Kevin Waterson has posted an extensive tutorial to his site today giving a great look at regular expressions in PHP (and just regular expressions in general).

At its most basic level, a regex can be considered a method of pattern matching or matching patterns within a string. In PHP the most oft used is PCRE or "Perl Compatible Regular Expressions". Here we will try to decypher the meaningless hieroglyphics and set you on your way to a powerful tool for use in your applications. Do not try to understand all this in a single sitting. Instead, take in a little and come back as you grasp various concepts.

He starts with simple string matching, showing how to get values from the middle, end and beginning of it then moves on to the next more powerful step - using meta characters. He outlines these as well as sequences and modifiers. There's plenty of examples here so there's almost no chance of getting lost.

It's a great tutorial that I'd recommend to anyone who things regular expressions are "just too hard" or it looking to figure out their power.

In a new blog post today Jonathan Snook shows how to create a contact form for your CakePHP application (version 1.2).

Most contact forms take a name and feedback from a user and mail it off to the administrator but don't store any information in the database. This tutorial will show how to use CakePHP's models, even when no table is being used.

He shows how to define the model class, set up the mapping of columns to named elements and the code to handle the submit. It just sends a basic email with the contents of the form with a few validation rules to ensure it's not abused. Simple stuff...

Stefan Mischook has posted a new introductory video for those just starting out with SQL in their PHP scripts - a look at using a (MySQL) database.

I've finally released my first video on using SQL statements in PHP pages. This is the next step after connecting to a MySQL database. I hope you find the videos useful.

The video looks at the "big four" - insert, update, delete and select, but focuses on the select statements and how to use them with function like mysql_fetch_assoc and mysql_fetch_array to get the results out of your database.

Fred Wu recently posted some of his thoughts on using the Zend Framework as a developer in other frameworks looking to expand his knowledge.

When Zend Framework was first announced, the developers have promised us one thing: extreme simplicity. I was 'extremely' excited, but it turned out that it wasn't the case. Ironically, Zend Framework is the most difficult one I have come crossed so far. I mean, as complicated as Symfony is, it has brilliant documentation and an active community to back it up.

He also comments on the level of documentation the framework has ("the documentation is often outdated, sometimes inaccurate"), the Zend_Search_Lucene component, some of what he thinks are missing components that should be in a 1.5 release, and a last jab at the naming conventions.

On PHPFreaks.com there's a new tutorial providing a beginner's guide to debugging in PHP (with the built in functionality PHP has, not external software).

Everyday the forums see probably hundreds of topics posted where the problem is a fairly simple error. [...] As a beginner, it can be difficult to find and solve these errors. By tackling each of these in turn, I hope to teach you some methods of finding and solving them.

They look at the different sorts of errors - syntax errors, fatal errors, warnings, notices - as well as some of the ones a bit harder to track down like database problems and logical errors.

In a recent post to the Ask About PHP blog, there's a quick "first look" at the CakePHP framework from a beginner's perspective.

Finally, I found some time to take CakePHP for a spin. I've heard some really good things about it, and I've been trying to get some time to try it out. I installed the framework and went through the tutorial on building a simple blog application. I have to say I'm quite impressed.

The post briefly introduces the Model-View-Controller method the framework follows and shows some of the features/benefits it brings with it - the low entry level, its speed, and whether or not it makes for a good "first framework" for other developers.

Hasin Hayder has blogged about some of his "first steps" with a relatively new PHP framework on the scene - Orchid.

Orchid is a small framework with bare necessities to kick start developing killer php web applications. this framework is not flooded with unnecessary features and libraries. it only contains the essential helpers and libraries to boost up your development, not slowing it down. orchid features a very short learning curve, which will keep you trouble free.

He documents the step he followed - downloading the latest release (from the svn repository), making a first controller and adding a view to make his first "hello world" application.

On DevShed today there's a new tutorial showing how to build file upload functionality into your scripts.

If you're a PHP developer who has built a certain number of web applications, then it's quite probable that you've already worked with HTTP file uploads. [...] First I'm going to teach you how to handle file uploads using a procedural approach, and then, with the topic well underway, by way of the object-oriented paradigm.

The introduce the beginners out there to the $_FILES array (a superglobal) that contains the details about the file(s) that have been submitted. Next comes the construction of a simple form and how to handle the submission on the PHP side.

Stefan Mischook has posted part two of his video series looking at the use of sessions in PHP applications today:

This is the part 2 of 3 of my videos that introduces the beginner to PHP sessions. In this video, I get into practical examples where we see basic PHP sessions in action.

You can find the video here as well as part one if you need to catch up.

The KillerPHP.com site has posted about the release of yet another introductory video to using PHP - this time with a focus on using sessions.

PHP sessions are one of the most important mechanisms in PHP because they solve a fundamental issue in web application development: keeping state on a user. [...] This is video 1 of 2 on sessions.

You'll find the video here. If you're looking for some of the other great PHP videos the site Stefan has created, check out the videos section of the site.