php[architect]

by Theo Spears

Your PHP applications most likely need to store some kind of data. While databases provide high performance and reliability, actually using them when writing object-orientated code can prove tedious. In this article, author Theo Spears describes three solutions which help you to forget about storage and allow you to focus on functionality.

by Ronel Sumibcay

By now, you've probably heard about the benefits of OOP and how it provides the ability to have more reusable, maintainable, and extensible code. But, if your background is in procedural programming, switching to OOP may seem like an overwhelming task. Author Ronel Sumibcay shows you how to harness the power of OO design patterns, to organize your code into layers, and allow you to more confidently develop a piece of code by knowing its place and responsibilities in the overall application.

by Derick Rethans

PHP's handling of variables can be non-obvious, at times. Have you ever wondered what happens at the engine level when a variable is copied to another? How about when a function returns a variable "by reference?" Major PHP contributor Derick Rethans gives an inside look.

by Marco Tabini

Tired of fighting with full-text search in MySQL? Do you need to create a professional-quality search engine and don’t want to have to deal with all the details? Then look no further than Xapian, the open-source search technology that you can integrate directly into your PHP scripts.

by Marcus Baker

We write slices of applications. The PHP architecture involves writing code on a page by page basis. At the start of every page we have to create every object and at the end of the script they are all torn down. This constant setting up and tearing down makes object construction very important to the PHPer. It's not always an easy task though, as if one object can create another you have introduced a dependency just as much as if one object uses another. Columnist Marcus Baker describes the various object-contruction options.

by Ben Ramsey

Has your blog (or that of a friend) been inundated with comment spam? Columnist Ben Ramsey brings back the Tips & Tricks column with an overview of ways to prevent this annoying side-effect of running a publicly-commentable website.