In this new tutorial from the SitePoint PHP blog Christopher Pitt once again takes on an unconventional question around the use of PHP: "is it possible to write/run PHP code on an iPad?"

I love the iPad. It’s a fantastic form factor for media consumption and gaming; and it also works well as an e-reader. The trouble is I don’t use it nearly as much as I could. Most of the time I’m consuming media (Netflix, Twitch, YouTube), I’m coding in parallel.

I can do that on my MacBook, but I’ve never been able to do that until now. [...] Today I’m going to show you how I code on an iPad. I won’t pretend it’s a perfect workflow (what workflow is?), but this is as exciting for me as the first time I used a laptop instead of a desktop.

He briefly covers some of the hardware you'll need to get started including a good keyboard you're comfortable with and a way to hook it up (either Bluetooth or manually via USB). He then gets into the software and mentions DraftCode and WorkingCopy as his tools of choice. He then helps you get started writing your first PHP script, using SQLite in-memory and using Working Copy to pull the latest code from your external source. Now that you're comfortable with the setup, he shows you how to install a Laravel application and the changes you'll need to make to get it up and running. Finally he shows the push of the code the remote source, updating the repository with these latest changes.

Jani Hartikainen has pointed out a new application that can run on the iPad and allows you to write PHP without having to write out a single line of code.

Yes, you heard that right! You can now code in PHP without having to write a single line of code – amazing, right? The application that makes this possible is called Lemon ADE, and it runs on the iPad. In this post I'll go over how Lemon ADE works, and I have also recorded a short video demonstrating coding with the app.

The tool is an abstract syntax tree editor and parses the blocks on-screen down into valid PHP code. You define operations, variables, functions, etc and the result can be pushed out to an FTP server for execution (nope, nothing local). You can watch his video demonstration here.

David Walsh has a new post to his blog today with some code snippets that can help you detect iPad users when they come to your site.

The hottest device out there right now seems to be the iPad. iPad this, iPad that, iPod your mom. I'm underwhelmed with the device but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to account for such devices on the websites I create.

He includes three ways to get the job done by matching against the User Agent sent by the browser - Javascript, PHP and with an .htaccess file for an Apache server. As one commenter points out, though, you need to be sure if you already have a redirect on the word "mobile", the iPad's User Agent contains that too.

Ivo Jansch of Ibuildings has taken a look at a different sort of spin on Apple's iPad device and asked what potential it has to affect the PHP companies out there.

I see the iPad (and the non-Apple alternatives that already exist or are on the way) as a game changer. It brings new ways of consuming content and will reach audiences that the laptop has never reached. [...] In any case, the iPad is a game changer. What does this mean for the web and for tech companies such as us? First, it's nice to see that Apple is pushing open standards heavily with the iPad. [...] Second, the typical architecture behind most iPad apps (and other mobile applications for that matter) is to have a thin client on the device, and a rich API as the backend.

Ivo talks about the one of the key pieces of technology behind it all - the API that your service provides for iPad/iPod applications too hook into. Without a well-built, solid API to interface with, your application can be world class but not be very useful at all.