Nikola Poša has shared some advice form his own experience on structuring PHP projects and some alternatives to some of the typical structures seen across many packages and applications.

An indispensable part of every programming project is how you structure it, which involves organizing files and sources into directories, naming conventions, and similar. As your application grows, so does the need for structuring it in way that it is easy to manage and maintain.

In most cases, structure of an average PHP-based application is dictated or influenced by the framework that is being used, which is something I'm opposed to. With no intention to be intrusive and without any bias towards specific framework, I'll share with you how I think about organizing my PHP projects.

He starts with a common directory structure seen in a wide range of projects in a framework agnostic way. He mentions the PHP-PDS project that tries to promote this same structure but also provides some alternatives:

• grouping by archetype
• grouping by feature
• splitting out domain and general-purpose code

For each he provides an example of the directory structure and explains the rationale behind it a bit.

In a recent post to his site Mikkel Høgh makes the suggestion that Drupal is still a gated community, mostly as it relates to the process around the "Project Applications" process.

One of the things the Drupal community prides itself on, is how open the community is. And that is generally true, but there's one exception. And that is the Kafkaesque horror-show we subject any newcomers that would like to publish their code on Drupal.org to. It goes by the name of “Project Applications“. I know several people who've hit this wall when trying to contribute code. It's not uncommon to wait several months to get someone to review your code. And when it does happen, people are often rejected for tiny code style issues, like not ending their comments with a period or similar.

He talks about other factors involving reviews and delays that can also cause authors to abandon their work and feel "unwelcome and unappreciated". He mentions the "review bonus" system and how it's used to encourage participation (or "more hoops" as he puts it) from other authors. He notes that this situation mostly relates to those new to the tool and community and suggests that it just doesn't work (and really is unnecessary). He ends the post with a call to "end the madness" and move to a standardized role that would allow developers to publish without pushing people away and making them feel unwelcome.

If you're a PHP developer and are looking for some new tools to "up your game" and improve your development life, check out this new post to /r/php on Reddit.com. Developers of all kinds have shared tools they've found useful in their own development (and maybe you can too).

In other words, what tools make your development life easier and why? Can be anything from database design to FTP clients to workflow planners. Which tools can you just not live without?

Among the many tools on the list are things like:

• PHP CodeSniffer
• PHPUnit
• IDEs like PHPStorm, Netbeans and editors like Sublime Text
• Git
• Composer
• Vagrant/VirtualBox
• Xdebug
• Redis
• Behat

Check out the full post for the complete (and growing) list.

The Nomad PHP virtual user group has announce the latest meeting - this time it's Corey Ballou presenting about realtime applications and WebSockets in July.

We’ll start out with a brief introduction to WebSockets to get everyone up to speed before jumping in to high level scaffolding code of the frontend and backend implemetations (the spec). Once the groundwork has been laid, I’ll introduce you to a both client and server side tools for implementing WebSockets directly in your PHP code. From here, we’ll jump into multiple interactive demos of increasing complexity utilizing the open source Ratchet library. I’ll walk through the source code of the first two intro demos to give you a better sense of how to structure your own WebSockets applications

If time allows, I’ll run through a complex demo where I introduced WebSockets to an existing CRUD todo application. The last demo is not for the faint of heart. By the end of the presentation, you’ll walk away with access to a github repository containing all of the presentation slides and demos ready to run yourself!

You can pick up your tickets for this meeting (happening July 25th) directly from the Nomad PHP site.

On his blog Brandon Savage has a new post reviewing a book from Chris Hartjes, “The Grumpy Programmer’s Guide To Building Testable Applications”.

When most developers think about books on testing, they think about books that highlight things like “test driven development” or “how to build a test for X.” [...] This is not true of Chris Hartjes’ book, “The Grumpy Programmer’s Guide To Building Testable PHP Applications”. When I asked Chris if I could review his book, I expected a step-by-step guide to writing tests. What I got was a step-by-step guide to building an application that COULD be tested. There’s a big difference, and it’s important to understand the distinction.

He points out that the book provides more about good application structure than who to write the tests for it. It provides a guide to creating modular applications that can be easily pulled apart and tested as well as some practical examples. He also includes a few "wise words" quoted from the book including: "if it’s not yours, wrap it up" and "testing is good; testable applications are better."

You can pick up your own copy of the book fron its page on the Leanpub site.

Mike Potter is happy to announce that Adobe is officially a "Gold Sponsor" of the upcoming Zend/PHP Conference & Expo as well as a mention of his involvement at the conference.

I'm happy to announce that Adobe will be sponsoring the Zend / PHP Conference and Expo in San Jose in late October. I have a speaking session there on Rich Internet Applications, and we'll have a booth where we'll be showing off integrating PHP, using open source tools such as AMFPHP or WebORB from the Midnight Coders.

He also reminds potential conference-goers that the Early Bird discount is still in effect (until September 15th - just two more days!) to get the dicsounted price. Head over and register today!

Mike Potter is happy to announce that Adobe is officially a "Gold Sponsor" of the upcoming Zend/PHP Conference & Expo as well as a mention of his involvement at the conference.

I'm happy to announce that Adobe will be sponsoring the Zend / PHP Conference and Expo in San Jose in late October. I have a speaking session there on Rich Internet Applications, and we'll have a booth where we'll be showing off integrating PHP, using open source tools such as AMFPHP or WebORB from the Midnight Coders.

He also reminds potential conference-goers that the Early Bird discount is still in effect (until September 15th - just two more days!) to get the dicsounted price. Head over and register today!

On the Zend Developer Zone, Cal Evans got a chance to site down and talk with Dan Gisolfi, a "Certified IBM Executive IT Architect" and talk about IBM the company, PHP, the Zend Framrwork, and the latest offering from IBM - QEDWiki.

When people mention IBM, the most common mental picture is huge corporate IT. (that and Avery Books starring back at me from my TV demanding to know where the flying cars are) Their reputation for large IT projects borders on legendary. So prevalent is this mental picture that many people lose sight of the fact that IBM has been quietly innovating for the past 20 years.

I was recently blessed with the opportunity to slip below the blue veneer. It was far from the corporate cube farm mentality I expected. What I found was interesting, it was fresh; yes, I'll say it, it was innovative.

They talk mostly about the QEDWiki technology - an interface to web applications (which can use PHP) to be a "mashup enabler" for developers. They cover what it is and how it'll help the web in general, and include a mention of IBM's demo site for the project (for a fictional hardware store).

On the Zend Developer Zone, Cal Evans got a chance to site down and talk with Dan Gisolfi, a "Certified IBM Executive IT Architect" and talk about IBM the company, PHP, the Zend Framrwork, and the latest offering from IBM - QEDWiki.

When people mention IBM, the most common mental picture is huge corporate IT. (that and Avery Books starring back at me from my TV demanding to know where the flying cars are) Their reputation for large IT projects borders on legendary. So prevalent is this mental picture that many people lose sight of the fact that IBM has been quietly innovating for the past 20 years.

I was recently blessed with the opportunity to slip below the blue veneer. It was far from the corporate cube farm mentality I expected. What I found was interesting, it was fresh; yes, I'll say it, it was innovative.

They talk mostly about the QEDWiki technology - an interface to web applications (which can use PHP) to be a "mashup enabler" for developers. They cover what it is and how it'll help the web in general, and include a mention of IBM's demo site for the project (for a fictional hardware store).