Sad news today from PHPBuilder.com - Tim Perdue, the founder of the PHPBuilder.com site and contributor to the SourceForge project as one of the original developers has passed away at 37.

The PHPBuilder staff was saddened to learn that the founder of our site, Tim Perdue, passed away on September 16 , 2011, after a battle with cancer. At only 37 years of age, Tim's passing came much too soon, but his contributions to the PHP and open source communities assure him a lasting legacy.

Related posts include this tribute from his company, GForge and this article from Jake Ludington on LockerGnome. Digging through our own archives, I found this interview with him back in 2002 (an archive.org link, the original is no longer there).

Jason Gilmore has put together a list of sixteen best practices and tools you can use to help make your PHP development life easier and the quality of your code better.

[I spent so] much time in fact that in 2010 I penned more than 130 articles. Many of these articles focused on PHP-specific best practices and productivity, two topics which should resonate closely with anybody involved in building websites for a living. So I thought it would be useful to compile a list of the sixteen tutorials which touch upon these topics. In this list you’ll find tutorials introducing testing, debugging, advanced object-oriented features, code profiling, security, enforcing coding standards, and more.

His list of articles includes:

• 10 Productive PHP Tools for Testing and Debugging
• Three Advanced Object-Oriented PHP Features You Need to Know
• Four Sane Solutions for PHP Debugging
• Enforcing Coding Standards with PHP_CodeSniffer
• Use PHPUnit to Implement Unit Testing in Your PHP Development

PHPBuilder.com has moved on in their "Using XML: A PHP Developer's Primer" series with this new tutorial posted today - part four, a look at XML-RPC, PHP, and Javascript.

They start with an overview of what XML-RPC is, how it works, and some sample calls to show you how it's done. From there, they show you how, using the PEAR XML-RPC client, you can connect to Flickr and grab picture information for a specific user. And keep an eye out for the next article in the series. It will cover the other half of the equation - the creation of your own XML-RPC server.

PHPBuilder.com has moved on in their "Using XML: A PHP Developer's Primer" series with this new tutorial posted today - part four, a look at XML-RPC, PHP, and Javascript.

They start with an overview of what XML-RPC is, how it works, and some sample calls to show you how it's done. From there, they show you how, using the PEAR XML-RPC client, you can connect to Flickr and grab picture information for a specific user. And keep an eye out for the next article in the series. It will cover the other half of the equation - the creation of your own XML-RPC server.

On PHPBuilder.com today, there's the second part in their "Using XML: A PHP Developer's Primer" series.

In the first part of this series, we took a look at how PHP 5 can be used to manipulate and parse XML files. In this installment, we are going to focus on Ajax, one of the most useful and topical applications of XML.

Initially, we are going to introduce Ajax and learn how to use the XMLHTTP object provided by most modern web browsers to create a live email validation form. Then we will pick up where we left off with the theme of XML and introduce XSLT, which we will use to transform our library XML from the previous article into valid XHTML code.

They jump immediately in, starting with the "what is Ajax?" question to provide a good base. The sample application that they help you build to work up your Ajax skills is an email validation app that checks the user's entry as they're putting it in. Of course, all of the PHP and Javascript code that you'll need is provided.

On PHPBuilder.com today, there's the second part in their "Using XML: A PHP Developer's Primer" series.

In the first part of this series, we took a look at how PHP 5 can be used to manipulate and parse XML files. In this installment, we are going to focus on Ajax, one of the most useful and topical applications of XML.

Initially, we are going to introduce Ajax and learn how to use the XMLHTTP object provided by most modern web browsers to create a live email validation form. Then we will pick up where we left off with the theme of XML and introduce XSLT, which we will use to transform our library XML from the previous article into valid XHTML code.

They jump immediately in, starting with the "what is Ajax?" question to provide a good base. The sample application that they help you build to work up your Ajax skills is an email validation app that checks the user's entry as they're putting it in. Of course, all of the PHP and Javascript code that you'll need is provided.