This is a PHP_CodeSniffer sniff to check against the PHP Standard Resolutions: PSR-0, PSR-1 and PSR-2. Those standards were approved by the PHP Framework Interoperability Group. You can read more about the PHP FIG and the PSR's on this excellent article by Paul Jones.

The github repository also provides an overview of the standards themselves and how to get these sniffs installed.

I am yet to write the last article of the Yii Session series. I just decided to write something about the scenarios in the Validation feature of Yii framework. Scenarios are a very useful tool for adding different validations rules for different cases on the same model. In a real life situation, you would require one validation rule for user registration but the same rule might not be applicable to the User login. Scenarios help you define validation rules for different situations within same model.

He shows you how to set up a "rules()" method in your model and a few validation configurations inside it - ensuring the password and email are set, checking the length of the password, etc. Then, by calling the "validate()" method on the model, you can easily apply these rules and check the pass/fail status.

Earlier today, more for my own interest, I asked the question on Twitter "What programming rules should you ALWAYS follow, regardless of the scenario you're working in?" In other words, are there programming rules that you ALWAYS should follow. It doesn't matter if it's a script to copy a bunch of files for a one time migration or if you're building the next Facebook (DON'T try to build the next Facebook. You will fail miserably. Build something else). In other words, what was the purist of programming rules.

Responses he received ranged from the simple to slightly more complex including:

• Always comment your code
• Test your code
• Use source control
• "Think. Think again. Then write code"
• Use a good debugger to help track down problems
• Make effective use of logging/output

He goes through the thirteen rules to help improve your website's performance including:

• Make fewer HTTP requests
• Gzip components
• Make JS and CSS external
• Remove duplicate scripts
• Configure ETags

For more information about the YSlow extension (available for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and mobile devices), check out the project's page on Yahoo's Developer section (including ten more rules it checks).

The content management system you choose can really make a huge difference in how much time you (or your clients) spend keeping a site updated and maintained. There's a huge variety out there-some estimates put the number at around 1700 different options. Some are great...some, not so much.

Among the suggestions are things like:

• A CMS needs to work intuitively.
• The backend needs to be logical and well-organized.
• The right CMS shouldn't have a ton of extra functionality you'll never use.
• The right CMS should be easy for non-geeks to use.
• The pages it creates should be fast-loading and have simple code.

They also mention a few options available that might be a good fit for you and your organization: WordPress, SilverStripe, Joomla! and a few more.

Using the new behavior is much like using the script as it was before. You can name the validation properties to include the action name and it'll automatically set that validation set as the default.

His behavior lets you define validation rules, both included in a default set and as callbacks. He includes an example of its use and the full code (all thirty lines of it) for the behavior itself.

It has been a lot harder than I thought to come up with a fair programming challenge that would not take too long or require lots of knowledge in any particular framework or other associated technology. It could have been to make use of a whole host of currently available API's and to make a useful mash-up but these again require other external knowledge beyond just PHP. I finally settled on a logic problem that is hopefully not too hard to solve but will test a range of PHP skills.

The problem he's worked up involves changing a word, one letter at a time, into another word using user-defined lists and choice of word. There's several requirements you'll need to follow an d rules for things like the submission process and what server setup can be used.

So, what's the motivation? First prize is a copy of Zend Studio Professional and a year of support, second prize is a Zend t-shirt, and third is a Zend Pen. For full information on participating and on all of the rules you'll need to follow, check out Nick's full post.

Seems like the question might have confused some others because the votes were notably lower than in some previous weeks. There was a tie for first place, though - both coming in with 6.8% of the votes were the "You can use PHP4 or PHP 5, MySQL or SQLite, Ajax, HTML, XHTML, and Javascript but no Flash" and "All" options. Dead last with no votes was the "All applications must be licensed with a CC compatible license" option.

They've also posted a new poll for this week asking which of the options you think still ring true when it comes to PHP:

• PHP administrators like to compile PHP in Summer
• Register global is not dead
• memory_limit is not used
• PHP applications handle 100 Mb files

The contest runs until November 30th, and the top 5 submitters will all win upgraded WebThumb accounts. The top submitter will also win a copy of my book, Understanding AJAX.

Since previously, all that was required was a comment on this blog entry, people who've posted there need to listen up - an official submission needs to be made. Check out this page for the complete rules and all of the information you need to include in the submission email.

Most PHP pager classes can work just fine with GET parameters, correctly forwarding them through the pages. Few of them let you control the navigation links they create, though. This can be particularly annoying when you have some nice urls (thanks to some mod_rewrite rules o to your hand-crafted front controller) and the pager class can't respect them, showing the real, ugly links to the world.

If the above scenario is not new to you, then you should probably have a look at PEAR::Pager. It's a fully customizable package that should satisfy all your needs, including your preferred link format.

In his examples, he provides the mod_rewrite rules to use, a sample PHP script that would normally use the $_GET values (in an ugly URL) to paginate the results. He also compensates for if the page number is actually a part of the path and not just at the end of the file name.