Laknath Semage submitted a new blog post he's written up about working with large file uploads in your PHP applications.

If we want to do large file uploads or database updates with PHP there are few configurations to be done to default settings and I'm putting this as a note to myself (I'm always keep forgetting this) as well as to any one who may find this useful like when importing a large backup file through phpMyAdmin.

There's four php.ini settings he recommends checking as well as two values to change if you do have the need to upload a large import file back into a phpMyAdmin installation (ExecTimeLimit, MemoryLimit).

With the recent released of the 1.7 version of the Zend Framework Rob Allen wanted to post about a new form element type that integrates some much needed functionality - Zen_Form_Element_File.

Now that Zend Framework 1.7 has been released, I thought I'd take a look at the built in file upload element, Zend_Form_Element_File, and see how it can be used. This is how to use it in its most basic form.

The form in this example is similar to his previous example and the simple code is included for the form, the controller and the view.

That's all there is to it for simple uploading of forms. There are still a few fairly important bugs in the component that we'll have to wait for 1.7.2 for. Specifically the Count validator doesn't always work as you'd expect and don't use getValues() and receive() as it isn't yet clever enough to know not to call move_uploaded_file() more than once.

Jeremy Johnstone has come up with a simple plist xml parser. The plist format is what iTunes (and some other application) uses for its library files.

Normally SimpleXML is enough to handle most XML parsing needs, but the plist XML format is just broken enough to make parsing it with SimpleXML virtually impossible. Since I hadn't played with XMLReader much, I thought it would be a good chance to give it a spin. For the anxious types, the code is available on github in my php_class_lib project, so dig right in.

His parser takes in the name of the file to fetch and a parser() method is called to do the actual work. The contents of the file are returned as an array (he includes a print_r() of that output too).

Jani Hartikainen has posted a quick tip for Zend Framework users out there looking to force a download from their script.

"How do I make a file downloadable through my script?" This seems to be a relatively common question on #zftalk nowadays, so here's a quick wrapup!

He compares the two ways - the usual PHP-only way of using header() calls and echoing out the file versus the more Zend Framework way - using a Response object to pull in the content, set the headers and a helper to display/render the data output.

Recently on his blog Yannick has done some benchmarking comparing mbstring and iconv in PHP 5.2.4 release.

Following up on my previous post about the differences between the mbstring and iconv international characters libraries (which resulted in a tentative conclusion that nobody knew anything about those differences), and particularly the comments by Nicola, we have combined forces (mostly efforts from Nicola, actually) to provide you with a little benchmarking, if that can help you decide.

His code for the test script is included (for you to gather your own results) and a full listing of his results comparing the effects of possible caching, running up to ten executions. You can download the text file that he ran the script on here.

The IBM DeveloperWorks site has posted some advice that can help keep you, your application and your data safe from security-related attacks.

Security in a PHP application includes remote and local security concerns. Discover the habits PHP developers should get into to implement Web applications that have both characteristics.

The habits in their list are:

• Validate input
• Guard your file system
• Guard your database
• Guard your session
• Guard against XSS vulnerabilities
• Guard against invalid posts
• Protect against CSRF

Each comes with their own explanation and for some, code to help you spot the mistakes and correct them.

The folks over at DZone have added to their RefCardz selection with a PHP version quick reference card.

PHP is the world's most popular server-side Web scripting language. This reference card was created to help you quickly navigate some of PHP's most commonplace features, including objectoriented programming, array and string manipulation, regular expressions, and MySQL integration.

The card (created by Jason Gilmore) is available for free download (PDF) from the DZone website.

Matthew Weier O'Phinney has another post full of Dojo/Zend Framework goodness today - this time he looks at making proper layer files by combining the two.

During my Dojo and ZF webinar on Wednesday, Pete Higgins of Dojo fame noted that I could do something different and better on one of my slides. This particular item had to do with how I was consuming custom Dojo build layers within my code. I contacted him afterwards to find out what he suggested, and did a little playing of my own, and discovered some more Dojo and javascript beauty in the process.

The improvement replaced the need for a manual commenting/uncommenting of an addLayer call with a bit of namespaced layers that, based on the environment, adds a dependency for the right file. One less manual process, one less thing to go wrong on deployment.

The ProDevTips blog has posted the fifth part of their look at using Doctrine with PHP. This time they focus on file uploads.

It's time to take a look at how file uploads can be integrated into the Doctrine validation and CRUD process. We will have a product in the form of a digital download as an example, it will have a screenshot image that can be maximum 250 pixels wide and high. The download itself will be a zipped file.

They set up their table definitions first and set up a few validation functions (update, insert and for the file data) to work on top of that. Custom upload/uploadImage and save methods handle the user's submission while a simple delete method makes removing images easy.

Recently on his blog Cormac has posted a quick little tutorial on making things a bit faster when rejecting file uploads in PHP that are just a bit too large.

Discovered today you can report to a user if the file(s) he/she is uploading is too large without having to wait for the file to finish uploading by checking $_FILES.

The key is the "error" field in the $_FILES array that actually returns its value before the upload is finished if the size of the file is larger than the MAX_FILE_SIZE set in the POSTed information of the form. The Content-length header is sent before the actual payload (the file upload data) so PHP can interpret that before the upload starts and kick it back with an error if it's too large.