The TutsPlus.com site has posted the next in their "Building Your Startup" series of tutorials covering the use of Yii2 to create a calendaring application. In this new part of the series they continue migrating some functionality over to use an Ajax-powered system, reducing the need for page reloads.

Last week, I delved deeper into Ajax to transform the meeting scheduling experience into a fully ajaxified model and eliminated the need for page refreshes. I got about halfway, focusing mostly on the straightforward elements.

In today's tutorial, I'll guide you through the more complex content panels that required a lot more troubleshooting, research, debugging, brainstorming, and recoding. [...] I'm also going to show you how I used Google's Chrome browser developer console to help me identify the broken areas—which can be especially difficult when working with Ajax between PHP and JavaScript. It's like light at the end of the tunnel of darkness.

The tutorial then walks through the updates needed to move over various pieces of functionality to the Ajax-driven model:

• adding meeting participants
• adding dates and times
• adding meeting places

There's also a few screenshots included of the Chrome developer console and what some of the example request/responses look like, helping you debug your own development work.

On the IBuildings bog today Ivo Jansch looks at a new step in PHP's evolution - its jump up into the top three on the TIOBE programming index (language popularity):

In their latest analysis PHP has entered the top 3 of most popular programming languages, and that is something that both makes us proud and provides further proof that PHP is still growing and here to stay. [...] What makes PHP's number 3 position remarkable is that the numbers 1 and 2 are very much general purpose languages. Java and C are pretty much used from anywhere from low level processes to desktop applications.

Some of the other languages in their top ten (according to their indexing tools) include Perl, Python, Ruby and Javascript.

Second place has been revealed in Nick Halstead's programming competition - and the 2nd place mark goes to Evan Chiu.

So second place, more drum rolls.. goes to Evan Chiu. Evan's solution revolved around a well implemented breadth first search which was wrapped up in a neat class. It was also quite well presented and the HTML was all w3c compliant.

In Evan's solution, he opted for a single "solve" method to handle the heart of the transition - an implementation of the "Breadth First Search method. If you'd like to see the full code, you can check it out here.

Second place has been revealed in Nick Halstead's programming competition - and the 2nd place mark goes to Evan Chiu.

So second place, more drum rolls.. goes to Evan Chiu. Evan's solution revolved around a well implemented breadth first search which was wrapped up in a neat class. It was also quite well presented and the HTML was all w3c compliant.

In Evan's solution, he opted for a single "solve" method to handle the heart of the transition - an implementation of the "Breadth First Search method. If you'd like to see the full code, you can check it out here.

As previously mentioned, Nick Halstead will be revealing the top three places in the results from the programming competition he was hosting. Today starts the top three list with third place - an entry from Karol Grecki:

I was really impressed with Karol's entry and if it was not for the fact that it did not 'run out of the box' it would have been a close cut thing to be the winner. The fact is that because it was a pain to get running the two other judges only gave it 1 point each.

Karol's website or just download the code and play along at home.

As previously mentioned, Nick Halstead will be revealing the top three places in the results from the programming competition he was hosting. Today starts the top three list with third place - an entry from Karol Grecki:

I was really impressed with Karol's entry and if it was not for the fact that it did not 'run out of the box' it would have been a close cut thing to be the winner. The fact is that because it was a pain to get running the two other judges only gave it 1 point each.

Karol's website or just download the code and play along at home.

As mentioned by the International PHP Magazine, PHP has held strong at its fourth place ranking on the TIOBE Programming Community Index for the month of May.

The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

PHP kept its ranking right alongside other popular languages like C++, Java and Perl to remain in the top five of the list. Their graph still shows a downward trend for the presence of PHP on the web, but it's the same trend that can be seen affecting several other languages as well.

As mentioned by the International PHP Magazine, PHP has held strong at its fourth place ranking on the TIOBE Programming Community Index for the month of May.

The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

PHP kept its ranking right alongside other popular languages like C++, Java and Perl to remain in the top five of the list. Their graph still shows a downward trend for the presence of PHP on the web, but it's the same trend that can be seen affecting several other languages as well.

In a follow-up to the previous post on the creation of a file manager with PHP, a new piece has shown up, augmenting it with the promise of a secure file manager created in PHP.

This is a follow-up tutorial on "Creating a file manager with PHP", and I highly recommend reading the previous tutorial first, before reading this tutorial.

In the previous tutorial I showed you how to build a simple file manager, which could upload, download, edit and delete, with PHP, but there was one problem: it wasn't completely secure if you had your upload directory in a public place. That's why in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to fix that.

In the new script he helps you rework the previous script, making it a bit safer for your files to be someplace public. One of the keys is creating a "protected file" with a 404 header at the top, thwarting any would-be leachers. He also includes the code for editing and deleting these protected files as if they were normal...

In a follow-up to the previous post on the creation of a file manager with PHP, a new piece has shown up, augmenting it with the promise of a secure file manager created in PHP.

This is a follow-up tutorial on "Creating a file manager with PHP", and I highly recommend reading the previous tutorial first, before reading this tutorial.

In the previous tutorial I showed you how to build a simple file manager, which could upload, download, edit and delete, with PHP, but there was one problem: it wasn't completely secure if you had your upload directory in a public place. That's why in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to fix that.

In the new script he helps you rework the previous script, making it a bit safer for your files to be someplace public. One of the keys is creating a "protected file" with a 404 header at the top, thwarting any would-be leachers. He also includes the code for editing and deleting these protected files as if they were normal...