In this new post to DZone.com Andy Hawthorne explains how to install MongoDB on OSX and get a local PHP working with it.

MongoDB is a document oriented, NoSQL database. It is gathering momentum and popularity amongst developers because it is flexible, and scalable at the same time. In this article I will describe how I got it set up and working on my Mac running OS X 10.8.2 and MAMP with PHP 5.2.17, and PHP 5.3.6.

They go a bit simpler route than trying to compile it yourself by using the binaries direct from the source. Instructions are included to test the installation, insert a record and how to install the MongoDB PHP driver for a MAMP installation. It's a shared object, though, so it's not specific to MAMP and could be installed even on the local OSX PHP functionality.

As is mentioned on the PHP.net website today, the latest release in the PHP 5.3.x series has been posted for download - PHP 5.3.1.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.1. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 100 bug fixes, some of which are security related. All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

Security updates in this release include a new max_file_uploads directive for the php.ini settings, the addition of some sanity checks on exif processing, correction of a safe_mode and open_basedir bypass and more. Check out the changelog for more information on what was updated and the release announcement for a full update.

You can download the source here and grab the Windows binaries here.

The main PHP.net site has a post with some unfortunate news about the Windows PECL repository:

Due to unfortunate circumstances Windows binaries for PECL extensions will no longer be available on http://pecl4win.php.net. Work is being done to incorporate Windows binaries for PECL extensions into pecl.php.net and will hopefully be ready early 2009.

If you are interested in helping out on the project, join up on PHP Windows Development mailing list.

On the ThinkPHP blog today, there's a new post from Stephanie Ehrling about simulating an LDAP connection and data request to PHP with LDIF.

An LDIF file is a simple text file that can contain those LDAP information, which can be separated into two groups. On the one hand, it can hold exported LDAP data in a text format. The other purpose of LDIF is to use it for importing data into an LDAP based system. So it can contain data to be imported or just commands that shall be processed. This is an important fact, because that opens the door to an interesting workaround.

This workaround allows you to import large amounts of data quickly and easy by dumping it into the server via a simple PHP script. The code is included in the post, but you'll need to have the binaries to get the LDIF and LDAP functionality working together.

Ilia Alshanetsky has posted a quick note about building PHP with cURL/HTTP support combined with adding a MySQL extension. Conflicts can happen with some of the libraries, and he knows how to solve it.

The MySQL binaries found on mysql.com are built against yaSSL as opposed to the more common openssl against which libcurl (usede by cURL and HTTP extensions) is linked. The conflict between the two libraries causes curl initialization of the SSL layer to fail preventing startup of the PHP extensions.

The fix? To either use the older mysqlclient libraries or manually compile MySQL yourself against the OpenSSL libraries.

Ilia Alshanetsky has posted a quick note about building PHP with cURL/HTTP support combined with adding a MySQL extension. Conflicts can happen with some of the libraries, and he knows how to solve it.

The MySQL binaries found on mysql.com are built against yaSSL as opposed to the more common openssl against which libcurl (usede by cURL and HTTP extensions) is linked. The conflict between the two libraries causes curl initialization of the SSL layer to fail preventing startup of the PHP extensions.

The fix? To either use the older mysqlclient libraries or manually compile MySQL yourself against the OpenSSL libraries.

In this quick note from DynamicWebPages today, there's information about the posting of the latest release candidate for the PHP 5.1.3 series by Ilia - PHP 5.1.3RC2.

This is the last release candidate before the final version is (planned to be) released this coming Thursday, April 6th. Any and all help is appreciated in testing this release, so take a quick trip to Ilia's page to grab the source, and for those on Windows, the latest binaries.

In this quick note from DynamicWebPages today, there's information about the posting of the latest release candidate for the PHP 5.1.3 series by Ilia - PHP 5.1.3RC2.

This is the last release candidate before the final version is (planned to be) released this coming Thursday, April 6th. Any and all help is appreciated in testing this release, so take a quick trip to Ilia's page to grab the source, and for those on Windows, the latest binaries.