NetTuts.com continues their series covering the basics of design patterns (in PHP) with a new article about the Command design pattern. This pattern is particularly useful for executing self-contained "commands" without other interaction.

In this article, we will be going through the command design pattern. As the name says, in this pattern we will be dealing with executing various commands. [...] Basically a pattern has numerous elements involved, which are as below. In the next section, we will be exploring each element with a code example. I will be taking the example of radio actions—very basic actions would be turning the radio on or off. So let's dive into each element.

Using the illustration of the radio, they go through the creation of the classes for the controls (on/off) and the two matching commands. The invoker is then told to execute the "turn off" command on the radio control object passed in. This sounds a little confusing but the code included in the article makes it clear how this implementation of the command is structured.

On the Sanisoft blog , Amit Badkas has posted a few fixes that he found when he was trying to make the upgrade from CakePHP 1.2 alpha to the 1.2 prebeta version of the framework:

Today a new version of cakephp-1.2's pre-beta released, Eager to upgrade I plugged it into the new Cheesecake2 codebase which was happily on cakephp-1.2's last alpha (released on 9th July). As expected some minor migration issues did crop up immediately, posting the list below.

He has a list of four:

• No more debug, cake_admin etc. constants in config/core.php
• Addition of fieldset/legend around radio buttons
• Label given for radio buttons group does not appear but radio buttons texts appear as labels
• The 'inbetween' has been removed

Each has helpful hints around (or to fix them) included.

On the Sanisoft blog , Amit Badkas has posted a few fixes that he found when he was trying to make the upgrade from CakePHP 1.2 alpha to the 1.2 prebeta version of the framework:

Today a new version of cakephp-1.2's pre-beta released, Eager to upgrade I plugged it into the new Cheesecake2 codebase which was happily on cakephp-1.2's last alpha (released on 9th July). As expected some minor migration issues did crop up immediately, posting the list below.

He has a list of four:

• No more debug, cake_admin etc. constants in config/core.php
• Addition of fieldset/legend around radio buttons
• Label given for radio buttons group does not appear but radio buttons texts appear as labels
• The 'inbetween' has been removed

Each has helpful hints around (or to fix them) included.

From Cclair.nl, there's a new post sharing some code that's been created in an effort to make a "more modern CAPTCHA".

"ModernCaptcha" is a simple script in order to prevent spam in a very user friendly way. In a few words, your visitors don't have to type some characters as you see on the most websites, the verification is made by choosing the company name belonging to the logo that is show.

It's an interesting approach, but, as one reader pointed out, bots has a one in five chance of guessing correctly. That's way less than with a more standard image manipulation CAPTCHA method. I'm not sure I'd want to use it on my sites, but it might be good for a smaller site.

There's a demo of the end result and a download of the latest version as well as some limited support provided in the comments of the post.

From Cclair.nl, there's a new post sharing some code that's been created in an effort to make a "more modern CAPTCHA".

"ModernCaptcha" is a simple script in order to prevent spam in a very user friendly way. In a few words, your visitors don't have to type some characters as you see on the most websites, the verification is made by choosing the company name belonging to the logo that is show.

It's an interesting approach, but, as one reader pointed out, bots has a one in five chance of guessing correctly. That's way less than with a more standard image manipulation CAPTCHA method. I'm not sure I'd want to use it on my sites, but it might be good for a smaller site.

There's a demo of the end result and a download of the latest version as well as some limited support provided in the comments of the post.

Cal Evans has posted a quick note over on the Zend Developer Zone about a podcast that Zend co-founder Andi Gutmans participated in for RedMonk Radio.

Andi is featured in episode #33 of RedMonk radio. In it James and Conte quiz Andi about PHP on the IBM System i, scalability, The Microsoft partnership, and a host of other topics.

They honed in on the System i stuff and mention how Java, one thought to be the perfect fit for the platform, has fallen short.

You can grab the podcast directly from here or, if you want to find out more about the RedMonk Podcast, check out their site.

Cal Evans has posted a quick note over on the Zend Developer Zone about a podcast that Zend co-founder Andi Gutmans participated in for RedMonk Radio.

Andi is featured in episode #33 of RedMonk radio. In it James and Conte quiz Andi about PHP on the IBM System i, scalability, The Microsoft partnership, and a host of other topics.

They honed in on the System i stuff and mention how Java, one thought to be the perfect fit for the platform, has fallen short.

You can grab the podcast directly from here or, if you want to find out more about the RedMonk Podcast, check out their site.