Vid Luther has a new post to his blog showing how to switch the storage engine only one (or any number of individual tables) in your MySQL-backed Propel/Symfony project.

I need one MyISAM table in my schema, I'm using Symfony 1.2 and Propel 1.3. As flexible as Symfony and it's YAML files are, Propel currently doesn't allow you to change the storage engine on the fly. [...] So, the next best thing to do now is to have it so that when Symfony runs propel:insert-sql, I can piggyback my own SQL to it. Luckily, this is possible, and it's explained here.

He gives an example of how he's doing it - making a simple alter table script, putting it into a SQL file and pushing it out into the project's setup via a "propel:insert:sql" command.

Derick Rethans has made a quick post about an update he's made to the XDebug function traces to add in information on variable modifications.

After I had a quick look at the feasibility of this feature I spend some time on implementing it for Xdebug's HEAD branch that is going to become Xdebug 2.1. Variable modification tracing can be enabled by setting the php.ini xdebug.collect_assignments setting to 1. Of course this can also be done in either .htaccess or by using ini_set(). This setting requires general execution tracing to be enabled as well and it's only available for human readable trace files (the default format).

He gives examples of how two example scripts would be logged to the trace file - one inside of a basic function and another showing updates to the properties on a class.

On the IBM developerWorks blog the next article in their "What's new in PHP V5.3" series has been posted. In this fifth part looks at some of the changes and issues you might face when making the upgrade (including slightly modified function behavior and deprecated functions).

In this final part of the series, learn about things to consider when upgrading from PHP V5.2. There are changes that break backward-compatibility and features that are deprecated in PHP V5.3 for removal in future versions. Some enhancements to existing features within PHP are also covered.

Changes included in the list are:

• Syntax changes
• Changes to functions and methods
• Extension changes
• Build changes
• Deprecated items

On the CSS-Tricks.com site today there's a quick tutorial on changing up the look and feel of your site based on an external source. More specifically, they give the example of updating the graphics of your site depending on the weather in your area via PHP and CSS.

Using a little magic and trickery (read: PHP and CSS), we can change the appearance of a website automatically based on the weather outside, in real time! In the example site we have created, the header graphic will change to one of four different styles based on Sunny, Rain, Snow, and Cloudy.

Their example makes a request to the Yahoo! weather data for a location and brings it in to PHP where the XML is parsed (via a regular expression) and the current conditions are parsed out. This condition is then passed out into the page as the class type on the header and, based on the CSS already defined, the correct image is pulled in as the background.

On the O'Reilly ONLamp blog Todd Ogasawara points out a few things that Windows users should watch out for with the upcoming PHP 5.3 release.

PHP 5.3.0 is only in its first alpha release. But, if you run PHP in Microsoft Windows, you should talk a look at the release notes for Windows binaries.

Among the changes are things like the drop of support for Windows versions less than Win2000, the changeover for compiling needs (VC6 versus the newer VC9) and that 64-bit binaries will be provided as well as the normal 32-bit (on a trial basis).

On the PHP::Impact blog Federico points out a new feature/update that the Propel team has made to help with performance - a change from Creole to the based PDO layer that PHP includes.

This change has a number of implications, particularly for those who are executing SQL directly. PDO's API is loosely similar to Creole's, so this change shouldn't require any major re-architecture.

New features that come along with this move you might have to upgrade for include the newer DSN format for build/runtime properties, the removal of the mysqli adapter, SPL autoload integration and a few API changes you'll have to look out for. You can find out more information on the Symfony framework's support for these changes on the sfPropelPlugin and DbFinderPlugin pages.

The PHP.net website has a note posted about the restructuring of the manual

A few weeks ago the manual was restructured to improve navigation and make room for per-extension chapters and usage examples along with improved documentation for object oriented extensions.

Changes were made in the function reference and in the predefined variables and context options/parameters sections as well as information on upcoming features like namespaces, late static bindings and Phar (to be included in PHP 5.3). The manual is now covered by the CreativeCommons Attribution license.

On the PHP::Impact blog, there's a new post talking about his conversion from Swift Mailer over to the Zend_Mail component of the Zend Framework.

I've recently switched from Swift Mailer to Zend_Mail and, to be honest, I'm loving it. Finally someone developed a lightweight, powerful and easy to use Mail component!

He includes an example or two showing a basic mailer script, one that uses a fluent interface, one sending an HTML email and two that show how to use a remote SMTP server.

Matthew Turland has said goodbye to Wordpress and hello to Habari - a "next-generation free software blogging platform". He also includes one of the more helpful tips for those thinking on doing the same:

So after eventually getting fed up with WordPress, especially after the WYSIWYG editor disappeared in the 2.3.3 update, I finally decided to bite the bullet and migrate my blog over to Habari. Once I'd been through the process, I thought I'd write a short blog entry about the experience.

The two tips he mentions are about exporting the old content (made simple from the WordPress admin interface) and making Habari support his WordPress URL scheme (so as not to loose links to any content out there). He found this to help on that front.

On the PHP::Impact blog, Federico has written up a bit of a "history of PHP applications" since 1998 that have changed the community (and the online world) by being released.

From managing databases to shopping, writing blogs to sending emails. Ten years of passion, great software architectures, team work and revolutionary ideas. Here are the most influential open-source PHP applications to date.

Among those on the list are things like SquirrelMail (1999), phpBB (2000), Drupal (2001) and WordPress (2003). More lately things like frameworks and content management systems have been popular and are being developed with more structure and better standards than some of their predecessors.