Tobias Schlitt has picked by up his "comfortable PHP editing in VIM" series today with this lengthy post with loads of helpful VIM tips to share with PHP developers everywhere.

More than a half year after my last "Comfortable PHP editing with VIM" post, I take up this series again, although I decided to let it die in January. Sadly I did not find any time by now, to extend PDV (the PHP Documentor for VIM plugin) further than it's version 1.0.1, which is available through vim.org and on my SVN. Anyway, I collected a lot of (at least for me) helpful VIM tips, which I'd like to share here

The post contains tons of tips on subjects such as:

• Find matching brace
• Indenting and unindeting
• Emergency help
• Macros

DevShed has a new tutorial posted today with a look at one of the more common tasks performed with PHP (second to generating web pages, of course) - working with files. It can be a little tricky for a budding PHP programmer, but they've got the info you need to get started.

Reading and writing to files can be useful if you do not require the storing of important data, such as a web counter. I must warn you though, that this method of storage should not be used to store passwords and other critical information, as it is not safe. Here we will discuss how to handle files and directories in PHP, specifically, how to create, read and write them.

They start off with a look at file permissions on both Unix and Windows systems ot give you an idea of what problems they could cause. Then, it's on to the actual files themselves - for this part, though, they only look at reading them in and working with their contents.

From the WaxJelly blog today, there's this new post demonstrating how to create a simple MySQL "abstraction layer" to help your PHP script interact with your database.

So you might notice "abstraction layer" in quotes, well, simply put, it's the big term for using a middle-man with MySQL data. Any form of data actually for that matter. It just makes your life easier. After using MySQL with PHP the procedural way I decided to try it the PHP object oriented way. So here it goes.

Mostly, they just provide the code for the layer, not getting too much into explaining what each function does. That's enough, thought, if you're experienced with using MySQL in PHP. There's also some sample usage code to help you get started.

The Packt Open Source Content Management System Award is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) that has been selected by a panel of judges and visitors.

On php|architect's A/R/T article repository today, there's a new guide written by Sebastian Bergmann - an introduction to PHPUnit.

In the last decade, PHP has developed from a niche language for adding dynamic functionality to small websites to a powerful tool making strong inroads into large-scale, business-critical Web systems. Financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies use PHP, for instance, to develop and maintain solutions for Basel II Credit Rating. Critical business logic like this needs to work correctly. But how do you ensure that it does? You test it, of course.

The tutorial takes a look at how to get started writing tests for your code and how to run those tests against your code to find problems. Sebastian also includes a few of the common misconceptions about unit testing, specifically using PHPUnit to test their apps.

On PHPit.net today, there's a new tutorial that focuses on one of the hot topics floating around the PHP community these days - the Model/View/Controller design pattern. It shows you how to create your own complete system in a PHP5 environment.

In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to build a simple Model-View-Controller system, which is the most common design pattern for big web applications. I'll take you through all the steps necessary to start from scratch to a full-blown MVC system.

The tutorial starts with creating the "one point of entry" (to the main controller) before setting up the startup tasks and a Registry class to help pass data around between objects. They include plenty of code examples on how to use it.

Next up is the creation of the model, a hook into the backend database (in this case, a MySQL one). The Router class is created to handle getting things to the right places, and an example controller is constructed to handle those requests.

Finally, the last step in the puzzle - the view, including some security measures and the link to download the complete code for the entire MVC system they've created.

In this new blog entry, Jared White notes that he's "back in the running" and working on his projects - Willowgarden and xajax.

First on the agenda: getting Willowgarden Developer Preview 2 out the door! The first step in that direction is adding the code to a Subversion repository, and to that end I've put Willowgarden up as a project at Sourceforge.net.

In other news, xajax 0.5 is still on the table, and I'm hoping we can get a beta release out by late September. Keep your fingers crossed! Much more news on that to come in the days ahead.

He notes that the codebase for DP2 of Willowgarden is just about 95% complete, but that it will still take a bit to finish and build a release he feels good about.

Nefarious Designs has posted part two of their look at the object-oriented functionality, this time, there's a focus on the relationships objects and their friends have.

Following on from my posts "Object-Oriented Concepts" and "Object-Oriented Javascript", I'm going to take a look at OOP in PHP.

In "Part 1: Definition" we took a look at defining objects and classes in PHP. In part 2 I'm going to look at the most important part of any object-oriented system - the relationships.

They look at inheritance, association, aggregation, and references. Code examples are sprinkled liberally to help illustrate the points.

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John Mertic has posted another update concerning the Windows PHP installer and some updates that have been made.

It's been awhile, but I've updated the installer with the latest RC of PHP 5.2, along with other fixes.

The other items on the list include:

• correcting issues with the Aapche config
• made strings localizable
• framework put to gether to allow for nightly snapshots

You can download the installer here