A recent post on the Developer Tutorials blog takes a look at a fundamental part of several of the PHP (and other language) frameworks out there - the Object Relational Mapping (ORM) layer for database access.

Instead of direct database access, an ORM layer in a PHP framework can make "objects" stored in a database behave like actual objects from a programming perspective - for example, creating a new "car" stored in the database could involve a call to $car->new(). By abstracting actual database access, web development can be more productive and result in more reliable applications. Here's a quick intro to ORM in PHP.

They talk about ORM's role in how applications interface with data (abstracted out to objects) and some examples of it in current frameworks - CakePHP and Symfony.

On the Zend Developer Zone, jonwage has posted about an ORM (Object-Relational mapping) he came across that can help abstract out your interface with your backend database - Doctrine.

One of its key features is the ability to optionally write database queries in an OO (object oriented) SQL-dialect called DQL inspired by Hibernates HQL. This provides developers with a powerful alternative to SQL that maintains a maximum of flexibility without requiring needless code duplication.

The project's page gives the full details on the features it offers and has links to the latest downloads so you can try it out for yourself. There's even a blog you can subscribe to to keep up to date.

The Zend Developer Zone has an article from Akash Mehta (reprinted from SitePoint) about creating a Yahoo! based mashup combining their search functionality and mapping.

In this article, I'll show you how to use the powerful collection of Yahoo! APIs to build a mashup with PHP 5. First we'll take a look at what APIs are, and the various offerings from Yahoo! that we can take advantage of. I'll demonstrate how to search the web using Yahoo!'s entire database with only three lines of code, then take you through the process of building an entire application to search for 'Pizza' in 'Palo Alto, CA' with only 25 lines of PHP code.

They show how to consume the RESTful data Yahoo provides via a custom class that makes calling the API simple. They also include the code (and HTML) you'll need to make the mapping for for the locations your search turned up.

On his blog today, Mike Naberezny has posted about something new that's just been released - Horde_Routes:

I'm pleased to announce the first release of Horde_Routes, a new URL mapping system for PHP 5. This package provides classes for mapping URLs into the controllers and actions of an MVC system, inspired by Ruby on Rails.

They came up with the system because they "wanted RESTful routing, named routes, sophisticated matching, PHP 5 E_STRICT, and extensive test coverage" and nothing else seemed to meet them all. Horde_Routes includes features like route recognition and generation, named routes, being PHP 5 E_STRICT compliant and has a comprehensive unit test suite. Right now, the Routes system is in a beta stage but should be quickly moving to stable.

Tobias Schlitt has pointed out a new article he's written up that acts as an introduction to the features of the new ORM component of the eZ Components application framework - the PersisteneObject.

For me the coolest feature of PersistentObject is, that the component does not require you're ORM enabled classes to inherit from a certain base to allow your objects to be stored in a database (made persistent).

This new object gives you a "wapper" of sorts to make any of the pre-existing objects in your application persistent. Check out the article for more.

On Tobin Bradley's blog today, there's a follow up to a previous artcile posted concerning getting MapServer working on a Windows/IIS install. This time, they show how, with a few lines of PHP code, you can create a map quickly and easily.

PHP/Mapscript makes this fantastically easy, with only 19 lines of code! You can download the code here.

The remainder of the post steps you through the process of installing the script and, with a few simple calls, you have a functional map of your chosen location.