New on the Debuggable blog, Tim Koschutzki has posted a method to get the fund() method in the CakePHP framework's models to bend to your will.

CakePHP allows you to use your own "find-types" for the Model::find() methodology. Those of your who are familiar with the find() method know that there are currently four types in the core: 'list', 'all', 'first' and 'count'. However, sometimes it is nice to specify your own type.

He shows an example of the end result - a find() call with a custom type that automagically gets translated correctly. His script overrides and enhances the usual find call in an extended object (extended from AppModel) that uses a switch/case statement to define the custom types and their find() search calls.

On the Developer Tutorials Blog today, there's a new post aimed at WordPress users to help them on the path to becoming "power users" with five tips.

If you're a wordpress power user, you'll inevitably have some questions about how you can improve your blog or add new features. Here are five tips that will make life easier for people wanting to maximize their use of Wordpress.

The list is:

• Quickly Find Page/Post ID
• Custom Front Page
• Password Protect Wordpress
• Protect from the 'Digg Efect' with HTML
• Stop Hackers

Each of them with their own explanations (and links to other resources detailing how they're done).

On the Ibuildings blog today, Harrie Verveer has posted about an interesting quirk he found when working with objects and references:

PHP is a loosely typed language. Most of the time this is very useful because you as a programmer don't have to worry about typecasting: it's done for you. However, on some occasions this can cause some unexpected trouble. [...] In this blog I want to point out what can happen if you try to access object properties by reference when the object is not initialized.

His example shows the problem when it tries to grab a value from an array in a non-existent object by reference. It results in a dyanamically created object (of that type) with an empty array inside of it. It only works when you grab it by reference, but he shares a tip or two about how you can prevent hard to track down issues like this.

php|architect is hosting a coding contest that started on Saturday. The task is to grab the contents of an HTML file and grab all of the links out of it, removing duplicates.

You may use any built in function, the phpinfo() of the server used for testing will be attached. You just need to retrieve the links, you don't need to worry about them being relative or absolute.

It should be able to be called from the command line and return the links, one per line. They include how the scripts will be measured (speed, accuracy, etc) and the prize list - $100 gift card for phparch.com, a one year subscription or *drum roll* an autographed picture of ProPHP podcast hosts Paul Reinheimer and Sean Coates.

To submit your entry just email it over to c7ycontests@phparch.com with the subject of "C7Y Contest - February" on it.

Antoine Ughetto has posted an easy way to find a file inside any series of subdirectories with PHP:

I've made a previus post on SPL using RecursiveIterator to parse Array. Today we will use this same RecursiveIterator with a DirectoryRecursiveIterator.

The code is pretty simple and straight forward - a DirectorySearch class that takes in the directory name and recurses through the files and subdirectories to locate the file you're looking for.

For a lot of developers, just finding good resources to look for a job is half the challenge. Sure, there's the big guys, but what if you need something a little more focused? The Developer Tutorials blog has a few suggestions you can try.

Many position-based boards are full of employers who don't understand the value of quality code. [...] There are really only two ways to find a decent PHP job, then: find freelance projects from clients that will pay for your expertise, or get a full time job. Here are some good destinations for each.

Their suggestions are broken up into two different categories - freelance or waged. The freelance list includes Elance and PHP-Freelancers while their waged list includes the Zend Job Board and the PHPJobs.com website.

On the O'Reilly OnLamp.com site, there's a bit more in-depth look at using the (now infamous) Google Code Search to locate issues with scripts that have been collected over time.

I've written about using Google to find security flaws in the past. However, thanks to Google Code Search, it is now easier to scan publicly available source code for potential security issues. The idea is query Google Code Search using techniques previously reserved for local static code analysis.

The examples he gives include a search for SQL injection in a Java application, a SQL injection in a PHP application, and a cross-site scripting problem in a PHP app blindly echoing out the user's input.

He also includes a few links to some code analysis tools that can be used to help prevent some of these issues - Flawfinder, RATS, and SWAAT

There's a new PHP editor on the block and it's name is Antechinus. According to this page on SoftwareHeadlines.com, it's a new shareware editor for Windows from C-Point.com.

Are you using Dreamweaver, Front Page, or another visual editor to design your web pages? If you are, you know how easy it is to put your pages together, and you might ask if there was any point in learning PHP.

PHP truly empowers your web development, but there is little joy in coding it with basic syntax-coloring text editors that are built into visual tools. For PHP, you need a specialized tool, fast, powerful and easy to use: Antechinus PHP Editor.

The editor seems like a good, solid, basic editor with plenty of interface items to help make code (and HTML) generation easier as well as an integrated "find functions" tool making it easier to track down that elusive bit of code.