devReview() is a site by php web developers for php web developers. It features articles, news and resource reviews related to the awesome php scripting language. Resources are divided into 3 sections, with more to come: code editors, web development books and PHP development frameworks. PHP does not exist on its own, and we are interested in related back end resources such as Apache and MySQL as well as the front end (XHTML, CSS and Javascript). Basically anything a php based web developer needs to know to create great web sites and applications for a profession or fun.
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I had occasion to set up a dev box to test a new web application against different php versions, so I thought I would share the steps. This setup is for one PHP version at a time, and I have documented for 2 versions, but more can be done if required. Also I have used PHP4 and 5, but it could be multiple versions of PHP5, such as a beta version of 5.3. This setup was done using Apache2 on Windows.
Read more 'Switching between PHP versions with Apache on Windows'.
Recently I was involved in a project that returned graphic thumbnails in response to a remote php script call. One of the optimisations done was to have browser caching of returned images to save on our bandwidth. I will share the code we used to do this.
Read more 'PHP image output and browser caching'.
Cake, Zend, Symfony and CodeIgniter are the best known PHP frameworks, but as is obvious from the the big list of PHP frameworks, there are many more out there. I have had my say on why there are so many, so I thought it was appropriate to ask some maintainers of lesser known PHP frameworks why they have also created a public framework. I was fortunate that all 4 took the time to reply to my 5 questions. Take the time to check out these frameworks they might be what you need for your next project.
The questions and answers follow here, grouped by framework.
Read more '5 questions of framework maintainers'.
If you are using version control in your development, your team or self is most likely wanting to use an issue or bug tracker for your development. There are alternatives to a dedicated product like whiteboards, spreadsheets, email folders or a super memory. However for this article we will compare dedicated issue trackers, and to be more specific, 5 PHP based trackers that are released as free and open source software. All evaluation was done using PHP5.2.6 on Apache 2.2.9, MySQL 5.0.67.
Read more '5 Free Software PHP Issue Trackers'.
Since producing the big list of PHP frameworks I have been contacted privately by email and the issue has been raised by David in the comments. Why so many frameworks for PHP? Python has a few, and Ruby has 2 of its main frameworks merging. PHP has at least 50 active public frameworks with a vast unknown number of in house frameworks. It has been suggested this is a waste of resources and that 1 good framework is all that is needed.
Read more 'So why so many PHP frameworks?'.