Johannes Schluter recently looked at one of the new features coming with PHP 5.3 - the goto functionality:
Over the last few days I already mentioned a few hidden gems from PHP 5.3. Now at Christmas I wanted to take a look at some new language feature of the upcoming PHP version: Added "jump label" operator (limited "goto"). (Dmitry, Sara)
No, its not the sort of "goto" you're thinking of - its a bit more limited than that. Johannes mentions that it only allows you to jump within the same execution unit and you can't jump into loops. Used incorrectly, it can be bad but he points out two useful instances - one being a code generator and the other an instance where you might need to drop out of code but not kill off the script in the process (sample code is included for this second one).
If you're looking for a framework to try out on your next Web 2.0 application, Knut Urdalensuggests you give Yii a try.
The Yii Framework is built for speed and the goal is to provide the best possible framework for your next large-scale web 2.0 applications. With it's superior performance, Yii still provides an easy-to-use and highly extensible feature set that is richer than most other frameworks.
If you haven't tried it, he points out the "getting started" tutorial offered on the Yii site as well as some of the performance benchmarks (including those for the next release, 1.0.1).
Mike Davies has posted a comparison he's worked up between the CakePHP and Symfony PHP frameworks:
Asking around in work (well, the extended group of web developers that used to be the phenomenal Yahoo Web Dev team in London, and Munich) for PHP framework suggestions, the most frequently recommended one was Django (go figure!), followed by symfony, Code Igniter, and one solitary suggestion of Cake PHP.
He gives overviews of each citing things like features, database integration, how they implement MVC and documentation. His comparison is quick, pointing out that the right tool for his job ended up being symfony - a bit more complicated, but more of what he needed.
The NETTUTS.com site has pointed out five new features of the latest WordPress release (2.7) that come bundled in by default.
Wordpress 2.7 is to be publically released in the next week, and a whole bunch of features have been packed in, looking past the obvious such as the new redesign. The new dashboard, Screen options, Plugins, Themes and Core upgrades and the media library!
Here's the list of five:
New Commenting system
New Dashboard Features
Screen Options
Plugin Interface
Media Library
Posts Management
They detail each with subheadings and screenshots of the new improvements in action.
Jani Hartikainen has posted a review of the latest release of the NetBeans IDE with an updated version of their PHP support:
During the weekend, I tried out NetBeans 6.5 and its new PHP related functionality. I had earlier seen some quick shots of how the support was, and it seemed like a good contender for big names like Zend Studio. What features does NetBeans 6.5 have for PHP developers? How does it compare against Zend Studio for Eclipse?
He looks at some of the basics it includes (PHPDocumentor support, autocomplete, etc) and gets a bit more in depth by comparing it directly to Zend Studio, a look at the project view and the integration of debugging support and version control. He also points out the HTML, CSS and Javascript support that comes bundled in too.
Sebastian Bergmann as a new post talking about a few of the features of the PHPUnit unit testing framework, especially test isolation.
Some of PHPUnit features come with the cost of a performance penality. This posting explores the effect of the --no-syntax-check, $backupGlobals = FALSE;, and --coverage-html options.
He compares benchmarks for a test with few different settings - $GLOBALS, syntax check and code coverage (including graphical output of the execution times on the various parts of the tests).
Brian Moon has released a simple blogging application he's worked up - a super-simple, lightweight application that already has several of the common blog features built in.
Up until now, I have used Wordpress.com for my blogging. It works quite well. You can get started quite quickly and it does what most people need. My wife uses Blogger for our family blog. It is, IMO, not as nice as Wordpress.com in some ways. But, it does allow you to edit your styles (for free) and such which is nice. So, why would I want to reinvent the wheel? I am a control freak and rarely run other people's code. I know, it is a character flaw. I am working on it.
His application, WordCraft, already includes things like Akismet/CAPTCHA support for comments, custom page creation, pingback support, temlpating and email notifications. You can download the latest release (version 0.5) from his google code page.
The symfony blog has a new post spotlighting one of the new features of their 1.2 release - updates to its Doctrine functionality.
A lot of awesome stuff has been added recently to the next major symfony release, 1.2. Fabien has worked very hard to add without a doubt the most sophisticated features of any PHP framework that exists today. Not only are they nice features but he has implemented them in a OO way so that it is easy for me to implement the same features with another ORM, Doctrine. All this is done with very little work by me. So, give a big thanks to him if you enjoy this.
Included in the post is a real-world example showing how to use the symfony command line to build out an environment and create connections to the articles, categories and authors tables.
On the Hurricane Software website they've done a comparison between PHP and Python judging them based on things like feature set, community and documentation.
What does it take to state one language better than other? One answer can be flexibility, development friendly, licensing policy (open source or commercial), community, portability, dynamic typing, support for variable number of function arguments and ability to freeze live objects in a string representation. Documentation of course is a major player when you choose a language because you still have to sharpen your skill and you haven't worked on that particular language yet.
They go through a list of the prominent features of each language as well as some basic benchmarks for mathematical operations like finding primes below 10000 and looping with a bit of calculation. They compare the two languages' speed of execution, speed of writing, ease of setup and portability.
You can also listen to the report via the in-page player.
Christoph Dorn has posted about the latest release of a very handy PHP/Mozilla extension - FirePHP 0.2.
The release includes 27 bug fixes and feature enhancements. The scope of this release was primarily focused on improving the current feature set in terms of usability, reliability and support for logging complex objects. You can find the changelog here.
After installing the FirePHP 0.2 extension you will be directed to the Install page after your next Firefox restart. On this page you need to download the updated FirePHPCore library. Next you can visit the Learn page for information on how to get started with FirePHP. Finally refer to the Usage page as a reference for all supported features.
Some of the updates included in the release are for enhanced object logging, the addition of file and line information, full UTF-8 and Latin-1 support and an enhanced variable display in the console. Head over to the FirePHP.org website to get the latest version.
