, put yourself in their shoes. Don't let your project lose potential users, community members, and possible contributors all because of insufficient documentation.

He (Matthew Turland) suggests a few things to keep in mind as you're writing up your documentation - the content is "king" (an emphasis on good descriptions/examples/use cases), open it up to external contributions using things like wikis (or even stored in the source code repository) and a focus on technical writing skills. Even the best tools out there can suffer if there's poor or no documentation.

Kristina Chodorow has posted a four part series of articles to her blog that shares some of her experiences in developing an extension for PHP (on C/C++). It walks you through the entire process - from the basic "hello world" out to working with more complex data structures.

A PHP extension allows you to connect almost any C/C++ code you want to PHP. This is a 4-part tutorial on how to write an extension. [...] Almost all of the code examples in this tutorial are available on Github.

The parts of the series cover:

• setting up a PHP environment
• creating a first "hello world" extension
• working with the PHP C API
• creating PHP objects in C (classes)

Each step comes with some good explanation, code samples and some advice on common tasks and pitfalls along the way.

On the Ibuildings techPortal they've posted a new episode of their recordings from the Dutch PHP Conference 2010, DPCRadio - a recording of Elizabeth Naramore's session Technical Writing.

If you've had an idea for writing a blog post or article, but you're not sure where to start, this talk is for you! Maybe you've had difficulty effectively documenting your code, or communicating your ideas to non-techies. This talk will help you, too! In this fun and informative session, we'll discuss the basics of writing and clear communication through the written word. We'll also talk about strategies for keeping your writing interesting and informative at the same time. Finally, we'll discuss resources for improving your writing skills in the future.

You can either use the in-page player to listen or you can download the mp3 to listen wherever you'd like.

DevShed has a new tutorial posted today with a look at one of the more common tasks performed with PHP (second to generating web pages, of course) - working with files. It can be a little tricky for a budding PHP programmer, but they've got the info you need to get started.

Reading and writing to files can be useful if you do not require the storing of important data, such as a web counter. I must warn you though, that this method of storage should not be used to store passwords and other critical information, as it is not safe. Here we will discuss how to handle files and directories in PHP, specifically, how to create, read and write them.

They start off with a look at file permissions on both Unix and Windows systems ot give you an idea of what problems they could cause. Then, it's on to the actual files themselves - for this part, though, they only look at reading them in and working with their contents.

If you were planning on attending the php|works conference in the fall and getting to hear Sara Golemon talk on extensions, you might just have to wait. According to her latest post, things haven't gone well with her passport situation.

So awhile ago I announced that I'd be speaking at php|works including a 3-hour workshop on extension writing. Knowing that the conference was outside of the US I made sure to apply for my passport well in advance (four months to be precise).

Well, long story short, the lovely folks at the state department must have confused 'Sara' with 'Syria' because I've been fighting them over the issuance of my passport ever since.

All is not lost, though - since the show must go on, Sara has found two people to take over her two talks (the extension talk and one on PDO_User).

Marcus Whitney has a quick note today on his blog about php|architect's search for columnists to write for their A/R/T article repository.

Just a heads up to all you incredible PHP writers out there. I am actively looking for columnists to contribute to A/R/T on a weekly, bi-weekly and monthly basis. If you want to get lots of paid experience as a technical writer, contact me at marcus-AT-phparch.com. Thanks.

Check out some of the current articles already posted there to get an idea of what they're looking for - things like Writing an Ajax-based Visual Rating System with PHP and An Overview of the CakePHP Framework.

The Zend site has published part three of their "Extension Writing" tutorials, this time focusing on the management of resources in your extensions.

Up until now, you've worked with concepts that are familiar and map easily to userspace analogies. In this tutorial, you'll dig into the inner workings of a more alien data type - completely opaque in userspace, but with behavior that should ultimately inspire a sense of deja vu.

They start things off by describing what resources are in the Zend Engine, initializing your resources, using them, and destroying them. They mention different kinds of resources, including normal and persistent resources. There's code for each step of the way, including a sanity check at the end.

On the IBM developerWorks page today, there's this new tutorial dealing with reading and writing XML with the DOM functionality in PHP.

Myriad techniques are available for reading and writing XML in PHP. This article presents three methods for reading XML: using the DOM library, using the SAX parser, and using regular expressions. Writing XML using DOM and PHP text templating will also be covered.

They look at what XML is, how to read it into PHP (with examples of DOM, SAX parsers, and regular expression methods), and writing out XML. The DOM functionality that they use for the examples is the newer, PHP5-compatable methods...