Michelangelo Van Dam is back with another part of his series covering the use of arrays in PHP. In previous articles he covered some of the basics including operations and associative arrays but in this new post he moves up and talks about some of the other functions you can use to manipulate them even further.

In my previous article about arrays (the basics, simple operations and associative arrays or hash maps) I have shown what arrays are and what you can do with it. Now I want to dive into real fun and explain PHP's array functions with real-world examples and how you can apply them in your day-to-day work.

He then goes through several of the PHP array functions, providing simple code snippets of them in action. To help apply it to a more "real world" situation he uses data based on a "countries" table in a database, making use of the "iso" and "printable_name" columns:

• array_walk
• array_intersect_key
• array_map

This is only three of the many methods you can use in PHP to manipulate arrays but it gives you a taste of what's there and what's to come in his future articles.

In a largely object-oriented world, one Redditer asks if it's still okay to just use functions, the more procedural method of PHP development:

Is there anything wrong with using an include file of functions instead of using full code in a file? [...] Obviously you wouldn't write functions for one off tiny things, but I think it would help to read files altogether especially if the functions file was alphabetically listed.

There's several suggestions in the comments including things like:

• You should also look into using a templating engine, so you can separate your html from your php code.
• One thing you could always ask yourself is "Do I will ever need to write that part a second time somewhere else ?" If "yes", that means you should put that part in a function.
• Before you go writing a load of functions and putting them all in a file, which can get quite unmanageable, consider grouping them logically and placing them in classes.
• Function names should start with a verb though (except for trivial getters whose meaning is clear by context, which can be named after the thing they get).
• Do group them logically, but it's not necessary to place them in a class unless they share data or state.

Jani Hartikainen has posted the second article in his series looking at parsing PHP with Haskell (part one is here). In this new article he builds on the parser he built last time and gets to the actual evaluation of the PHP code.

Last week I wrote a post about a PHP parser / evaluator I wrote in Haskell. I explained some of the parts on how the parser itself was designed to process PHP code into an abstract source tree. Continuing from where we left off in the previous part, in this post I’ll discuss the actual evaluation part.

He starts by introducing the structure of the evaluator script, how it's broken up into functionality based on the type of object/data type being handled. He uses a "custom monad transformer stack" to handle the environment for the evaluation as is progresses. He talks about handling statements and expressions, declaring custom functions and the actual execution of the function call. There's also a mention of handling conditionals/looping as well as dealing with PHP's type juggling.

if you're interested in seeing the final result (and maybe trying it out for yourself) you can find the full source on Github.

In this new tutorial on the PHPRefresher.com site, Anand Godar walks you through just about all of the session functionality that comes with PHP and includes some code snippets for explanation.

Due to the fast evolution of Web programming, the stateless nature of the HTTP protocol brought many problems to certain Web applications that required maintaining their state across several HTTP requests. This demanded a rapid development of several mechanisms aimed at tackling this issue through diverse methods. Then a session management emerged as a direct response to the above mentioned problem, and currently this mechanism is being used by PHP developers worldwide, in cases where a Web application needs to keep track of its “state” during the occurrence of different HTTP requests.

The article starts off with the basics of sessions - what they are, how they're handled and created by PHP - and moves into the specific functions and their use. He talks about starting/ending sessions, their IDs, caching, module handling and working directly with the session cookie (if it exists).

Damien Seguy has continued his series looking at PHP configurations around the web and is sharing the results in the form of two new reports over on Nexen.net.

I just published the second part of the serie about PHP configurations. This part focuses on three aspects of PHP: PHP extensions, PHP streams, and disabled functions.

You can find the statistics themselves here and the latest configuration statistics here. It's interesting to see the drop-off when it comes to the various modules that are installed ("php, ftp and http are the most common. Besides them, tough luck.") and to see the somewhat more gradual curve of which functions are disabled - with system() topping out the list (with good reason).

Damien Seguy has continued his series looking at PHP configurations around the web and is sharing the results in the form of two new reports over on Nexen.net.

I just published the second part of the serie about PHP configurations. This part focuses on three aspects of PHP: PHP extensions, PHP streams, and disabled functions.

You can find the statistics themselves here and the latest configuration statistics here. It's interesting to see the drop-off when it comes to the various modules that are installed ("php, ftp and http are the most common. Besides them, tough luck.") and to see the somewhat more gradual curve of which functions are disabled - with system() topping out the list (with good reason).

Continuing on in their "PHP functions" series today, DevShed has posted this next step up the ladder, getting more advanced with the functions they're working with. This time, there's a focus on functions inside classes and creating the classes around them (a sort of introduction to object-oriented programming).

Continuing our PHP functions article, we move on to creating classes. Let me say right at the start that you can write perfectly effective and useful PHP code without creating classes or going into object oriented programming. Object oriented programming can be very powerful and PHP programmers are increasingly taking advantage of these capabilities, which have been greatly expanded since PHP4.

They start with the creation of a simple class - a human class with two $legs and two $arms. They show a simple display of this data and add another attribute to the class, one for hair color. They then capture the output they've been creating inside a function, report, and show how to execute it. Finally, they show how to use the special function that runs when the object is created - the constructor.

Continuing on in their "PHP functions" series today, DevShed has posted this next step up the ladder, getting more advanced with the functions they're working with. This time, there's a focus on functions inside classes and creating the classes around them (a sort of introduction to object-oriented programming).

Continuing our PHP functions article, we move on to creating classes. Let me say right at the start that you can write perfectly effective and useful PHP code without creating classes or going into object oriented programming. Object oriented programming can be very powerful and PHP programmers are increasingly taking advantage of these capabilities, which have been greatly expanded since PHP4.

They start with the creation of a simple class - a human class with two $legs and two $arms. They show a simple display of this data and add another attribute to the class, one for hair color. They then capture the output they've been creating inside a function, report, and show how to execute it. Finally, they show how to use the special function that runs when the object is created - the constructor.

In his latest post, Jacob Santos talks about global functions and some of the dangers behind using them in your code (as per his own experience debugging with them in place).

When I develop in PHP and code functions, I always either place them in a file or place them at the top of the script. Well, this is more about C++ and how I totally freaked out my teacher, by breaking his paradigm of thought. You see, you can have a definition of a function at the top of the page and then code the body of the function later.

He soon discovered his problem in debugging the script - he was too used to having the global functions at the top (as in C++) and not mixed in with the code - or at the bottom of the script.

If there is something at least somewhat common about popular scripts that people use and extend, is that the functions are placed in organized manner. Reforming otherwise is a bitch and I remember rewriting the entire script anyway. You can't reform when you can't reuse anything.

In his latest post, Jacob Santos talks about global functions and some of the dangers behind using them in your code (as per his own experience debugging with them in place).

When I develop in PHP and code functions, I always either place them in a file or place them at the top of the script. Well, this is more about C++ and how I totally freaked out my teacher, by breaking his paradigm of thought. You see, you can have a definition of a function at the top of the page and then code the body of the function later.

He soon discovered his problem in debugging the script - he was too used to having the global functions at the top (as in C++) and not mixed in with the code - or at the bottom of the script.

If there is something at least somewhat common about popular scripts that people use and extend, is that the functions are placed in organized manner. Reforming otherwise is a bitch and I remember rewriting the entire script anyway. You can't reform when you can't reuse anything.