PHPMaster.com has posted some news you might have missed that's happened in the development and open source communities recently. In the post Bruno Skvorc covers updates to projects, resources and various online tools/environments related to PHP.

The last month or two have been chock full of small news and releases not warranting a full story in their own right but still interesting, I’ve decided to make a small compilation and direct your attention to the interesting developments around us. Just because we don’t cover something immediately, doesn’t mean we don’t notice or care.

Included in the post are updates about:

• Ubuntu 14.04. LTS
• Google App Engine 1.9.1 – 1.9.3
• Hack
• Phalcon 2 beta 1
• the Zend Framework 2 Certified Architect certification
• Zend Framework 3 Progress

...and several more. Check out the full post for more information on these and several other recent happenings around the web.

On PHPMaster.com today there's a new tutorial for those on the bleeding edge of PHP using the latest released version (5.4) and a feature that comes with it - using the built-in webserver that comes bundled for testing purposes.

One of the cooler features of the new PHP 5.4 release is a built-in web server designed specifically for development and testing. Now you can write and test your code without having to have a full-fledged LAMP configuration - just launch a the built-in server from the command line, test your code, and then shut it down when you're finished. [...] In this article I'll explain some basic uses of the new built-in server and show you how to build a portable personal development server useful for quickly testing your applications

He starts with a look at how to start up the web server (a simple command line switch and host/port definition) and the resulting default phpinfo page it displays. Other options include the ability to specify a document root for your server and create a sort of "front controller" for it to route requests. They show how to create a simple application based on this that can dynamically load in the index file, a router and pass the request off to the correct file. Their example includes some "niceties" too like logging, "hosts allowed" and checks for requesting directories.

You can find their full code for this example over on github.

If you're a last.fm user and have been curious about how to get the latest list of your "last played" selections, Philip Norton has just the code you'll need.

The other day I was approached by a friend (Julie Cheung) and asked if I could create some code that would display a list of last played tracks from last.fm. Julie isn't a PHP developer and so the code I gave her had to be easily understandable so that she could edit it herself if needed. The following code is what I came up with.

The code pulls from the defined user's "recenttracks" feed and parses it (via a simplexml_load_string call) into an object that's looped through and outputted. Data that comes back from the feed includes artist anme, name of the track, a URL to more information about it and an image of the album cover. He also includes an updated version that caches the data for three minutes so it's not always relying on the last.fm servers to be there.

Recent CakePHP-related posts from The Bakery:

• Form posting with '_GET' parameters

• Bake ROT13 Encoded "mailto:" Links
• Wizard Component 1.2

The Zend Developer Zone has their latest security tip posted for all of you eagerly awaiting more words of wisdom. This time, it's on a topic near and dear to Zend's heart - keeping your framework up to date.

Make sure any framework you are using is updated regularly. This is especially important if you are working on a 'one-shot' client project. It is important to think about who is going to maintain the site if (or rather: when) a security patch is issued for any of the 3rd party files.

Using frameworks is generally a good idea – not only because they take a lot of the work away from you, but also because any potential security issue will (usually) quickly be dealt with.

Cal also talks about the other side of the coin - that the openness a framework can have can allow for would-be attackers to find the holes and issues in your site much easier.

The Zend Developer Zone has their latest security tip posted for all of you eagerly awaiting more words of wisdom. This time, it's on a topic near and dear to Zend's heart - keeping your framework up to date.

Make sure any framework you are using is updated regularly. This is especially important if you are working on a 'one-shot' client project. It is important to think about who is going to maintain the site if (or rather: when) a security patch is issued for any of the 3rd party files.

Using frameworks is generally a good idea – not only because they take a lot of the work away from you, but also because any potential security issue will (usually) quickly be dealt with.

Cal also talks about the other side of the coin - that the openness a framework can have can allow for would-be attackers to find the holes and issues in your site much easier.