So we all know that the internet is full of frameworks. They've been the popular thing for the last 5 or 6 years and it seems to have become the "barrier for entry" or the "passage of rights" that 8 or 9 years ago used to be "hey I just wrote a phpBB clone!". There are plenty around but in this day in age, why would anyone write a new one? As somebody involved in a new PHP framework - Fuel - that has shaken a few opinions up I thought it would be interesting to share my thoughts and views on the situation.

While he agrees that there are plenty of other frameworks out there, maybe too many to choose from, he thinks that there's value in making something that's useful to you and the toolsets you're already used to. One of their goals with Fuel is to "make PHP as fun to use" as possible and things like built-in migrations and scaffolding (along with a command-line tool, Oil) help towards that goal.

A framework is essentially a way to put all of your best practises into a single place so that you can reuse them over and over again. This should make you more efficient and make your time more financially viable to clients. If the framework you use slows you down or does not cater for the way you like to develop then sack it off and do your own thing.

When I was first creating the Database Extension for PHPUnit I realized that there was a very high likelihood that several people would have tests that were already written that they would like to add additional database tests too. To accomplish this I actually wrote the PHPUnit_Extensions_Database_DefaultTester class. In fact, if you were to look at the source of the database test case you will see that all of it's operations are actually forwarded to this class which does all of the work.

He includes his same example from before - the banking system - and shows how the tests can be appended on, adding a getDatabaseTester method that returns an object the rest of the tests can use.

As I stated at the end of the previous article of this series, the GD extension comes packaged with many other useful functions, which indeed deserve a close and detailed look. Thus, in this second tutorial I'll show you how to create different types of image streams from existing graphics, but in this case limiting the process to building GIF, JPG and PNG images.

They work through each of the types (GIF, JPG and PNG) creating an new one from a previous "clouds" image of the same type (a GIF out of a GIF, a JPG from a JPG, etc).

I know the title is harsh but it's so true. At least it is according to nowadays php's implementation of classes and objects, which do not permit to "reopen" and add or redefine new methods to an existing class definition, which is the basis upon Rails (and I presume lots more of applications and frameworks) is built.

The post goes on to talk about they "why" behind the statement - basically that this kind of functionality makes it easier to "Extend. Morph. Adapt. Improve. Refine." your applications. She talks some about other frameworks that have tried to offer the same kinds of functionality Rails does (CakePHP and Symfony) but notes that they still have their limitations (in specific, mentioning CakePHP's AppModel functionality).

This is a follow up to a question posted by Sam in my DB-2-MDB2 post. The question was if you can reuse an exisitng database connection you've already established and not have MDB2 creating a second connection.

He gives two different methods, one for persistent connections and the other for non-persistent ones - including some code.

PHP 5 was released in July 2004. Since its release two years ago, there has been a lot of talk about its adoption rate and whether it will surpass the PHP 4 installed base. No doubt that it will still take some time for PHP 5 to reach PHP 4's existing installed base. The main reason for this are the numerous PHP 4-based applications that were built over the years, and if it's not broken, don't fix it.

He includes a graph showing the adoption of both PHP4 and PHP5 versions, noting a large increase from the release of the 5.1 version of PHP.

Although I knew many were waiting for PHP 5.1 before upgrading, its release in last November seems to have created a huge increase in PHP 5 adoption. In July over 74% of support tickets were by customers using PHP 5 (and remember we do support both versions).