Padraic Brady has continued his series about making a sample blogging application with the Zend Framework in a new blog post, part six - a focus on Zend_Form and Zend_Auth.

In the previous entry, we created a new Administration Module to hold blog management functionality, added a Module specific layout for it, and discussed the upcoming need to ensure this is only accessible by authorised Authors. In this entry I'll unravel some of Zend_Form's mysteries in adding a login form, before using Zend_Auth to implement authentication for authors.

He includes the code (controller and view) to add the login form as a part of the Author functionality and, using a few decorators to help him build the form how he likes it, extends the Zend_Form component to make his form with username, password and submit elements. He throws in some validation and a bit of error checking to finish it off.

DevShed is wrapping up their series looking at benchmarking your PHP applications with the third part - a look at comparing execution times of scripts that can either pull from a database or from a flat file.

This large, complex subject offers numerous possibilities for experimentation, which means that you'll surely have tons of fun creating timing systems with PHP. [...] his article, then, will be focused on evaluating different scripts that fetch sets of records, first from a database, and then from flat files.

They use the Timer class they defined in a previous part of the series and wrap it around both a database class (pulling user information from a MySQL database) and a fetch to a flat file for similar information. General exceptions are handled as a part of the resource connection class.

DevShed has started a new series off today with this new tutorial, a look at a few image galleries written in PHP and how to get them up and working on your site.

In this article, we are going to tackle this subject and present some real-world applicable solutions.First of all, this article presumes that you either have a web server of your own or one that you pay for (as a web space) with the necessary server-side services already running and configured appropriately (PHP, MySQL, Apache, etc.). Second, we are going to consider free options for the applications we'll present throughout this article.

The two pieces of software they look at are 4images Gallery and the Coppermine Gallery. Simple installation instructions are included (more can be found in the project's documentation, though) and screenshots show some of the end results.

The Developer Tutorials blog has a recent post that talks about manipulating objects in PHP with the help of the iterators that the Standard PHP Library has to offer.

It's a generally accepted fact that more readable code is more maintainable and easier for other developers to pick up. [...] Today I'm going to take a look at object iteration, most commonly found in the Standard PHP Library, and explore using the Iterator interface to simplify looping.

The main part of the tutorial shows how to implement the Iterator interface of the SPL to create your own custom methods, theirs being a Database version with methodsfor rewinding, reading and getting the current record you're working with.

The Bakery (the CakePHP programmer's resource) has a few new articles, tutorials and components that have been posted lately. Here's the list:

• Preview and alter the SQL generated from Model::find()
• After 3 years, looking back and moving ahead
• Encrypted Cookie Component
• Open Flash Chart Helper: draw charts the Cake way
• Maintaining an Application-independant Code Library
• Rolling you own Gallery2 component
• DarkAuth v1.3 - an alternative Auth
• Easy AJAX Pagination Using JQuery

Be sure to check out the rest of The Bakery for more great CakePHP-related content.

Maarten Balliauw has made a new blog post today about a method he's using to help reuse some of the business logic that Excel spreadsheets can have in a PHP script with help from PHPExcel.

In many companies, business logic resides in Excel. This business logic is sometimes created by business analysts and sometimes by business users who want to automate parts of their everyday job using Excel. [...] Did you know you can use PHPExcel to take advantage of the Excel-based business logic without having to worry about duplicate business logic?

He creates a quick example of a script that can take in an Excal file and pull it into a PHPExcel object, ready for manipulation. He fills in values for the already defined fields (like "carColor" or "leatherSeats") and uses the getCalculatedValue method to perform the action on the cell. The output is dropped into a variable that can be echoed out or used later on in the PHP script.

On the Zend Developer Zone there's a new tutorial (by Matthew Weier O'Phinney) covering the use of decorators with the Zend_Form component of the Zend Framework.

One point of flexibility [Zend_Form] offers has proved to be a pain point for many developers: decorators. This tutorial aims to shed some light on decorators, as well as provide strategies for creating your own decorators and combining them in creative ways to customize the output your forms generate.

Matthew starts with a little background behind the component to help you find your way around. Building on this, he shows how to use some standard output decorators and how to create decorators of your own. His example shows how to create a set of grouped checkboxes.

The PHPEveryDay.com website has posted more tutorials recently - this time about working with Smarty.

• Smarty Template: Introduction
• Smarty Template: Installation
• Smarty Template: My First Smarty
• Smarty Template: Basics That You Must Know
• Smarty Variable: Associative Arrays
• Smarty Variable: Array Index
• Smarty Variable: Object
• Smarty Variable: Variable at Configuration File
• Smarty Variable: Reversed Variable

Check out PHPEveryDay.com for more great PHP articles and tutorials.

PHPBuilder.com has continued their series looking at building an Ajax-driven shopping cart with part two posted today (part one here). Last time they laid the PHP foundation for the example app, this time they add another layer - the Ajax functionality to manage the current contents of the cart.

Finally, a link to the shopping cart is provided, although you could just as easily have displayed the cart contents on the same page. For the sake of brevity I'll just show you how to integrate the add feature, and will leave the subtraction mechanism to you as an exercise.

The Ajax frontend calls a managecart.php backend file that calls addToCart and deleteFromCart based on which type of "task" is passed to it.

The Developer Tutorials blog has posted a tutorial showing you how to set up a tag cloud for your site:

Every major website seems to have a tag cloud. Users love tag clouds; they help navigate masses of content quickly and easily. [...] How do we actually build a tag cloud at application level? In this tutorial, I'll take you through putting together a full-blown, calculated web 2.0 tag cloud in PHP.

They start at the end, with an example cloud with some sample tags ("php" being the largest, of course). The code for it is pretty simple - it looks at an array of counts, the number of times the tag is used, and builds the links with the correct font size automatically.