In a new post to his site Derick Rethans talks about "analemmas" and shows how to use PHP's own DateTime handling to determine the locations of the sun at different intervals (that's what an "analemma" tracks).

Last week I listened to an The Sceptics' Guide to the Universe where the word of the week was "But as I am currently starting to update the Guide to Date and Time Programming for a second edition, I was wondering whether I could create an analemma from existing PHP functions. Unfortunately, PHP only provides functionality to calculate when the Sun is at its highest point, through date_sun_info().

He includes an example of this function in use to determine the time the sun was at its zenith. While PHP by itself can't calculate the position, Derick remembered a PHP extension he wrote that could help: php-solarsystem. He includes some code using this functionality to iterate and locate the sun via its azimuth and altitude based on his choice of location (London). The result is a CSV export of data that he then drops in to gnuplot to create the graph of the analemma during that time.

Mahmoud Zalt has a recent post to his Medium.com site that shares a cheat sheet for Eloquent relationships you can use with the Eloquent database layer in a Laravel application.

He goes through each of the relationship types and provides both a diagram showing the relationship and some sample code to make it work:

• One to One
• One to Many
• Polymorphic One to Many Relationship
• Many to Many Relationship
• Polymorphic Many to Many Relationship

The post ends with a combined table of all of the relationships, how they connect with the other models, the number of tables involved and how to set values to a related model.

In this new post to the Zend Developer Zone, they point out a workflow diagram Polley Wong has come up with showing how the Zend Framework's dispatch system works (request handling).

I've been researching Zend Framework lately and was curious about what's actually happening behind the scene of the whole dispatch process. Inspired by Thorsten Ruf's (zenddispatch_en.pdf) clear and beautifully presented workflow, I decided to go a step deeper and crawl Zend Framework's code. I came up with my own version of the flexible yet complicated workflow.

You can check out this new PDF here. It diagrams out an overall view of the request handling, a look at what happens inside the front controller including components like the Controller Dispatcher, Action Controller, Action Helper Broker and Response Object.

Prior to their release of the next big jump in the Symfony framework, Fabien Potencier wanted to introduce people to the new version and what they can expect.

Apart from the new exciting features we have in symfony 1.1, this version also represents a year of hard work to refactor the internals. Let's dig into symfony internals a bit!

They talk about the new platform that everything is built of off now including the framework itself (complete with diagrams mapping out the different parts of the MVC whole).

From the Vexxblog, there's this new tutorial that shows how, with FFMPEG and PHP, to convert and encode files to the FLV format.

So, as I’ve written in an earlier article on how to install FFMPEG on your server, while there are those who probably use a “YouTube Clone” script, there might be those who want to create their own using FFMPEG & PHP. FLV is the most widely used type of codec that runs on most Flash players.

The tutorial started with a diagram that outlines how the mini-app will work and is followed by the source. The script sets up the environment then grabs the file and sends it to the FFMPEG handler to be parsed and output as the FLV file (courtesy of a few handy command line parameters).

From the Vexxblog, there's this new tutorial that shows how, with FFMPEG and PHP, to convert and encode files to the FLV format.

So, as I’ve written in an earlier article on how to install FFMPEG on your server, while there are those who probably use a “YouTube Clone” script, there might be those who want to create their own using FFMPEG & PHP. FLV is the most widely used type of codec that runs on most Flash players.

The tutorial started with a diagram that outlines how the mini-app will work and is followed by the source. The script sets up the environment then grabs the file and sends it to the FFMPEG handler to be parsed and output as the FLV file (courtesy of a few handy command line parameters).

On his blog today, Alexander Netkachev has charted out some of the new functionality in the latest version (0.6.0) of the Zend Framework as pertaining to improvements in the Zend_Controller.

Zend Framework 0.6.0 release comes with improvements in Zend_Controller area (new Zend_Controller_Request, Zend_Controller_Response classes, dispatch process improvements), which looks very promising. Dispatching process now better described and its parts (Zend_Controller_Router and Zend_Controller_Dispatcher) are replaceable.

He also includes a diagram of how it's all laid out and a brief description of how each of these new pieces works.

On his blog today, Alexander Netkachev has charted out some of the new functionality in the latest version (0.6.0) of the Zend Framework as pertaining to improvements in the Zend_Controller.

Zend Framework 0.6.0 release comes with improvements in Zend_Controller area (new Zend_Controller_Request, Zend_Controller_Response classes, dispatch process improvements), which looks very promising. Dispatching process now better described and its parts (Zend_Controller_Router and Zend_Controller_Dispatcher) are replaceable.

He also includes a diagram of how it's all laid out and a brief description of how each of these new pieces works.

According to this note from the International PHP Magazine website, there's a new tool being offered by Aivosto that allows PHP developers to "reverse engineer" their code back into flow charts and UML activity diagrams.

Visustin is the ideal diagramming tool for software developers and document writers. Save your documentation efforts by automatic charting! Visustin reverse engineers your source code and visualizes it. No manual drawing is required. Your existing code is all you need. If you see a real complex case, print it out as a big mosaic and hang it on your wall.

Functionality includes the automatic creation of a optimized layout, the ability to do a multi-page printout, saving the graphs/charts/etc in various formats, run a "bulk chart" on all of your files at once, and export options including PowerPoint, out to the web, and Word.

You can get the full details on the product (as well as screenshots and a demo) from their website.

According to this note from the International PHP Magazine website, there's a new tool being offered by Aivosto that allows PHP developers to "reverse engineer" their code back into flow charts and UML activity diagrams.

Visustin is the ideal diagramming tool for software developers and document writers. Save your documentation efforts by automatic charting! Visustin reverse engineers your source code and visualizes it. No manual drawing is required. Your existing code is all you need. If you see a real complex case, print it out as a big mosaic and hang it on your wall.

Functionality includes the automatic creation of a optimized layout, the ability to do a multi-page printout, saving the graphs/charts/etc in various formats, run a "bulk chart" on all of your files at once, and export options including PowerPoint, out to the web, and Word.

You can get the full details on the product (as well as screenshots and a demo) from their website.