VCL for PHP Roadmap

VCL for PHP Roadmap has been published, you can find it here:

http://www.qadram.com/vcl4php/forums/viewtopic.php?t=563

This roadmap exposes the features we plan to add to the library on upcoming releases, it should be useful for contributors to know in which aspects they can contribute to the project and for users and Delphi for PHP customers to know the direction we have to make the library grow and improve.

This information describes general project direction at this time, and should not be relied on in making an usage decision. The future development, release and timing of features and functionality remains at our sole discretion and may be changed at any time without notice.

Some of these features will be available as separate packages, we will revise the current VCL for PHP folder structure and provide different types of downloads.

Estimated time: 2 months
* QA: Increase the amount of automated tests, using selenium and php unit
* QA: Fix any problem found with the goal to make an stable release

Estimated time: 1 month
* Make components generate valid code according to the Page doctype
* Improve execution speed by profiling and optimizing
* Make heavy use of test cases to check there is no regression because of these changes

Estimated time: 1 month
* Ajax improvements: Give more options when using ajax in coordination with VCL for PHP components to speed up ajax performance

Estimated time: 1 month
* Improve Zend Framework integration by adding a lot more components to the collection

Estimated time: 1 month
* Integrate more PEAR components to start a collection to get collaboration from third-parties

Estimated time: 2 months
* Finish the ExtJS component set, which was started as a test, so release a full set of components

Estimated time: 2 months
* PDO data access components

Estimated time: 2 months
* Report components, to allow reporting in a similar way of Delphi for Windows QuickReports or FastReport

Estimated time: 1 month
* JPGraph wrapper to allow generate professional looking graphics

Estimated time: 1 month
* Add more jQuery components to setup the base for a component collection, with the goal of promote the collaboration with third-parties

Pending items:
* Client-side data-aware components
* JS Mode mode for components: Make easy to generate javascript code using php code
* Mobile phone support
* QDBAdmin
* Session data handlers
* Expand data dictionary components

Blog at codegear.com #1

To get more exposure for the product and to add articles about Delphi for PHP and not only about the VCL for PHP, we have got a blog at codegear.com, you can check it out here:

http://blogs.codegear.com/joseleon

We will publish information in both blogs and we will make a recap here from time to time:

Creating components using Delphi for PHP
Delphi for PHP provides, through VCL for PHP, a standard to create PHP components that can be integrated inside a visual IDE. This standard has been checked to be as open as possible, so you can reuse existing PHP code base.
By creating components, you get a lot of benefits:

Abstract and wrap working functionality and provide […]

Access control lists with Zend Framework in Delphi for PHP 2.0
On the previous article, we dealed with authentication using Zend Framework components, but, what happens if you want to customize a page depending on the role or even the user is accessing?
Let’s say, for example, you have a page for customer management, where there is information, not only about customer, but customer invoices, or even, […]

Adding authentication using Zend Framework components in Delphi for PHP 2.0
One of the main goals of VCL for PHP design was to reuse as much existing PHP code as possible. There is a lot of excellent PHP code out there, so we wanted to make easy to integrate all that content in a visual development environment, but the problem was that no other library […]

RSS feeds in PHP: Three simple steps to PHP RSS generation
PHP is the perfect language for text handling, its structure is oriented to make this kind of tasks really easy, find here a basic example on how to produce RSS using PHP:
http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/php/rss-feeds-in-php-3-simple-steps-to-php-rss-generation-121/

Use the YouTube API with PHP
In this tutorial, you will see how easy is to access the YouTube API using PHP with few lines of code:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-youtubeapi/index.html?ca=drs-
You get simple examples, and also, more complicated ones if you require a higher degree of integration.

Google Chart API via PHP
Here is an article which evaluates (briefly) several solutions to embed Google Chart API in your PHP applications:
http://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2008-04/16-google_chart_api_via_php
It points to three scripts:

GoogChart – very simple and basic

GphpChart – nearly covers the whole API

gchartphp – not all graphs supported

All of them, easy candidates to become VCL for PHP components

Oracle and PHP
Oracle and PHP can be a powerful combination to create strong and scalable server apps, the Oracle support in PHP is becoming better and better as Oracle itself is working on the OCI8 extension to improve it.
If you are interested on this combination, you should check this blog to keep you informed:
http://blogs.oracle.com/opal/
Just highlight the latest […]

Converting XML to a PHP Array

Here is a basic script that takes XML text and returns an array featuring the XML structure:

http://www.msbware.com/articles/scripts/xml_to_array.html

It uses XPath and XDOM to do the job.

Three ways to test Web form input with a CAPTCHA in PHP

A CAPTCHA is a way to determine in your applications if there is a real person behind the screen, there are several scripts to ease the generation of these captchas, three of them analyzed on this article:

http://www.linux.com/feature/131925

Here are the links:

Capictcha

Captcha PHP

KCaptcha

Nice articles about PHP

Here are some articles pointing nice features about PHP, but the curious thing is that they come from people that is not strictly related with PHP, like Ian Bicking, a Python developer or David Henemeier, from Ruby on Rails:

Ian Bicking : What PHP deployment gets right

Jack Herrington : The PHP Scalability Myth

David Henemeier Hanson : The inmediacy of PHP

Put Your PHP App on Steroids - Optimizing with APC Cache

“Nothing’s cooler than writing a bad-ass site or application and watching it gain popularity and a significant user base. By the same token, nothing’s more frustrating that watching your app fall on its face when its running under high load. If you’re like me, you know how disheartening this can be, as it usually means that its time for a hard dose of reality: your code probably isn’t as awesome as you thought it was.”

Full article here

Accessible Data Visualization with Web Standards

A nice article about data visualization using html and css.

Check the full article here

And don’t forget to check the results here

Contact Forms

Sending e-mail from webpages could be handy, but also dangerous as could transform your website as a spammer tool for sending e-mails, check out here how to prevent it:

http://www.combined-minds.net/tutorials/6/PHP_Security:_Sending_an_email

SQL Injection

SQL Injection could allow someone to hack your web application by modifying queries issued against your server, here is a very simple explanation:

http://www.combined-minds.net/tutorials/4/PHP_Security:_SQL_Injection

PHP Site Search Made Easy

“When users want to find information on your website, they first look for a search box. Failing that, they head back to Google - potentially finding a competing site and taking their business elsewhere, or simply becoming frustrated with your service. But implementing effective search doesn’t have to be hard. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to build a basic site-specific web search in just five lines of code, using the Yahoo! APIs.”

Read full article here