On the QaFoo blog they have a new post offering some advice on extracting functionality to data objects and reducing the complexity of your application's interfaces.

Extracting data objects from your code will make it easier to read and write, easier to test and more forward compatible. This post shows you the two most common cases where introducing a data object makes sense and how to do it.

The first case covers the extraction when a method ends up with too many parameters. We've all been there and remembering the correct order and values for each (not to mention optional vs required). By making use of value objects you can reduce that down to one or two parameters that act as self-contained "containers" for the same values. They illustrate with a refactor of "product" search criteria into a "ProductCriteria" object. The second example show a refactor away from using an array as an input value and providing a bit more structure with a "Checkout" value object instead.

The post ends with a helpful hint about migrating from one method to the other in legacy systems using a "shim" method to handle the new case right alongside the old one.

The Laravel podcast, hosted by Matt Stauffer with regular guests Taylor Otwell and Jeffrey Way, has posted their latest episode today - Episode #32: Adam Wathan Is Strong

In this episode, the crew discusses simple code, staying focused, Adam vs. The Hulk, and coding music.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 of the show. If you enjoy it, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter to get updates on the latest episodes as they're released.

Hannes Magnusson has a new post to his site talking about the new update to the MongoDB driver for PHP and its focus on simplicity.

For the past few months I've been working on a "next-gen" MongoDB driver for PHP -- codename "phongo". The aim was to build a new PHP extension ontop of the mongoc and libbson libraries to reduce maintenance of the extension itself and focus more on providing the ecosystem with improved support and libraries.

The new driver is available on PECL (called "mongodb", surprisingly enough). It doesn't include any of the bells and whistles found in the previous "mongo" driver. It doesn't include any `group` or `count` command helpers, and you won't find any Collection or Database objects; however, it really doesn't need any of these things.

He talks about the three basic things it can do: execute a command, a write or a query to locate records. He also answers the question many developers have about this shift to simplicity and provides a link to a PHP library to make porting over existing MongoDB handling simpler.

Jack Skinner has a new post to his site showing how he rewrote his blog aiming for simplicity with the help of Sculpin and Codeship.

I’ve recently relaunched my blog (hi everyone!), I’ll migrate some old content and scrap others. While I clean up the content however I wanted to share how the new site has come into being.

He starts off talking about why he chose to go with Sculpin but doesn't get too much into it as there are "plenty of posts and content around" on how to get started. He then talks about the Codeship service and share some of the initial setup commands and setting up a deployment pipeline to an AWS instance. He makes use of the S3 website hosting, Route53 and CloudFront services for the serving of the actual site. Codeship makes it simple to deploy a new build whenever he updates or adds a new post too.

Matt Setter has a quick new post that suggests a way you can get more done with less work - simplicity.

Though we can do so many things simultaneously – should we? Does it actually reduce effectiveness and productivity which are the antithesis of professional application development? [...] I had the thought, as is common in a western-based mentality, that to be busy, to be industrious, to try and multi-task a series of independent tasks and projects simultaneously was the right thing to do. It’s meant to be a simple formula: "Greater productivity = Greater self-worth right?" Sounds almost like Thatcherism. I felt that this was not only right, but the sign of an intelligent and sophisticated developer, who truly had honed his craft. Perhaps you’ve felt the same at one time or another?

He points out that, while it's very easy for developers to fall into this trap and way of thinking, it's not sustainable. It leads to stress, bad code and even - possibly - an even higher bug count. Instead he suggests the good standby idea of "KISS" (essentially, simplicity).

Instead of trying to do everything at once – I stopped and decided to only do one thing at once. And that one thing, had my full attention and focus. When it was done, I then moved on to the next one. Not before and not after.

He includes some of his own experience trying to apply this in a Zend Framework 2 application.

Simon Holywell has a new post to his site about a project that aims to be a minimalist ORM library and make it easier to built queries on the fly for your applications (and is installable via Composer) - the Idorm + Paris combination.

Idiorm is a PHP ORM that eschews complexity and deliberately remains lightweight with support for PHP5.2+. [...] However, having said this, Idiorm is very powerful and it makes most of the queries PHP applications require pain free. Some of these features include fluent query building, multiple connection support and result sets for easy record manipulation. Paris sits on top of Idiorm to provide a simplified active record implementation based upon the same minimalist philosophy.

He includes examples in the post of both queries with Idiorm - simple things like creating and finding records - and using Paris to make models out of PHP objects. He also talks some about the current state of the project, recent advancements and some of the things they're looking to do with it in the future (including dropping PHP 5.2 support and use late static binding).

Doug Brown asks a question on his blog today that is coming up more and more, especially on those programmers new to the language that don't quite get what frameworks really have to offer. Do you really need a framework for writing PHP?

The simplicity in using PHP sometimes acts against it. Since there are very few coding restrictions, developers tend to write a bad code. The answer to this is definitely to use a framework. There are various PHP Frameworks available today like Zend Framework, CakePHP Framework and CodeIgniter. They provide a strong organization for your application and follow the commonly used MVC pattern.

To help out those new to frameworks, offers a few things they have to offer that normal procedural/library-based development may not. These include maintaining code standards, attractive URLs and getting help when you need it from other developers using the same system.

Fred Wu recently posted some of his thoughts on using the Zend Framework as a developer in other frameworks looking to expand his knowledge.

When Zend Framework was first announced, the developers have promised us one thing: extreme simplicity. I was 'extremely' excited, but it turned out that it wasn't the case. Ironically, Zend Framework is the most difficult one I have come crossed so far. I mean, as complicated as Symfony is, it has brilliant documentation and an active community to back it up.

He also comments on the level of documentation the framework has ("the documentation is often outdated, sometimes inaccurate"), the Zend_Search_Lucene component, some of what he thinks are missing components that should be in a 1.5 release, and a last jab at the naming conventions.

Yet another PHP framework can be added to the lists already out there - Simplicity:

The Simplicity PHP Application Framework is an advanced, scalable and extensible PHP application framework to aid developers in creating high traffic, high availability Web 2.0 online applications. Integrating a solid MVC framework with some of the best Open Source projects around Simplicity aims to assist developers with any amount of experience in taking their applications to a new level.

As mentioned on the Ajaxian post about the framework, there's an Ajax admin console that lets the developer configure everything in their app including database info, creation of controllers and drop-in predefined actions.

Yet another PHP framework can be added to the lists already out there - Simplicity:

The Simplicity PHP Application Framework is an advanced, scalable and extensible PHP application framework to aid developers in creating high traffic, high availability Web 2.0 online applications. Integrating a solid MVC framework with some of the best Open Source projects around Simplicity aims to assist developers with any amount of experience in taking their applications to a new level.

As mentioned on the Ajaxian post about the framework, there's an Ajax admin console that lets the developer configure everything in their app including database info, creation of controllers and drop-in predefined actions.