Archive for October, 2006
Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:12 UTC
I’ve just finished giving my presentation on XML & Web Services with PHP (An Overview). Overall, I think the presentation went quite well, though I had entirely too much material to cover in a very short period of time, so it was impossible to go into much depth on any one type of Web Service. This was unfortunate, but I think the “overview” nature of the presentation allowed for this top-level approach.
As promised, here are the slides from the presentation (PDF, 2 MB), and what follows is the list of links for further reading:
Further Reading
XML-RPC
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Tags: conferences, php, talks, webservices, xml, zend, zendconference2006
Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:42 UTC
The first day of the Zend/PHP Conference and Expo (the day of tutorials) was great. I sat in on Robert Richards’s Advanced XML and Web Services and Marcus’s and Sara’s Extending PHP tutorials. I multi-tasked as best I could, catching up on some work while finishing my slides and listening to the presentations. Robert went into a great deal of information on DOM, which was all very excellent material—you can definitely tell where his passion lies and that he knows his stuff—but discussion on Web Services was not very prominent. My presentation today, though, while entitled “XML & Web Services with PHP” will be nearly the opposite and discuss Web Services in general, while glossing over XML. So, I think the two properly balance each other. Marcus and Sara covered PHP extensions brilliantly, but, while WiFi here has been excellent, trying to connect to Sara’s ad hoc network for the presentation hosed my wireless connection, and I couldn’t connect for the remainder of the day from the presentation rooms.
For another roundup of the conference tutorial day, I’d suggest reading Aaron Wormus’s take on the day. Unfortunately, Aaron’s server is currently down, so he’s unable to blog on his site (or receive e-mail for that matter), so his roundup post is on PHPDeveloper.org. Be sure to check it out.
This morning, the opening keynote of the conference was led by Mark de Visser, Andi Gutmans, and Zeev Suraski. Mark is Zend’s Chief Marketing Officer, and I’ve had the pleasure of talking with him at OSCON and again last night at the speakers/ZCE dinner. He has a great feel for the PHP and open source community, and he’s sensitive to the appearance and presence of a corporation within this community. I think he brings a wealth of experience to Zend, given his background at RedHat, and he’s doing a great job building Zend’s relationship with the community and presenting them in a manner that is acceptable to the community as a whole.
The keynote covered a range of topics, including the current state of the PHP Collaboration Project, a demo of the new Google Data client library in the Zend Framework, the Eclipse PHP project, Zend Platform and Zend Studio, and the future direction of PHP. Mentioned, also, was the imminent release of PHP 5.2, which might be available this coming Thursday. Overall, the keynote was good, informative, and well-presented, though I felt the introductory part of the keynote, in which some applications, such as Joomla and ZenCart, were showcased, did not show off the strengths of the current state of PHP. These applications are still using PHP 4, for the most part, and I think it would have been good to showcase applications that take advantage of the powerful features of PHP 5 to create a “Web 2.0” application.
In all, it’s been a great conference thus far, and it’s just getting started. I’m heading now to Eli White’s High Volume PHP & MySQL Scaling Techniques, and then, after lunch, I’ll be giving my XML & Web Services with PHP presentation.
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Tags: conferences, php, zend, zendconference2006
Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:46 UTC
I’m at the Zend/PHP Conference and Expo right now sitting in Robert Richards’s Advanced XML and Web Services tutorial. I’ll be attending Marcus’s and Sara’s Extending PHP tutorial later today. Had a great day yesterday, in which Andrei drove us to wine tastings at two different wineries: Ridge and Picchetti.
I wanted to take a moment to mention a 24-hour coding marathon announced by Elizabeth Naramore: PHP Throwdown. The competition sounds exciting, and I’m hoping to get a group together from Atlanta PHP to participate. It’s still in the planning stages, so you need to keep your eyes on it for announcements and more information. For now, here are the details:
What: 24-hour coding competition to see who can code the best PHP app
When: January 27, 2007
Who: You! You may enter individually or as a team, so if you think you’ve got what it takes then read more.
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Tags: atlphp, competitions, conferences, php, phpthrowdown, zend, zendconference2006
Sun, 29 Oct 2006 4:22 UTC
I’m flying out to San Jose tomorrow for the Zend/PHP Conference and Expo. Does anyone know the way? 
I’ll be speaking at this conference on Tuesday during the 2:30pm time slot. My presentation is an overview of Web Services entitled “XML & Web Services With PHP (An Overview).” The abstract follows:
What is XML? What are Web Services? This talk will answer both of these questions, exploring ways to use the powerful features of PHP 5 to consume and create XML-based Web Services. Topics will include SOAP, XML-RPC, and REST, giving real-world examples and explaining the differences between and benefits of each.
