On the Symfony blog there's a post that reminds you, at a time of year when giving is top of mind of a lot of people, to say thank you to the libraries you depend on.

If you're like me, you build apps that depend on a lot of great PHP libraries that are maintained by countless talented developers. That's amazing! The PHP community has come so far! And while I try my best to contribute back, it's tough to show appreciation for all these efforts.

Sometimes, I just want to send some ???? and shout THANKS!

To make it easier, they've released the Thanks composer plugin that will star every package your project depends on automatically to show them your appreciation. It may seem like a little thing to do but project maintainers love to know that their work is appreciated. If you want to show even more appreciation consider emailing the team or individuals working on the project and let them know.

It's easy to get discouraged when working on an Open Source project and hearing back from the users of the library can do wonders for the maintainers and contributors.

On the NETTUTS.com site there's new tutorial showing you how to combine the power of PHP and jQuery to create a quick and easy star rating system for your web application.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build a rating system with AJAX, PHP, and jQuery. Votes will be recorded and updated in real-time with the magic of AJAX, and we’ll also leverage the power of PHP so that you don’t even need a database!

The Ajax portion of the script is handled by a "$.post" request made from jQuery to the PHP backend when a star is clicked. Once the message is sent to the PHP backend, the information is serialized and pushed into a text file. This method can easily be modified to work with a database too.

T'is the season for snow and twinkling lights, and the PHP-GTK Community site has taken this to heart with their latest tutorial posted today showing the creation of a Drawing area with stars and blinking lights.

They start with an overview of the mini-project (three different parts) and quickly get into the code.

First it's the abstract class Object, then the BasicStar that extends our object (complete with the method for drawing the dots), and finally the "Christmas widget" that they all get pushed into. The result is a small window that has flashing "lights" and will run until you shut it off. Happy holidays!

T'is the season for snow and twinkling lights, and the PHP-GTK Community site has taken this to heart with their latest tutorial posted today showing the creation of a Drawing area with stars and blinking lights.

They start with an overview of the mini-project (three different parts) and quickly get into the code.

First it's the abstract class Object, then the BasicStar that extends our object (complete with the method for drawing the dots), and finally the "Christmas widget" that they all get pushed into. The result is a small window that has flashing "lights" and will run until you shut it off. Happy holidays!

Pádraic Brady is back today with another update on the game he's working on and his latest addition - the stars and planets ("bodies").

Planets and Stars ("Bodies") form the central hub around which the majority of a player's activity will center. This planning document addresses the generation and mapping of these entities, and not their individual contents, facilities or uses.

He breaks it down into a few steps:

• Laying a Foundation
• Adding Stars
• Skeleton Map_Star Interfaces
• Implementing the Map_Star Interfaces
• Position Random
• Generate Simple
• Conclusion

The end result is a system for positioning stars and providing all of the star's data to the user.

Pádraic Brady is back today with another update on the game he's working on and his latest addition - the stars and planets ("bodies").

Planets and Stars ("Bodies") form the central hub around which the majority of a player's activity will center. This planning document addresses the generation and mapping of these entities, and not their individual contents, facilities or uses.

He breaks it down into a few steps:

• Laying a Foundation
• Adding Stars
• Skeleton Map_Star Interfaces
• Implementing the Map_Star Interfaces
• Position Random
• Generate Simple
• Conclusion

The end result is a system for positioning stars and providing all of the star's data to the user.