IBM developerWorks has posted this new tutorial, the first part in a two-part series looking at the development of a PHP/Ajax application using Saxjax.

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax), is arguably the most popular new Web technology. In this two-part "Developing PHP the Ajax way" series, you will create a simple photo album as an online Web application, entirely in PHP and the Simple Ajax Toolkit (Sajax). You'll begin by writing a simple photo album using the standard method of PHP development and later apply Sajax to make it an active Web application.

There's no hesitation on their part - they just jump right in and start in with the image pager class to handle the display of a number of images at a time. The files are stored in a directory on the local filesystem (as they should be) and pulling them in is just a matter of reading the directory. They integrate in basic back/forward and the ability to enlarge the images and the basic gallery is complete.

Now, it's time for the fun stuff - they take the processing that the PHP script was doing to grab the files/display them/etc and move it to the backend, replacing it with a simple Ajax call to another PHP file to grab the image information to display. They even finish off this part of the series with a method for implementing metadata for the images, an XML file with a summary of the file's attributes, date taken - anything you want, really.

On the BobCares.com blog today, there's a quick new tutorial on getting libcURL implemented within your installation of PHP.

In this article, we'll see how to install or upgrade libcurl to a new version ( 7.15.3 ) and then integrate it to the PHP running in the server. Following steps were successfully tested on a Plesk 7.5 server running on RHEL-3.

It's basically a two step process (if all goes well) - downloading/compiling/installing the cURL libraries and application, and integrating it with PHP. If you're going to want to use secure connections with your installation, you'll also need to install the current certifying authorities for your setup.

From php|architect's ART article repository today, there's part two in the series following the creation of "rich internet applications" with PHP and that ever-helpful Adobe product line, their Flex products. This time, they look at how the the AMFPHP (flash remoting for PHP) library can make the connection even easier.

They start with links to the downloads for AMFPHP, and mention to "just follow the instructions" to get it set up. They provide a "create database" string to feed into MySQL before getting into the actual code for the application. The functionality grabs the list of users from the database table and stores it where the Flex interface can get to it.

The next step - generating the interface - is a simple one. They provide the code to cut and paste in to display all of the information the previous script had pulled out (in a datagrid).

Finally, they pull it all together, using the AMFPHP library to bridge the gap between the PHP script and the Flex interface, pushing the data into the Flex application.

WeberDev has posted part one of their latest series today - a look at using the patUser utility to authenticate users for your website.

It should, therefore, be possible to come up with a generic library to perform these tasks, one which provides developers with a reusable code base and eliminates the need to reinvent the wheel every time they build the user management component of a Web application. This library should be flexible enough to adapt to different needs, powerful enough to satisfy most requirements, and robust enough to meet the performance and scalability requirements of most of the current generation of Web applications.

Which brings me, rather nicely, to patUser.

They take the time to explain what the patUser package is all about, including where to grab the latest copy from. There's a SQL file that comes with the installation to help you get started and will be what the tutorial is based around. They provide a basic example of adding and authenticating a user, breaking it down into chunks to explain it.

They also include a method to make the patUser system use a plain HTTP authentication instead of integrating into a template - sometimes a simpler, quicker approach for validating users.

Using an accelerator with eZ publish is highly recommended. This article compares two open-source accelerators: APC and eAccelerator (a Turck-MMCache fork). The commercial Zend Platform gets a mention but is not included in the comparism.

Using an accelerator with eZ publish is highly recommended. This article compares two open-source accelerators: APC and eAccelerator (a Turck-MMCache fork). The commercial Zend Platform gets a mention but is not included in the comparism.