Engrowe.com has this quick tutorial posted about converting one popular data transfer style (RSS) into another (JSON) using the power of PHP.

Here are a quick set of directions to build your own RSS to JSON proxy using only PHP. You need to download and install two libraries, MagpieRSS for RSS and JSON-PHP for JSON. With these two libraries you can easily create a simple proxy to suit your needs.

The script grabs the contents of the RSS feed and uses the built-in functionality of the MagpieRSS library to re-encode the data into a JSON format. Then, it spits out the result to the browser for consumption yet again...

From Cal Evans over on the Zend Developer Zone today comes two links for beginner guides the "wished he'd had when he was starting PHP".

Everybody starts somewhere. I started (officially) with my Commodore 64. I wrote my first commercial program on it and it started a life-long obsession with programming. Being a self-taught programmer, there are gaps in my education. The 2 biggest areas I have trouble with are Recursion and Graphics. Thank (generic deity reference) for the Web.

While surfing around today, I stumbled upon 2 tutorials covering those two areas. They are well written, informative and free so I thought I'd share them with you on the off-chance you struggle with them as well.

The two he shares are this guide to recusion from DevShed and a guide from Builder.com on the creation of graphics on the fly.

The SuSE linux group has released new packages, according to this post on the PHP Magazine site, to deal with the XSS and information leak issues found recently in PHP4 and PHP5.

A new update fixes security issues in the scripting languages PHP4 and PHP5 including a vulnerability in copy() and tempnam() functions that could bypass open_basedir restrictions, a cross-site-scripting (XSS) bug in phpinfo(), a vulnerability in mb_send_mail() that lacked safe_mode checks, and a bug in html_entity_decode() that could expose memory content. Fixed packages are available from ftp.suse.com.

It is strongly suggested that you upgrade your installation to prevent any issues/problems from arrising.

DevShed has posted part two of their series dealing with recusion in PHP, this time with a focus on its use in a more object-oriented environment.

Welcome to the second tutorial of the series "Recursion in PHP." Comprised of three parts, this series introduces the fundamentals of recursion in PHP, including the definition and use of recursive functions in procedural PHP scripts, as well as the creation of recursive methods in object-oriented Web applications.

Now, in this second part of the series, I'll explore some advanced uses of recursion in PHP, particularly in the terrain of object-oriented programming. I will develop a couple of object-based applications which use recursive methods for accomplishing their tasks. By the end of this tutorial, you should have a pretty solid grounding in how to define recursive methods within your own PHP classes.

They start with a simple example of OOP with recursion, handling some "HTML widgets" to be output to a page (div, h1, p, and ul tags). With this library created and in place, they work up a "generator" class to actually build the page dynamically. Finally, they bring it all together with the creation of a simple template processor for simple page creation.

Sometime ago I created few datatypes which are common in Poland. Today I have clean up code a little and packed them as collection of 3 independent extensions. I think Polish eZ publish users will find them useful. You can find installation instructions and download package from ez.no contribution section.

My last post had a few people asking when I had joined the Mozilla Foundation or if I had left eZ systems.

I joined the Mozilla Foundation last year, at the time when the Mozilla Foundation split into two entities .

My work at the Mozilla Foundation hasn't meant that I am any less committed to eZ systems - in fact, about four or five months after joining the Mozilla Foundation, eZ systems promoted me to a more senior role.

My committment to eZ has meant that I haven't been able to give the Foundation the love and attention it deserves. However, I have started getting better at being able to juggle my responsibilities (and having a great eZ team in Vancouver to work with doesn't hurt!!!)

Typically, I have a lot on the go at any given time - if you are curious, just check out http://zak.greant.com/affiliations to see what I am up to.

My last post had a few people asking when I had joined the Mozilla Foundation or if I had left eZ systems.

I joined the Mozilla Foundation last year, at the time when the Mozilla Foundation split into two entities .

My work at the Mozilla Foundation hasn't meant that I am any less committed to eZ systems - in fact, about four or five months after joining the Mozilla Foundation, eZ systems promoted me to a more senior role.

My committment to eZ has meant that I haven't been able to give the Foundation the love and attention it deserves. However, I have started getting better at being able to juggle my responsibilities (and having a great eZ team in Vancouver to work with doesn't hurt!!!)

Typically, I have a lot on the go at any given time - if you are curious, just check out http://zak.greant.com/affiliations to see what I am up to.

WeberDev.com has this new article today, an introduction to some PHP5 functionality that doesn't seem to get used so much - the SimpleXML functions. The tutorial provides an introduction to the topic, and includes several code examples to get you started.

While PHP has included support for the two standard methods of parsing (read: making sense of) XML - SAX and DOM - since version 4.0, the complexity and inherent geekiness of these methods often turned off all but the most dedicated XML developers. All that has changed, however, with PHP 5.0, which introduces a brand-spanking-new XML extension named SimpleXML that takes all (and I do mean all) the pain out of processing XML documents. Keep reading, and find out how. The Bad Old Days

They describe what it is, how it works, and what kind of situations it's best suited for before getting into the code. They show you how to reference values as objects, grab their attributes, and how to use the XPath function to pick out just the data you need.

A week ago today I moved from Siegburg, Germany to Skien, Norway. I took a plane from Cologne/Bonn Airport to Oslo Gardermoen and from there a train to Skien. The final leg of this trip, from Larvik to Skien, was by bus.



I am currently living in an appartment provided by eZ systems AS, my employer. The appartment is conveniently located right next to where Derick lives (so I can use his WLAN access) and about a five minutes walk away from the office.



The first week I spent with literature review and looking at various Workflow Management systems for my diploma thesis. I will continue this work next week and then start working on the specification of the Workflow Management component that I will be developing for eZ publish 4 as part of my diploma thesis.

A week ago today I moved from Siegburg, Germany to Skien, Norway. I took a plane from Cologne/Bonn Airport to Oslo Gardermoen and from there a train to Skien. The final leg of this trip, from Larvik to Skien, was by bus.



I am currently living in an appartment provided by eZ systems AS, my employer. The appartment is conveniently located right next to where Derick lives (so I can use his WLAN access) and about a five minutes walk away from the office.



The first week I spent with literature review and looking at various Workflow Management systems for my diploma thesis. I will continue this work next week and then start working on the specification of the Workflow Management component that I will be developing for eZ publish 4 as part of my diploma thesis.