New on DevShed today is the latest article in their "magic functions" series. This time they focus on the "clone" method to create exact copies of current objects.

In this fifth part of a seven-part tutorial on magic functions, we'll briefly review the sleep and wakeup functions, and then tackle the clone function. [...] So, with that goal in mind, in this fifth part of the series I'm going to take a closer look at the "__clone()" method, which as its name suggests, is called behind the scenes when using the "clone" PHP keyword.

Their example code adds on to the previous examples using "__get" and "__set" and adds in a method to catch the cloning of an object. It only outputs a string ("Cloning user object") when its called, but it lets you get the idea.

On the SitePoint Web Tech blog Raena Jackson-Armitage has a recent post on a few tools that you can use to mimic some of the functionality Twitter offers (three of them) with applications that already exist.

If you're anything like me, you've already wondered how easy it would be to make your own'"perhaps you'd like to set up a microblog for you and your colleagues to share links and have discussions. [...] Today we'll look at three new solutions that are easy to set up, have reasonably modest hosting requirements, and even include some features that blow Twitter out of the water.

They suggest three tools:

• the P2 plugin for WordPress
• the Motion plugin for Movable Type
• Laconica (the platform that Identica runs on, a full Twitter clone with other added features)

Each of these comes with a description of installation, features offered and use.

Raphael Stolt has another post dealing with the Phing (PHP-based) build tool. This time he talks about making ad hoc tasks inside of your build scripts.

Sometimes there are build scenarios where you'll badly need a functionality, like adding a MD5 checksum file to a given project, that isn't provided neither by the available Phing core nor the optional tasks. [...] The following post will try to outline how to define and use these inline tasks, by sketching an ad hoc task that enables the build orchestra to clone Git repositories from GitHub during a hypothetical workbench setup.

He creates an example task - running a "clone" command via github - complete with the code for both sides of the feature; the PHP code to create the task and how to use it in your build file.

On the PHP::Impact blog today Federico points out a Django templating language clone for PHP - Calypso.

Calypso is a full clone of the Django Template Language that helps developers separates the presentational and logic concerns of the application. It offers template inheritance, pluggable tags and filters, and can be easily integrated into the Zend Framework

The most powerful part of the Calypso system is the template inheritance. It allows you to build up a skeleton of templates that can be used for the entire site with blocks and areas that any other part of the application can easily override.

According to the PHP::Impact blog, the PHP-based replacement for Twitter has finally arrived - identi.ca.

Identi.ca is a microblogging service. Users post short (140 character) notices which are broadcast to their friends and fans using the Web, RSS, or instant messages. It runs on the Free Software Laconica tool.

If you'd like to give it a shot you can register for an account of your own and start posting. It also supports OpenID authentication.

Hasin Hayder has posted part two of his series on making a FriendFeed clone in PHP (here's part one).

Following the first installment in this series, here is the second part. In this part I will focus mainly on Bookmarking and News services supported by FriendFeed .

He points out some of the major bookmarking sites and the URLs for their interfaces for their users (like del.icio.us, furl, stumbleupon and news services like digg and reddit).

Ever through about starting up your own custom version of a Digg-sort of site? Well, check out this new tutorial from the Developer Tutorials blog showing how to start it in "five minutes flat".

So, you want to start your own Digg or Reddit? Look no further. With PHP and MySQL, you can create your own Digg site in just five minutes. All you need is a PHP web server and MySQL database server; follow these instructions and you'll be up and running in time.

They use the Pligg software to do all of the hard work and describe its installation, configuration and use - simple and easy. You can find out more about Pligg on its website.

DevShed continues their series about working with XML in PHP's DOM extension with this new tutorial posted today showing how to get at attributes for tags and cloning nodes from others.

You've probably realized that the DOM XML library can be pretty useful when working with web documents. However, this extension includes some other methods, which can be utilized to parse attributes of a given XML string, as well as to clone nodes.

They show how to use the getAttributes method, hasAttribue method and cloneNode method to work with their XML examples.

Taking full advantage of the upcoming features in the PHP 5.3.x series (and in PHP6 for that matter), Joshua Thompson has come up with a way to accomplish some prototype-based programming in a PHP application:

With the implementation of the get_called_class() function in PHP, prototype based programming in PHP is possible. The new function is in both PHP5.3 and PHP6 snapshots. So, I went back to the drawing board and came up with a fully capable class. The $this keyword is usable, as well as being able to use the self, parent, and static (new with the late static binding patch) keywords.

Prototype-based programming is (basically) a method where classes aren't prebuilt. Instead they are created on the fly based on other objects and interfaces. Joshua's post is a huge code dump of a prototype class and an example of it in use, dynamically creating two methods and making the three objects available.

Pierre-Alain Joye has a little reminder posted to his blog today about two posts from planet-debian and Apache that refer to clones/references in PHP4 and PHP5 and some of the misconceptions presented there.

Reading planet-debian and Apache (from Sven and David), I catched two posts about clones and references in php4 and php5. I do not think it is worth to explain again everything here as Sara wrote a very good post already, check it out here.

He mentions his annoyance with articles/posts like these and the impact that it has on PHP as well as the person posting.

I wonder when the OS community in general will be mature enough to stop bitching at each other. And that's valid for PHP developers, gnome-kde and other well established wars.