On the Jolicode Blog there's a new post covering something not often mentioned in PHP development: environment variables. In this tutorial the author provides what you "need to know" about these variables and how to more effectively use them in your applications.

Environment variables for configuration are today’s best practice for application setup – database credentials, API Keys, secrets and everything varying between deploys are now exposed to the code via the environment, instead of configuration files or worse, directly hard-coded. Let’s dive into: how does it work, is it really a good idea, how to deal with them in PHP and finally some recommendations and common errors to avoid – with some real world traps we fell into!

They start with a "101" look at environment variables, covering what they are and how they can be referenced from your code (both in the web server and on the command line). They briefly talk about the potential danger in their use and using a .env file to store and read them rather than having them as web server configuration options. The post also includes examples of importing these values using various libraries and some of the common pitfalls that can come with their use.

Adam Culp has posted his latest episode of his "Run Geek Radio" podcast series with Episode #8: Escaping PHP Variables Forgotten

Escaping variables in PHP is as important as ever, and developers can sometimes forget about it when using a modern framework. Adam Culp, the host of Run Geek Radio, talks a little about common pitfalls and how to handle them. Also covered is the ZendCon and SunshinePHP preparations and status of Adam speaking at some other upcoming conferences. Plus a brief update on the running front and training.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 directly. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to the feed and get information about the latest episodes as they're released.

On the DeveloperDrive.com site today there's a new post with five easy steps you can take to help increase the security of your PHP-based applications.

For many years, PHP has been a stable, inexpensive platform on which to operate web-based applications. Like most web-based platforms, PHP is vulnerable to external attacks. Developers, database architects and system administrators should take precautions before deploying PHP applications to a live server. Most of these techniques can be accomplished with a few lines of code or a slight adjustment to the application settings.

The five tips they list range from general "best practice" kinds of things to a bit more specific:

• Manage Setup Scripts
• Include Files (using ".php" not ".inc")
• MD5 vs. SHA
• Automatic Global Variables (no longer an issue in recent releases, 5.4.x)
• Initialize Variables and Values

In this new post to his blog Rob Allen shows you how to access the view variables from another ViewModel.

Unlike Zend Framework 1, the view layer in Zend Framework 2 separates the variables assigned to each view model. This means that when you are in the layout view script, you don't automatically have access to variables that were assigned the the action's view model and vice versa.

He includes snippets of code with an example controller and a sample view that fetches a value from a child ViewModel instance. He also shows how to access layout and configuration values in the view.

The third part of the "PHP source for developers" series has been posted over on Anthony Ferrara's blog today looking at the variables PHP's internals use.

In this third post of the PHP's Source Code for PHP Developers series, we're going to expand on the prior posts to help understand how PHP works internally. In the first post of the series, we looked at how to view PHP's source code, how it's structured as well as some basic C pointers for PHP developers. The second post introduced functions into the mix. This time around, we're going to dive into one of the most useful structures in PHP: variables.

He starts with one of the most important variable types used in PHP's source - the ZVAL. This is one of the keys to PHP's loose typing and can be thought of as "a class with only public properties". He gets into more detail with the properties of this "class" (value, refcount__gc, type and is_ref__gc). Also included is a look at how it's actually used - creating new ones, getting the value of them, converting their types and how the internal PHP functions parse their variables.

There's a lot more covered about variables in the post so if this is interesting stuff to you, be sure to read it all. They've done a great job of explaining one of the more complicated parts of the internals that power PHP.

The "Introduction to CodeIgniter" series continues on DevShed with this new article, a look at nested views in their sample application.

In this third chapter of the series I’m going to discuss one that bases its functionality on the loader class that comes bundled with CI. [...] By means of this method, it is very simple to replace in one single step all the variables included into multiple views with actual data. Therefore, in the next few lines I’m going to discuss how to use it to generate a dynamic web document, which will display some database contents.

After a quick review of loading views sequentially, they look at the new stuff - a "master view" that can load multiple other views inside. To pass information into this master view, they use the "$this->load->vars()" method included in the framework.

Felix Geisendorfer shares another helpful tip for CakePHP users out there - this time dealing with controller variables and Javascript.

If your application requires JavaScript in order to work than you have probably been looking for an efficient way to pass CakePHP controller variables to your scripts. I already mentioned this technique in my talk at CakeFest this year, but here is the full explanation.

His method sets up a new function in the controller that automatically pushes PHP arrays out to a Javascript block in your application's layout. The widget system makes it a simple process.

WebReference.com has posted part two in a series looking at the "building blocks" that make up PHP and its use. This time, it's a look at the containers for your data - the data types, literals, variables, and constants.

They go through each, explaining what they are, how they're used and when you'd want to use them in your code. They explain the data types and how those fit with each "container" and some basic things like valid names and how to assign things correctly.

They even get get into working with variables from GET and POST requests as well as working with the scope of variables and getting the metadata about them (is it an integer? is it empty?)

WebReference.com has posted part two in a series looking at the "building blocks" that make up PHP and its use. This time, it's a look at the containers for your data - the data types, literals, variables, and constants.

They go through each, explaining what they are, how they're used and when you'd want to use them in your code. They explain the data types and how those fit with each "container" and some basic things like valid names and how to assign things correctly.

They even get get into working with variables from GET and POST requests as well as working with the scope of variables and getting the metadata about them (is it an integer? is it empty?)

In his latest post, Brian Moon talks about a method to help you and your code fit into an E_STRICT style of coding - the settype function.

These days, the way to develop is to have E_ALL and maybe even throw in E_STRICT if you are really hard core. That of course means having all your variables initialized before they are used.

In his view, defining them is good, but it's more "elegant" to use the settype function to make it more clear where they are defined. He also includes a function, using settype, that ensures that the entered values are what they should be (i.e. and int is an int).