PHP5 Magazine

vfsStream 0.4.0 released

2009-07-14T09:13:28Z

Frank Kleine released yesterday version 0.4.0 of vfsStream with new support for file modes, owners and groups; in addition to a bugfix for vfsStreamDirectory::addChild(). vfsStream is a stream wrapper for a virtual file system that may be helpful in unit tests to mock the real file system. It can be used with any unit test framework, like PHPUnit or SimpleTest. Frank pointed also to some issues related to vfsStream :

Major problem is that the PHP functions chmod(), chown() and chgrp() do not work with vfsStream URLs due to limitations imposed by PHP (or possibly by underlying C, not sure). The stream wrapper API has no support to enable setting file modes, owner or group of a userland stream implementation. This means the usage of file mode support is limited and can not be applied to create tests for classes using one of the three functions.

You can find examples for testing file modes here. To install vfsStream add pear.php-tools.net to your pear channels (pear channel-discover pear.php-tools.net) then you can install using pear install pat/vfsStream-alpha. More information available here.

Limonade, the PHP micro-framework

2009-07-11T18:02:20Z

Sometimes, maybe you notice it, some small projects are really big ! For example you can include only 19KB of jQuery in your webpage and get tons of extra functionnalities. Here is a very tiny project especially if you like a Lemon Juice, it's called Limonade and it's a PHP micro-Framework. The framework code is less than 70KB, and it is inspired by frameworks like Sinatra or Camping in Ruby, or Orbit in Lua. It aims to be simple, lightweight and extremly flexible.

Limonade usage is as simple as :

API Documentation is available here, you can find more sample usage on the project's website. Limonade inclue also a tiny debug tool in addition to a full tests package. Source code download available at github.

Build a secure login with Zend Framework

2009-07-04T09:17:24Z

Enrico Zimuel, Zend consultant in Italy, wrote an interesting article on how to create a secure login with Zend Framework. The sample application uses Zend_Form, Zend_Auth_Adapter_DbTable, Zend_Session, Zend_Config and Zend_Db_Table. The securiy aspect of this application are:

MD5 of the passwords stored into the database;
pseudo-random token generated into the form to prevent CSRF attacks;
timeout of the token validity to improve the security of the login system;
regeneration of the session ID to mitigate the possibility of session fixation attacks;
redirect to a 403 Forbidden page in presence of a CSRF attack;
filter of the user input with the Zend_Form to prevent SQL Injection attacks;

One of the unsecure point of this application is that the username and the password are submitted in plain text. Any attacker that is able to sniff the HTTP communication between client and server can capture these information. In order to build a real secure system i suggest to use the Secure Sockets Layer protocol (SSL), this is the only way to encrypt the communication between client and server.

Read Build a secure login with Zend Framework's article, source code available for download.

PHP 5.3.0 Released

2009-06-30T13:32:45Z

The PHP development team have just announced the immediate release of PHP 5.3.0. This release is a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes a large number of new features and bug fixes. For users upgrading from PHP 5.2 there is a migration guide available here, detailing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.3.0.

The key features of PHP 5.3.0 include:

Support for namespaces
Late static binding
Lambda Functions and Closures
Syntax additions: NOWDOC, ternary short cut "?:" and jump label (limited goto), __callStatic()
Under the hood performance improvements
Optional garbage collection for cyclic references
Optional mysqlnd PHP native replacement for libmysql
Improved Windows support including VC9 and experimental X64 binaries as well as portability to other supported platforms
More consistent float rounding
Deprecation notices are now handled via E_DEPRECATED (part of E_ALL) instead of the E_STRICT error level
Several enhancements to enable more flexiblity in php.ini (and ini parsing in general)
New bundled extensions: ext/phar, ext/intl, ext/fileinfo, ext/sqlite3, ext/enchant
Over 140 bug fixes and improvements to PHP, in particular to: ext/openssl, ext/spl and ext/date

This release also drops several extensions and unifies the usage of internal APIs. Users should be aware of the following known backwards compatibility breaks:

Parameter parsing API unification will cause some functions to behave more or less strict when it comes to type juggling
Removed the following extensions: ext/mhash (see ext/hash), ext/msql, ext/pspell (see ext/enchant), ext/sybase (see ext/sybase_ct)
Moved the following extensions to PECL: ext/ming, ext/fbsql, ext/ncurses, ext/fdf
Removed zend.ze1_compatibility_mode

New SPL Features in PHP 5.3 Webcast Slides

2009-06-29T17:32:13Z

For those who missed the first CodeWorks 2009 webcast, like myself, Matthew Turland posted slides and source code of his presentation titled "New SPL Features in PHP 5.3". Matthew talked about containers and how SPL can help with scalability in your application, with very interesting benchmarks comparing Arrays to SPL methods.