There are many things I’m looking forward to during this conference, including:
Fri, 13 Oct 2006 13:12 UTC
While at PHP Appalachia, I had the pleasure of meeting David Rasch, the founder of Triangle PHP, which meets in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill region of North Carolina. One night, by the campfire, David and I launched into a discussion about how newbies learn PHP from current books on the market. He suggested that the format for teaching PHP needs to change and that these books need to start not by teaching PHP from the Web but by introducing newbies to PHP concepts by creating command-line applications. The idea being to introduce them early on to OOP and best practices, rather than trying to get them started fast with a simple “Hello, World” Web site.
While I agreed with the concept in general, I questioned the marketability of this approach. When a person picks up a book on PHP, I asked, what is it they want to do? The simple answer is: they want to create a dynamic Web site, and they want to do it now. Publishers will be very reluctant to publish a book that does not follow the traditional “teach them to create an application then teach them the best practices” model because the reader knows or has heard somewhere that PHP will enable and empower them to create an application—albeit a simple one—in a matter of minutes. This is what makes PHP so attractive to newcomers.
Nevertheless, David had some good points, and, while I was playing devil’s advocate in my comments, I agree that the way we introduce newbies to PHP needs to change at the fundamental level. Newbies must learn the fundamentals first, while still feeling like they are moving somewhere quickly and not being overburdened by a steep learning curve. Thus, David has followed up his original post with “Learning PHP sans bad habits,” which includes a proposed TOC for such a book. The proposed book introduces the reader to PHP syntax from the command line, but, by the second chapter, takes them into Web development with a simple framework that will protect them from bad practices (such as failing to filter input and escape output). At this point, the reader does not yet need to understand these principles or how the framework works (these are covered later in the book), but they are still learning how to protect themselves using best practices.
I think David’s got some good ideas here that the community should definitely take into consideration when teaching and writing books about PHP. Now, I’m just waiting to see what publisher will approach David first to turn his proposed TOC into a reality.
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Tags: books, php, phpappalachia, teaching
Thu, 12 Oct 2006 14:09 UTC
Since there will be a substantial number (something like 9 or 10) of #phpc frequenters in attendance at the Zend/PHP Conference and Expo, we decided it would be cool to print up some t-shirts for fun and wear them at the conference. So, quickly, Aaron Wormus came up with a t-shirt design, and we’re ready to start printing them. Tuesday, October 31 will be the official #phpc wear-your-t-shirt day for conference goers.
If you want a t-shirt, please send an e-mail to tshirts [at] benramsey.com and include your size. This is how I’ll get a head count for the initial printing. I need a count soon, so don’t delay! The cost of the shirt will be about $13. I’ll bring them to the conference to hand out. If you can’t make it to the conference, and you still want a shirt, I’ll arrange for shipping after the conference (but go ahead and let me know you want one now).
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Tags: conferences, php, php-community, phpc, tshirts, zend
Mon, 9 Oct 2006 2:59 UTC
If you’re keeping count, you’ll know that there are seven women listed in my blogroll. These seven women are PHP programmers, and I’ve made it a point to include them in my blogroll because women are underrepresented in PHP and these women provide a much-needed voice for all female PHP developers. However, it still seems that there are very few PHP developers who are women, or perhaps, they’re just not very active in the community, which is my hunch (seeing as how there are at least four women who frequent the Atlanta PHP meetings).
Tonight, during a conversation on IRC, my good friends Ligaya Turmelle and Elizabeth Naramore resolved to change this by announcing a call for the creation of a women’s group for PHP programmers. Now, I’m not a woman, but I’m blogging about this because I think this is an important opportunity for the PHP community to reach out to the female programmers of the world and make them feel included in what has largely been a man’s industry.
So, if you’re a woman and you’re a PHP programmer or you’re just interested in the group, drop by Ligaya’s or Elizabeth’s blogs and let them know. You can also find them both in #phpc on Freenode IRC.
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Tags: php, php-community, women
Thu, 5 Oct 2006 21:51 UTC
Today, php|architect has released the latest in their line of nanobooks: php|architect’s Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide. Writing along with Davey Shafik, I’m proud to have been a part of this project. It was hard work, and Davey had to step in on more than one occassion to save my rear-end, but I think, in the end, all worked out well, and I can honestly say that the final product is more than simply a study guide for the Zend PHP 5 Certification Exam. In fact, it is an essential guide to PHP 5 in general.
php|architect’s Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide covers topics ranging from the basics of PHP to object-oriented programming to databases to Web services, and it does so all under the banner of PHP 5. If you want a general primer on PHP 5, then this book is for you. If you want to study for the Zend PHP 5 Certification Exam, then even better; this book is especially for you.
Coinciding with the release of the book is the announcment of a competition in which the grand prize winner will receive a Zend Studio Professional license, a voucher for the Zend PHP 5 Certification Exam, one year’s subscription to php|architect, and a signed copy of php|architect’s Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide.
To find out more about the competition, the book, the authors, and to read a sample chapter, check out the book’s official Web site at http://zceguide.com/. And don’t forget to buy the book!
Finally, since I’m often asked, my contribution to this book included the chapters Databases and SQL, XML and Web Services, and Security.
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Tags: books, certification, php, php-architect, zce, zend
