code:diesl has posted their list of the top six books that can help you master the PHP language:

If you are new to PHP or are thinking of moving to PHP form other language then the following list of books will provide you with the required knowledge to become a seasoned PHP programmer. Of course, the list is subjective and you may have a different list of books in mind.

Their list is made up of:

• Zend PHP5 Certification
• PHP in Action
• PHP and MySQL Web Development
• PEAR
• PHP Cookbook
• SQL for MySQL Developers

Matthew Weir O'Phinney has a great new blog post today on the topic so many developers don't even think about when working up their applications - making apps that aren't "loners" and are embeddable.

"Why embed?" you ask. Simple: if I'm creating a site that has one or two of these applications, but also my (or my company's) own custom functionality, I may want to ensure that certain elements are present on all pages, or that I can control some of the content in all pages: a unified header and footer, ability to inject statistic tracking javascript, etc.

The predominant attitudes are either, "Don't embed our app, embed your app in ours," or "Just modify the templates." Neither of these solutions is acceptable.

He proposes a few helpful hints to those developing applications right now to have them be that much more "embeddable" like:

• When using configuration files, use a configuration component that doesn't require use of the global namespace
• Have your bootstrap script call on class methods or functions to do their work
• Better yet, use an MVC pattern in your apps
• Make sure your templates are easily modified to allow developers to strip out header, footer, and menu elements
• Create an API to allow retrieving necessary javascript and CSS
• Don't use $_GLOBALS ever.

In his latest blog post, Tobias Schlitt shares a bit of a book review about one of the latest (German) PHP-related offerings from O'Reilly - PHP Design Patterns.

I seized the time on the tram yesterday night to take a look at it and I have to admit I'm quite impressed. Stephan managed to write down a lot of practical experience in respect to the implementation of OO patterns with PHP.

Tobias talks about the structure of the book (recommending it to anyone looking to learn OOP in PHP), and mentions some of the chapter topics including:

• New OOP features in PHP5
• Basic OOP concepts
• Generation Patterns (Singleton, Factory, etc)
• Behavior Patterns (Subject/Observer, Visitor, Iterator)

While some books only touch the theory of design patterns and avoid giving practical examples to the user, Stephan manages very good to combine both.