You can read more about SPL here and here. There are more webcasts coming this summer to celebrate the CodeWorks 09 Conference, so be sure to not miss next ones !

Zend Framework 1.8.4 Maintenance Release

2009-06-24T08:51:15Z

The Zend Framework team have just released 1.8.4, the fourth maintenance release in the 1.8 series with over 50 bugfixes. There is also a new page now on the website about the framework roadmap and the upcoming 1.9.0 release.

Right now, we are only detailing the upcoming 1.9.0 release, but expect to see more listings in the future. Currently we are not setting dates for the releases as this is often difficult to predict due to the fact that the releases are largely dependent on contributor schedules -- and most contributors are, in the end, volunteering their time. We are, however, targetting 1.9.0 for late July of this year.

The roadmap include actually 11 new feature, but not final, new proposals might be accepted prior to the final release. Features planned so far :

Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Rest
Zend_Db_Table plugin support
Zend_Dojo: Build layer support
Zend_Feed_Reader
Zend_Form multipage action helper
Zend_Ldap
Zend_Log factory
Zend_Log_Writer_Syslog
Zend_Queue
Zend_Test_PHPUnit database support
Zend_View_Helper_BaseUrl

Download latest version from Zend Framework website. Released under New BSD License.

PHP 5.2.10 Released

2009-06-20T11:27:35Z

The PHP development team have just announced the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.10. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.2.x branch with over 100 bug fixes, one of which is security related. All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 5.2.10:

* Fixed bug #48378 (exif_read_data() segfaults on certain corrupted .jpeg files). (Pierre)

Further details about the PHP 5.2.10 release can be found in the release announcement, and the full list of changes are available in the ChangeLog.

PHP 5.2.10RC2 and PHP 5.3.0RC3 Released

2009-06-14T12:30:07Z

The PHP Team have just announced the availability of two releases candidate PHP 5.2.10RC2 and PHP 5.3.0RC3.

These RCs focuses on bug fixes and stability improvements, and we hope only minimal changes are required for the next candidate or final stable releases.

PHP 5.2.10 is a pure maintenance release for providing bugfixes and stability updates. PHP 5.3.0 is a newly developed version of PHP featuring long-awaited features like namespaces, late static binding, closures, the famous GOTO and much more.

Please download and test these release candidates, and report any issues found. Downloads and further information is available at qa.php.net. See also the work in progress 5.3 upgrade guide.

Flourish, A Developer-Friendly PHP5 Library

2009-01-21T06:51:42Z

Flourish is an object-oriented PHP 5 library designed to reduce code and improve security. It�s not an MVC framework and it doesn�t try to solve every problem. Instead, it focuses on being small, portable, well documented and easy to use.

Flourish provides classes to simplify many common and repetitive tasks in PHP with class APIs that are simple and intuitive. It helps produce code that is easy to write, and more importantly, easy to read and maintain.

The project is very well documented, and to get started you need PHP 5.1+, it include an ORM for supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite and Microsoft SQL Server, in addition for being built with internationalization and localization in mind. Flourish is available under the MIT license.

Spoon, PHP5 Library

2009-01-17T07:30:29Z

Spoon is a PHP5 library that stands for speed, both in page execution and coding agility. Because of it's clear and logical structure, it offers a very small learning curve for both the experienced and not-so-experienced developer. Spoon provides a well documented library with a large collection of classes that you can use while building the next Web 2.0 application.

Spoon is not a framework, you can choose the components you would like to use in your project. The library provides a set of classes for cookie, database, date, email, filesystem, filter, html, session, and template. Spoon is written by Davy Hellemans, Tijs Verkoyen, and Dave Lens; released under an open source BSD license.

