For those using (or wanting to use) the SQL Server driver for PHP via PDO, Brian Swan has a handy resource for you - a PDO Cheat Sheet.

With this weeks release of the SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0 CTP 1 (which includes a PDO driver for SQL Server), I need to get up to speed quickly. And, the truth is, I'm fairly inexperienced with PDO, so a cheat sheet is helping me learn the API. Besides, there are some constants that are database specific...I don't stand a chance of keeping those at the ready without a cheat sheet.

This cheat sheet is for this first release of the PDO driver, so it'll probably change as time goes on, but it's a good starting place. You can find out more details about the methods and constants mentioned on the PDO page of the PHP.net site.

Scott Klarr has pulled together a listing of the top cheat sheets that he's found out there relating to PHP (and things surrounding it) like:

• this one from blueshoes.org
• a sheet covering filtering and escaping
• a Smarty cheat sheet
• a few covering WordPress
• and ones covering CakePHP and Drupal

Check out his page for more (and thumbnails for each).

Harry Fuecks has gotten busy and posted the third part of his "Joy of Regular Expressions" series over on the SitePoint PHP Blog today.

Following on from the last part, this one is more of an intermission-a round up of regex syntax seen so far and a couple of links following feedback.

He looks at two different topics:

• A "must reads" section of resources for getting the most out of regular expressions
• A comprehensive "cheat sheet" with tips on expression delimiters, literals, pattern modifiers, character classes, quantifiers, assertions, sub-patterns, and working with the blackslash.

One of the more elusive concepts of programming can be working with regular expressions. Now, there's lots of places to learn them and to get a handle on what they can do (such as this book), but what if you don't need the full-blown reference and just want a quick and dirty reference source? AddedBytes.com is happy to be of service with their latest cheat sheet divided up into the different formats (anchors, character classes, assertions, escape characters, etc).

The Regular Expressions cheat sheet is designed to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper and live by a designer or developer's desk, to make life a bit easier. A description of what is on the cheat sheet follows, or if you are impatient, you can go straight to the full size Regular Expressions cheat sheet.

This time, they've posted it in a few different formats, including a torrent file to make for faster/easier download. They still have the usual methods (PDF and PNG) but you'll need to visit the page for those links - it's been requested not to directly link to them.

At the 456 Berea St blog today, there's a popular new post that demonstrates a simple (yet effective) method for switching out the style sheets on your site at the whim of the user.

Want to have a style switcher that lets your site's visitors choose a different style sheet? Want it to work even if there is no JavaScript support? The trick is to use a server-side language like PHP, which is what I use for my style switcher.

Using PHP to let the user switch to a different CSS file is nothing new. But it is one of the things that I am often asked about, so I thought it would be good to have a write-up to refer people to in the future.

The code for the switcher is only about five lines long, implementation and all, but it's a nice, clean way to do it. It would break if the viewer didn't have cookies allowed on their system, though.

Davey Shafik has created a cheat sheet useful for any developer out there using a database, one to remind you of the filtering and escaping techniques to use before putting data into your database or outputting it to your site.

After having two conversation on escaping data for MySQL? insertion within 5 minutes of each other in ##php@freenode, I decided to created a cheat sheet on Filtering & Escaping in general.

I think what most people are not aware of is that not just outputting to the browser is output. So it querying a database, or calling one of the exec functions, or even using the mail function (not mentioned on the cheat sheet, perhaps for v2.

You can grab the cheat sheet here in a PDF format.

From Trevor's blog, thingoid, today, there's Here's my Markdown. It's great to be able to write in (nearly) plain English - say, for submitting something for print - and being able to dump the same text down into the blog and have it work on the web. Setting aside writing-for-web vs. writing-for-print issues, I find this a great help.

And PHP Markdown Extra adds a few niceties, like Markdown inside HTML block tags, simple tables, and definition lists. It just drops straight into WordPress and away you go.

For more information on Markdow (or it's use in PHP), you can check out the Markdown manual first and the PHP one to follow up...

John Cox has a pointer today in this new entry on his blog to a handy cheat sheet for converting Perl to PHP.

Robert Kline has a handy little cheat sheet to translate Perl to PHP or vice versa. It's been quite some time since I had written any Perl, besides a quick parser or two. This certainly does the trick for me in getting my thinking correct for the Perl syntax. I would assume Perl hackers would say the same thing when needing to use PHP.

The sheet goes through things like arrays, array split/joins, string comparisons, HTML elements, and MySQL database access. Obviously, it works the other way around too, allowing PHP programmers to get some of the basics of Perl...

On our sister site, AjaxDeveloper.org today, there's a new post that references an "Unobtrusive Degradable Ajax Style Sheet Switcher" powered on the backend by PHP - UDASSS.

First of all, the idea is very simple. I wanted something just like what Paul Sowden put together in Alternative Style: Working With Alternate Style Sheets from Alistapart Magazine EXCEPT a few minor (not-so-minor actually) differences which I've listed briefly below:

• Allow users to switch styles without JavaScript enabled (degradable)
• Preventing the F.O.U.C. before the window 'load' when getting preferred styles
• Keep the JavaScript entirely off our markup (no onclick's or onload's)
• Make it very very easy to implement (ok, Paul did that too)

What I did to achieve this was used server-side cookies instead of JavaScript cookies. Hence, PHP. However this isn't a "PHP style switcher" '" which is where Ajax comes in. For the extreme technical folks, no, there is no xml involved here, or even a callback response. I only say Ajax because everyone knows what 'it' means. With that said, it's the Ajax that sets the cookies 'on the fly'. Got it? Awesome!

The rest of the post is a tutorial on how to use it (simply), and a direct link to download it.