Martin Shwalbe has a new post that wants to help you get started using the Zend Framework 2 for creating REST web services quickly and easily.

Today i want to show you how to build a rest application. This tutorials assume you have completed the Getting Started. I will be repeating lot of the steps allready explained in there. There is also a sample Album module which you can install from here.

He starts off by setting up the Album module to load via the module autoloader and sets up its controllers and views in the module configuration. He shows how set up the REST routes (via the "router" in the module config), how to set up the view strategy and how to make a first controller. There's also a bit about testing this newly setup module with PHPUnit.

In a new article from PHPBuilder.com today Marc Plotz starts from the beginning and guides the reader through some of the basics of PHP.

It's been a few years since I echo'd my first HELLO WORLD script. PHP has developed and evolved and yes, it has changed since it was first devised as little Perl extensions on Rasmus Lerdorf's localhost. Still, for a little Home Page script, it has grown into something that is now used on over 200 million websites around the world. That is nothing to be scoffed at. In this article we'll discuss the two most important things we should try to remember when developing in PHP.

His two things are "develop on linux" and "use SVN or CVS". The first tip is up for debate - one of the best things about PHP is its ability to work well on both linux and windows-based systems but the second point is an absolute must for anyone doing any kind of serious development work.

NETTUTS.com has posted what they consider everything you'll need to get started with the CodeIgniter PHP framework:

CodeIgniter is a web application framework for PHP. It enables developers to build web applications faster, and it offers many helpful code libraries and helpers which speed up tedious tasks in PHP. CodeIgniter is based on a modular design; meaning that you can implement specific libraries at your discretion - which adds to the speed of the framework. This tutorial will attempt to show you the basics of setting up the framework, including how to build a basic hello world application that uses the MVC approach.

They start by looking at why you would even use a framework, what CodeIgniter is and what the MVC design pattern is (including its flow). The rest of the tutorial is broken out into the "Getting Started" guide:

• Downloading CodeIgniter
• Installing and Exploring CodeIgniter
• Configuring CodeIgniter
• Testing CodeIgniter
• Configuring CodeIgniter Cont.
• Create the Helloworld Database
• Create the Helloworld Model
• Create the Helloworld Controller
• Create the Helloworld View
• Ta-da and Some Extras

In a new post Gennady Feldman has listed out some beginner resources to help those just getting into PHP:

I know that some of my last blog entries were a bit too technical for the web designers who are just starting out and curious about using PHP for their website. I thought I'd do a blog post with links for the newbies who are just starting out and making their first steps in PHP.

He points out the videos on the KillerPHP.com website, links to the PHP manual and the PEAR and PECL home pages.

In a new post Gennady Feldman has listed out some beginner resources to help those just getting into PHP:

I know that some of my last blog entries were a bit too technical for the web designers who are just starting out and curious about using PHP for their website. I thought I'd do a blog post with links for the newbies who are just starting out and making their first steps in PHP.

He points out the videos on the KillerPHP.com website, links to the PHP manual and the PEAR and PECL home pages.

On the ThinkPHP Blog, there's information posted about a new help center for their Chorizo! scanner with lots of information included already.

Go and check out Chorizo!'s new Help Center. We extended the existing tutorials and provide a smooth overview about the current documentation. Included is an overview about all the scanner plugins Chorizo! is using and explain a bit what each plugin does.

There are "Getting Started" guides offered, video tutorials, details on each of the plugins (PHPversions, XSS plugin, Session injection, etc), some of the features of the scanner, and some general troubleshooting information.

On the ThinkPHP Blog, there's information posted about a new help center for their Chorizo! scanner with lots of information included already.

Go and check out Chorizo!'s new Help Center. We extended the existing tutorials and provide a smooth overview about the current documentation. Included is an overview about all the scanner plugins Chorizo! is using and explain a bit what each plugin does.

There are "Getting Started" guides offered, video tutorials, details on each of the plugins (PHPversions, XSS plugin, Session injection, etc), some of the features of the scanner, and some general troubleshooting information.

In another report from this year's O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Kevin Yank has covered Rasmus Lerdorf's talk - "Getting Rich with PHP 5" - a look at building rich web applications in PHP5.

PHP's creator, Rasmus Lerdorf, gave a surprising talk on building PHP rich web applications using PHP5—suprising, because fully half the talk focused on low-level PHP optimization techniques. The slides are available online.

Kevin gives an overview of the talk, mentioning some of Rasmus' examples, the bottlenecks he defined, and the time spent on the new functionality in the PHP 5 series.

In another report from this year's O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Kevin Yank has covered Rasmus Lerdorf's talk - "Getting Rich with PHP 5" - a look at building rich web applications in PHP5.

PHP's creator, Rasmus Lerdorf, gave a surprising talk on building PHP rich web applications using PHP5—suprising, because fully half the talk focused on low-level PHP optimization techniques. The slides are available online.

Kevin gives an overview of the talk, mentioning some of Rasmus' examples, the bottlenecks he defined, and the time spent on the new functionality in the PHP 5 series.

This new post on the Sitening.com blog (written up by Tyler Hall) today takes a look at PHP and databases (MySQL specifically in this case) and "getting real" with them.

He proceeds to show a class that can perform operations similar to those styled in RoR - creating the object, applying proterties to it and performing the action (inserts/delete/etc). It's all made possible through the use of the __get and __set functions offered in PHP5. From there, it's just a simple matter of defining the functions for the actions.

To bring the point home, he also includes some examples of how to use this kind of functionality with a bit more than the previous example - selecting, updating, deleting, and inserting a new record (including the action function for each). Lastly, he gives an example of extending this base class, as mentioned in his first example (creating an object like "Animal" or "User" to abstract out the connections even more.