More info could be found at : http://spoon-library.be/

Artisan System, PHP5 Framework

2009-01-12T05:50:22Z

Artisan System is a new object oriented PHP5 framework with most of the features you'd expect from a framework (database abstraction, MVC, etc). The main purpose of Artisan is to be an e-commerce/event management framework. The project is very well documented and included so far some good tutorials for classes such the Log , Database, Registry, and Value Objects. Current stable version is the 0.2, many features are under development for 0.3 that you may find in the project roadmap. Artisan System is available under a zlib/libpng License. For more information and download http://artisansystem.com/

PHP 5.2.8 Released, 5.2.7 Removed

2008-12-10T13:07:44Z

Very busy week at php.net, and very busy gift-season also ! PHP 5.2.8 have been officially released fixing a major security bug in 5.2.7 - a bug-fix version that was released two days before. So in addition to the ini bug fixed, you will get around 120 bug-fixes from the 5.2.7

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.8. This release addresses a regression introduced by 5.2.7 inregard to the magic_quotes functionality, that was broken by an incorrect fix to the filter extension. All users who have upgraded to 5.2.7 are encouraged to upgrade to this release, alternatively you can apply a work-around for the bug by changing "filter.default_flags=0" in php.ini.

Note that 5.2.7 is no longer available. Security enhancements and fixes in PHP 5.2.7 include :

Upgraded PCRE to version 7.8 (Fixes CVE-2008-2371)
Fixed missing initialization of BG(page_uid) and BG(page_gid), reported by Maksymilian Arciemowicz.
Fixed incorrect php_value order for Apache configuration, reported by Maksymilian Arciemowicz.
Fixed a crash inside gd with invalid fonts (Fixes CVE-2008-3658).
Fixed a possible overflow inside memnstr (Fixes CVE-2008-3659).
Fixed security issues detailed in CVE-2008-2665 and CVE-2008-2666.
Fixed bug #45151 (Crash with URI/file..php (filename contains 2 dots)).(Fixes CVE-2008-3660)
Fixed bug #42862 (IMAP toolkit crash: rfc822.c legacy routine buffer overflow). (Fixes CVE-2008-2829)
Fixed extraction of zip files and directories with crafted entries, reported by Stefan Esser.

Download current PHP 5 Stable 5.2.8

VS.Php 2.5 integrates ZendFramework with Visual Studio

2008-06-23T06:33:29Z

Miami, FL, June 23, 2008: Jcx.Software today announces the release of VS.Php 2.5 for Visual Studio 2008, a Php integrated development environment (IDE) for Microsoft Visual Studio. Like previous versions of VS.Php, it comes in three different editions:

VS.Php 2.5 for Visual Studio 2008
VS.Php 2.5 for Visual Studio 2005
VS.Php 2.5 Standalone Edition, designed for customers that do not own Visual Studio.

VS.Php 2.5 includes the Zend Framework and integrates it seamlessly to the Visual Studio IDE. The Zend Framework integration includes the following features:

Zend Framework integration to the Php preview built-in engine.
Intellisense support for Zend Framework classes, including support for class auto loaders.
Zend Framework Model-View-Controller project wizard.

PHP|architect Books : Turn your PHP5 upgrade into success

2008-06-13T12:17:16Z

PHP|architect have just released php|architect's Guide to PHP 5 Migration, a book written by Stefan Priebsch. The guide in 250 pages aims to help developers migrate successfuly from PHP4 to PHP5. php|architect's Guide to PHP 5 Migration is available since 6 June in PDF format and will be available in 20 June in print format.

The topics covered include:

Migration Concepts
Strategies for Migration
Migration Aspects
Preparing the Migration
The Migration
After the Migration
Tools
Migrating PHP Code

This is the only book you will need to help you through the rough spots when migrating your PHP apps from PHP4 to PHP5. Not only is this an extremely comprehensive and in-depth resource, it will show you virtually every pitfall you may encounter and will undoubtedly make your migration as smooth as possible.

PHPDevShell 1.0.0, PHP Web Administration Framework Released

2008-06-05T17:37:47Z

PHPDevShell is a stable, secure, fast PHP Web administration framework. It allows rapid deployment of Web based PHP applications. Robust, secure, clean, fast, including many administrative functions, the framework supports an unlimited number of users, user groups, security levels, menu tree levels, and menus.

Latest update include major feature and stability enhancements in the core, database layer, GUI, security, template engine, caching, gzipping, and navigation system, with all reported bugs fixed. PHPDevShell is available under the GNU (LGPL) Open Source License.