On the PHPDelusions.com site there's a post that compares the functionality of mysqli to PDO and looks at the differences in their overall usability.

By no means I am going to say that mysqli is worse than PDO. Mysqli is an excellent extension, with many specific features. But it's just not intended to be used directly. To make it usable, one have to always wrap it into a helper library, to reduce the enormous amount of code that otherwise have to be written by hand.

[...] But for the average PHP/MySQL user, standard APIs are the only known methods for database interaction. Thus they tend to use both extensions right in the application code, without any intermediate wrapper around. For such a use PDO is an indisputable winner, and I'll show you why.

The post then breaks it down into sections comparing the functionality between the two database access methods:

• Named placeholders
• General inconvenience in binding
• Getting single column value
• Getting multiple rows
• Binding unknown number of parameters
• Compatibility

Of course, all the inconveniences above could be overcame by a good wrapper. This is why if you choose mysqli, you definitely have to use one.

The SitePoint PHP blog continues their series showing how to integrate content from the YouTube API into your application with this new tutorial. It covers the use of categories, searching and suggestions.

In the first part, we introduced the Youtube API and built a small demo to list the most popular videos on Youtube. In this part, we will extend our application to have search functionality, and we’ll also list the available categories on Youtube to let the user narrow down their area of interest.

He starts with with the updates you'll need to make to the routes and controllers for the "categories" functionality and the API call needed to popular the content. He updates the "videos" page to show the category information and integrate the category into the pagination. Next up is the search, allowing the users to find videos based on a search string. The search route/controller/view functionality is added as well. He ends the post talking about a way to extend the demo and advice to keep an eye on quotas and implementing cache.

If you're constantly hungering for more PHP news, there's a new resource (a Digg-like one, too) that wants to give PHPers the latest from the community and give them a way to show which they like the best - abcphp.

abcphp.com is a social news website made for people to discover and share PHP related content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories.

The site lets you vote (with a registered account) on the PHP-related articles they've posted ala Digg.com and breaks them up into categories like "New Releases", "PHP Dev Tools", "Database" and "Security". You can even create groups of people that share the same interests. Check it out and maybe submit a story while you're there.

Over on her latest blog entry, Elizabeth Naramore makes an official announcement about the launch of new site and new community event - the PHP Throwdown.

The PHP Throwdown gauntlet has been thrown down! We’re in the planning stages of the competition, so if you’re interested in being involved as a volunteer, drop me a note. We’re also looking for some interesting ideas for our sample apps so if you have one of those, then visit the site and leave a comment or drop me a note.

The event will be happening at the beginning of next year (January 27th, 2007) and will be a competition to hack together the best application in twenty-four hours in one of the four (yet to be determined activities).

Over on her latest blog entry, Elizabeth Naramore makes an official announcement about the launch of new site and new community event - the PHP Throwdown.

The PHP Throwdown gauntlet has been thrown down! We’re in the planning stages of the competition, so if you’re interested in being involved as a volunteer, drop me a note. We’re also looking for some interesting ideas for our sample apps so if you have one of those, then visit the site and leave a comment or drop me a note.

The event will be happening at the beginning of next year (January 27th, 2007) and will be a competition to hack together the best application in twenty-four hours in one of the four (yet to be determined activities).

DevShed continues their look at the creation of a simple blogging script with part three of the series (part 1, part 2) - the creation of an admin utility to work with the contents of the blog.

The idea is to give the owner of the blog the ability to manage the blog by being able to remove users and articles as required, or to alter the status of users by upgrading them to admin status or banning them. It is also a place where the administrator can start new topics that will then garner their own replies.

They go through the creation of the main admin script (functionality managed with a switch statement, including other external PHP files) and the functions that go in each of those individual files to make things work - managing messages, managing users, and managing categories.

DevShed continues their look at the creation of a simple blogging script with part three of the series (part 1, part 2) - the creation of an admin utility to work with the contents of the blog.

The idea is to give the owner of the blog the ability to manage the blog by being able to remove users and articles as required, or to alter the status of users by upgrading them to admin status or banning them. It is also a place where the administrator can start new topics that will then garner their own replies.

They go through the creation of the main admin script (functionality managed with a switch statement, including other external PHP files) and the functions that go in each of those individual files to make things work - managing messages, managing users, and managing categories.

Davey Shafik has done some "spring cleaning" on his blog and finally implemented a tagging based system for it (using the Serendipity software) away from the category system it uses by default. In this new post he shares the simple solution to how he did it.

He populates the tags for the entries in a simple way - a SQL query that goes through and updates the tag table with the current category for the entry.

Davey Shafik has done some "spring cleaning" on his blog and finally implemented a tagging based system for it (using the Serendipity software) away from the category system it uses by default. In this new post he shares the simple solution to how he did it.

He populates the tags for the entries in a simple way - a SQL query that goes through and updates the tag table with the current category for the entry.