The Laravel News Podcast, hosted by Jacob Bennett and Michael Dyrynda, has posted their latest episode: Episode #57 - Laravel 5.6, Spark 6.0, and framework helpers

Join us for a whirlwind journey through the latest Laravel Framework and Spark releases, as well as community project Larastream, and more.

The episode also includes mentions of this article covering five useful Laravel helpers and the model caching package. You can listen to this latest episode either using the in-page audio player or by downloading it directly. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed to get updates on when new shows are released.

The SitePoint PHP Blog has a new tutorial posted from author Claudio Ribeiro that takes you beyond the basics with the Symfony Console component, showing you how to use some of the helpers and other tools included in its functionality.

It’s undeniable how useful console commands can be when developing software. Not too long ago we re-introduced the Symfony Console component.

This component allows us to create structured and testable CLI commands. We created some simple commands and tested them; but when our commands become bigger and more complex, we need a different set of tools.

This is what we are going to look at today: advanced Symfony console tools.

He then walks you through the installation of the component via Composer and the initial creation of a "FizzBuzz" console command class (and other related classes). He then shows how to use several of the helpers:

• the "question" helper to ask for user input
• the "table" helper for outputting structured data
• the "progress bar" helper to visually output progress of a task

There's also examples included showing how to call a command from inside a command and changing up color and style of the output.

The TutsPlus.com site has continued their "Programming with Yii2" tutorial series with a new post introducing you to helper functions that come bundled with the framework. It also shows you how to create your own custom helper function, making it easier to perform common functions custom to your application.

In the Programming With Yii2 series, I'm guiding readers in use of the Yii2 Framework for PHP. In this tutorial, I'll provide a brief overview of helpers. In Yii, helpers are modules which group commonly useful libraries for string, file, image, URL and HTML management amongst other things, and they are easy to extend.

I'll also share an example of creating a helper within Meeting Planner, the focus of our Envato Tuts+ startup series.

The tutorial then introduces you to (and links you to) the common helpers the framework comes bundled with including the ArrayHelper, FileHelper and Markdown helpers. The tutorial then covers two in a bit more detail, the ArrayHelper and HtmlPurifier helper, including some code examples for each. Finally it shows the creation of a custom helper with several custom functions and their use in a template.

If you've ever worked with the Symfony Console component and wanted to enhance the experience with some additional functionality, check out the latest tutorial from the SitePoint PHP blog: Symfony2 Console: Getting Started with Console Helpers.

In this tutorial, I’ll share my experiences and we’ll give some extra love to the console helpers, which provide us with a large collection of handy functions. There are a lot of reasons to create console commands in your projects: sending emails, exporting/importing data, creating users, and so on. [...] By the end of this post, we want to be able to create a basic console command to generate some output – any output will do – only the way to getting there is important. Near the end, we’ll discover some console helpers in order to create some nice interactions between users and the interface.

He starts by helping you get the component installed via Composer and creating the first simple command line script (a ConsoleApplication). He shows how to add in a basic "hello world" command (conveniently named "BasicCommand") and the result when executed. With this in place, he starts in on three helpers:

• Question Helper
• Table class
• Progress Bar

Each includes the code needed to implement it and the resulting output. You can find out more about the component in the Symfony2 documentation.

On the Zend Developer Zone today, there's this new look at extending the popular CakePHP framework with three different options - helpers, components, and plug-ins.

They describe each of these items:

• Helpers - functions/functionality to help out in the views
• Components - extra building blocks in controllers
• Plug-ins - little "applications" to add instant functionality to a site

For each, they include a more complete definition, how they fit in with the overall "Cakeness" of an application and even a bit of code to explain things. Daniel also includes a few helpful links to get aspiring coders a head start.

On the Zend Developer Zone today, there's this new look at extending the popular CakePHP framework with three different options - helpers, components, and plug-ins.

They describe each of these items:

• Helpers - functions/functionality to help out in the views
• Components - extra building blocks in controllers
• Plug-ins - little "applications" to add instant functionality to a site

For each, they include a more complete definition, how they fit in with the overall "Cakeness" of an application and even a bit of code to explain things. Daniel also includes a few helpful links to get aspiring coders a head start.

On his blog, Nick Lo has posted a brief tutorial showing how to use custom view helpers with the Zend Framework.

Currently the framework (version 0.1.3) includes a small selection of form helpers which will no doubt expand as it matures. For now I'm more interested in the ability to add custom helpers for specific project use.

He shows both the code and the directory structure to implement these custom view helpers, including a cuationary note about how the View helper should be named to get things to play nice together.

On his blog, Nick Lo has posted a brief tutorial showing how to use custom view helpers with the Zend Framework.

Currently the framework (version 0.1.3) includes a small selection of form helpers which will no doubt expand as it matures. For now I'm more interested in the ability to add custom helpers for specific project use.

He shows both the code and the directory structure to implement these custom view helpers, including a cuationary note about how the View helper should be named to get things to play nice together.

The team behind the Symfony Project have updated their distribution today with the release of version 0.6.2 of the framework. Along with this, they've updated the site with a lot more content, both about their framework (documentation updates) and some samples showing how to use it (new tutorials).

First off, there's a new tutorial covering the use of sortable lists with the framework - comapring and contrasting it to the normal Ajax methods of creating these lists.

Secondly, they've published new extensive documentation about the Ajax helpers the framework uses to speed coding time and make advanced functionality simple to add. Several of them are even based on the Rails+script.aculo.us features so many developers look for.

Lastly, the askeet tutorial series has been updated to make it a bit more "newbie friendly", taking some of the things down a level furhter for those just diving into the wild world of Ajax.

It's great to see this quickly maturing framework keep its push going - past the 6 month mark now - and just keeps getting better with each version.

The team behind the Symfony Project have updated their distribution today with the release of version 0.6.2 of the framework. Along with this, they've updated the site with a lot more content, both about their framework (documentation updates) and some samples showing how to use it (new tutorials).

First off, there's a new tutorial covering the use of sortable lists with the framework - comapring and contrasting it to the normal Ajax methods of creating these lists.

Secondly, they've published new extensive documentation about the Ajax helpers the framework uses to speed coding time and make advanced functionality simple to add. Several of them are even based on the Rails+script.aculo.us features so many developers look for.

Lastly, the askeet tutorial series has been updated to make it a bit more "newbie friendly", taking some of the things down a level furhter for those just diving into the wild world of Ajax.

It's great to see this quickly maturing framework keep its push going - past the 6 month mark now - and just keeps getting better with each version.