Jim Plush has posted part one of a series of tutorials covering the use of sockets in PHP:

Anyway, here is a link to Part I on my socket programming tutorial. This page is really aimed at getting you up to speed on what socket programming is all about and what all the commands refer to and what the parameters they take are geared to do. I'm planning on adding a section a week so we'll see how that goes.

In this first part he looks at:

• the basic socket functions
• TCP and UDP protocols
• the creation of a socket server in PHP

In the end, there's a code listing of a very simple socket server, one he illustrates the use of through a simple telnet to the localhost.

Niall Kennedy is attending this year's OSCON as well, and brings us this new blog post covering another of Rasmus Lerdorf's talks covering the scaling web applications in PHP.

Rasmus Lerdorf led OSCON attendees through a series of optimizations for modern web applications using PHP at O'Reilly's Open Source conference today. Most programmers use default installations and configurations for their web applications and never really dig deep within their stack or their own code to optimize page load and latency. The full slides from Rasmus's talk are available online and I recorded audio of the entire session from the front row.

Niall also talks more about rich web applications, interaction models, and the use of http_load, the Valgrind emulation tool, prepared statements, the use of the APC, and the improved XML support included in PHP5.

In this new post Tiffany Brown shares a "PHP quickie" with her readers - using is_numeric versus ctype_digit.

The difference is subtle, but important one. Which function you use depends on the condition for which you're testing.

is_numeric tests whether the string in question is a number. ctype_digit(), on the other hand, tests whether the string in question contains all numeric characters.

To help alleviate the confusion, she gives some code that does var_dumps of both methods, clearly showing the difference.

In his latest blog entry today, Alan Knowles talks about the HTML_FlexyFramework, DataObjects and HTML_Template_Flexy libraries with a crash course on how to get started with them.

Since most of the applications I write, and get teams to write for me, use the FlexyFramework, I though some simple instructions might be usefull.

FlexyFramework, is an extremely simple pair of classes that help load action classes, do internal redirection, and load up basic configuration settings. Basically taking all the hard work out of setting up a reasonably secure web application.

His sample project, FlexyCash, will help serve as a framework for the tutorial. You'll have to have somewhat of a familiarity with the installation and setup of the libraries, but after that, all of the code/explainations/instruction is provided. In the end, the script connects to a database and grabs a list of accounts and displays them as an unordered list.

Sandro Groganz has two new posts related to eZ systems today, one detailing their new strategy in the PHP market and the other, the set of slides from the eZ publish Conference this year.

In their new strategy staatement, eZ systems states why they develop the software they do, how it all relates to the eZ publish CMS, and a mention of their plans to built on top of the eZ platfom.

They look at the "mature market" that is the realm of PHP, noting it's a perfect time for them to make this move. They also talk about their development being done in "the PHP way", popular in the community. Their new focus is one driven by the community, too, adapting itself to the current climate of the market. They're also seeking to raise up the standard of their development, at the same time, raising the bar for other PHP platforms out there.

The second post just notes that the slides from the eZ publish Conference 2006 are now online. They primarily discuss the recent developments with the eZ platform and eZ application server.

This week's newsletter includes information about new eZ publish bug fix releases, news about articles and an update on the current bug status.

In another report from this year's O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Kevin Yank has covered Rasmus Lerdorf's talk - "Getting Rich with PHP 5" - a look at building rich web applications in PHP5.

PHP's creator, Rasmus Lerdorf, gave a surprising talk on building PHP rich web applications using PHP5-suprising, because fully half the talk focused on low-level PHP optimization techniques. The slides are available online.

Kevin gives an overview of the talk, mentioning some of Rasmus' examples, the bottlenecks he defined, and the time spent on the new functionality in the PHP 5 series.

If you're as big of a fan of the DokuWiki wiki software as Norbert Mocsnik, you'll be very happy to check out his latest post on his blog about setting up the simple form of authentication in the application.

In my opinion DokuWiki is the best wiki software out there (see features). In addition to all those cool features like namespaces, it stores pages in plaintext files, thus no database backend is required. Setting it up is pretty easy also. I promised to investigate the steps needed to set up DokuWiki with the simplest authentication scheme for a friend and I thought others might benefit from it too, so here it is.

He starts from, well, the beginning - grabbing the latest DokuWiki download, copying it over and running through the installation and configuration. Then it's on to the web inferface, changing the Access Controls to allow for more of a fine tuning on who can do what.

Today eZ systems published an article entitled Platform and Solutions Strategy by Aleksander Farstad, CEO eZ systems.

This article sheds a light on the big picture why eZ systems develops the eZ platform and how this relates to the eZ publish CMS. It also talks about eZ systems planning to offer various other software solutions on top of the eZ platform.

In this blog entry, I won't talk about the article itself because it speaks for itself. Instead, I will have a look at how does eZ systems' strategy relate to the PHP market?

Mature market

First of all, eZ systems is the first company in the PHP application development domain that I know of, which actually announces such a long-term strategy. I am not talking about purely technical sofware roadmaps, I am talking about the combination of business and software development. This is a novelty in the PHP market.

This shows that the PHP market has matured substantially, that companies like eZ systems have grown big enough in terms of resources and experience so that they can envisage a long-term strategy of that scope. It also means that there is demand in the market for long-term planning, mature enterprise-grade software and related services.

The PHP-way

When looking at the eZ platform, the PHP platform by eZ systems, one could argue that PHP simply follows Java and that this is what J2EE offers. Nevertheless, there is a good reason why eZ systems does not simply port J2EE to PHP or any other software platform: there is something like the PHP-way of doing things. eZ systems has a market track-record of 6 years in PHP development, they know about the best practices that have emerged by using PHP.

PHP developers think in a different way compared to Java developers. There's a subtle difference in approaching problems, that can make a big difference when you look at the actual solution. What the new eZ systems strategy tells us is: PHP has reached a level where it has proven that it can serve as a serious alternative for solving highly complex software problems.

Market-driven approach

About 2 years ago, International PHP Magazine published an article of mine about "PHP5EE" where I wrote, that it needs more companies who further develop the market for generic PHP platforms. We are at this point today.

Note that PHPLIB and PEAR are both community projects. Yes, they also had a commercial background, because in most cases they evolved from customer projects, but there was no business model behind those projects, rather a community model. With eZ components, the PHP components library by eZ systems, the first serious project in that area driven by one company has been introduced.

This evolution is in sync with the typical evolution of an Open Source market that starts off with community-driven projects being accompanied by more and more similar company-driven projects.

For example, PEAR provides object-oriented PHP libraries and has established a community. It has actually proven that there is a need for something like that in the PHP world and that it can be done with PHP. A growing market for OO PHP libraries evolved and there came up the need for a party doing constant maintenance, guaranteed support and related services. This is where eZ components backed up by eZ systems came in.

Raising the standard

eZ platform will be more then just eZ components, it will also include the eZ application server and various functionality plugins. With eZ platform, eZ systems will raise the standard for what a PHP platform is supposed to be. Companies that still neglect PHP might then consider its usage. Due to the fact that eZ platform will be Open Source, there is a big chance that the whole PHP market will profit from that.