php[architect]

by Travis Swicegood

Writing tests is something you do every day, possibly without even realizing it. Setting up an entire test suite for an application, however, is a whole different thing. Travis shows you how PHPT can remove the pain and help make the adoption of test-driven development a simple matter of choice rather than a matter of time and effort.

by Stanislav Malyshev

The most talked-about feature of PHP 6 is its native Unicode support. However, when it comes to developing Web pages for an international audience, supporting various characters and encodings is only the beginning. The internationalization extension for PHP 5 and PHP 6 provides much needed functionality for globalized application development.

by Michael Tutty

Until very recently, PHP has not been nearly as Web service-friendly as other platforms, notably Java and .NET. Even now, as core PHP 5 features begin to close this gap, it is still somewhat tedious and complicated to code Web service clients and servers in PHP. What PHP developers need is a simple, robust framework for consuming and offering Web services. Better SOAP support would make PHP more acceptable in corporate IT shops that are becoming increasingly service-oriented.

by Bart McLeod

When frameworks started to be mentioned regularly in php|architect, Bart got a little worried. Shouldn't he try them and discover what all the fuzz was about? But he found himself too busy fixing bugs and security holes in his own legacy code to spend time on that. His worries didn't go away however. At one pointm he even began shaping his own legacy class library into a tiny little framework—all the while knowing this was probably pointless, with so many more frameworks growing out there in the PHP community.

by Steph Fox

"My garage is full of elephants" is a strange utterance to hear on any occasion (except perhaps a meeting of Barnum executives)—and ever more so when you're hearing it coming from of the community's best-known members.

by Jeff Moore

The concepts of coupling and cohesion in object oriented programming have been the subject of many a Test Pattern column, usually along the way to discussing a broader concept. This month, though, Jeff takes a step back and examines cohesion in more detail.

by Paul Reinheimer

If you already use Firebug every day of your working life, you can skip this column. On the other hand, if Firebug is only a cute-sounding name to you, you'd better read on.

by Sean Coates

I (heart) Unicode. I (hate) Unicode. I really (hate) Unicode.