DRX

Web Developer Resource Index: PHP

PHP is a popular server-side scripting language used by many developers to deliver dynamic content in their Web pages. It is generally embedded into the same document markup code as the rest of the page, usually HTML. I use it to extract content from MySQL databases and other sources, and then deliver these pages to my visitors as XHTML.

PHP is similar in concept to CGI scripting, but it has several advantages. Foremost is efficiency: scripting languages like PHP are modular components of the Web server rather than separate programs and processes. This makes communication through the server, and thus the results returned to the user, much faster. In addition, PHP scripts have access to the full Web server API—in this case Apache.

PHP has a large assortment of extensions that allow the programmer to communicate with various database systems, generate graphics, connect to FTP servers, read and write XML code, send email, and so on.

If you’re interested, you can view the PHP source code to this page.

If you find this directory useful, please take a moment to rate and/or review it on Hotscripts. I put a lot of work into drx, so I would very much appreciate it. Thank you!

Updated: Friday, October 20th, 2006 @ 5:00 PM EST [23]

Programming:Languages:PHP {0}(86)

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Resources

• 1.PHP Manual

  The manual consists primarily of a function reference, but also contains a language reference, explanations of some of PHP's major features, and other supplemental information. [61]

  ★★★★★
  URI:http://php.net/manual/
  Author:
  PHP Staff
  [2]
  Reviewed:Monday, April 4th, 2005 @ 11:42 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  PHP Manual developerphpprogramming
   

• 2.PHP 5 Power Programming

  Downloaded over 1 million times, this book in PDF (and available in dead tree format) is a must-have for PHP 4 programmers migrating to version 5. Covering OOP in detail, it also includes chapters on DBs, PEAR, XML, CLI, Error Handling and Performance. [1693]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://www.computer-books.us/php_2.php
  Author:
  Andi Gutmans
  [1]
  Reviewed:Friday, October 20th, 2006 @ 5:00 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  PHP 5 Power Programming databaseoopperformancephpshellxml
   

• 3.Xdebug

  Available in source form, or as Linux and Windows binaries, Xdebug is a powerful client tool you can leverage to run stack and function traces through your PHP code, check for logical and other errors, and find bottlenecks using the profiling features. [1692]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://xdebug.org/
  Author:
  Derick Rethans
  [1]
  Reviewed:Thursday, October 12th, 2006 @ 10:37 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Xdebug debuglinuxopen sourcephpzend
   

• 4.Recommended PHP Reading List

  This list of recommended reading material on PHP is compiled from a variety of online sources by Web application developers at IBM's Global Production Services. An comprehensive list, despite the fact that the database integration material is focused DB2. [1679]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-php-read/
  Author:
  Daniel Krook
  [1]
  Reviewed:Sunday, March 26th, 2006 @ 12:00 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Recommended PHP Reading List databasedeveloperphpprogrammingreferenceresourcessecuritytutorial
   

• 5.A Few Tips for Writing Useful Libraries in PHP

  From the author of MagpieRSS is this excellent article on best practices when designing, coding and supporting software libraries written in PHP (or any language pretty much). Packed with 20 tips, and lots of examples and insights, it's well worth a read. [1671]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://laughingmeme.org/articles/2003/08/05/a-few-tips-for-writing-us...
  Author:
  Kellan Elliott-McCrea
  [2]
  Reviewed:Sunday, March 19th, 2006 @ 12:03 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  A Few Tips for Writing Useful Libraries in PHP developermagpiemodulephpprogrammingsoftware
   

• 6.Zend Developer Zone

  An online community for professional PHP developers, the Zone is a collection of news, articles, tutorials and examples, and provides the community with an interactive forum to promote best practices and methods for using PHP in real world applications. [1661]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://devzone.zend.com/
  Author:
  Community
  [22]
  Reviewed:Saturday, March 4th, 2006 @ 10:16 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Zend Developer Zone communitydeveloperforumphpprogrammingzend
   

• 7.SafeHTML

  If you're planning on rolling your own commenting system that accepts markup from a form, then you had best be careful about XSS and similar security issues. SafeHTML is a parser that will strip all potentially dangerous content from any untrusted source. [1655]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://pixel-apes.com/safehtml/
  Author:
  Roman Ivanov
  [1]
  Reviewed:Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 @ 1:06 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  SafeHTML htmlmarkupphpsecurityxhtmlxss
   

• 8.Symfony

  Built from Mojavi (Model View Controller), Propel (object-relational mapping), Creole (database abstraction) and inspired by Rails, Symfony is an open-source PHP5 MVC framework designed to quickly create and easily maintain enterprise Web applications. [1632]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://www.symfony-project.com/
  Author:
  Symfony Team
  [1]
  Reviewed:Monday, February 6th, 2006 @ 9:57 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Symfony databasedeveloperframeworkmvcoopopen sourcephpprogrammingweb
   

• 9.Duck Soup

  A Technorati API library with support for CosmosQuery, SearchQuery, GetInfoQuery, OutboundQuery, BlogInfoQuery, TagQuery, TopTags, AttentionQuery and KeyInfo. Ducksoup can interact with Technorati, perform queries and produce the data in organized trees. [1582]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://kailashnadh.name/ducksoup/
  Author:
  Kailash Nadh
  [1]
  Reviewed:Saturday, January 21st, 2006 @ 12:41 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Duck Soup apiblogdomoopphpprogrammingrestsearch
   

• 10.dBug

  dBug is a PHP class that displays structured information about a variable in a colored, tabular format. Simply put, it's PHP's var_dump function on steroids. With a name like dbug, all I can say is why didn't I think of that! (dbrowse, dcal, drx, hmm...). [1579]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://dbug.ospinto.com/
  Author:
  Kwaku Otchere
  [1]
  Reviewed:Sunday, January 1st, 2006 @ 10:12 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  dBug debugoopphp
   

• 11.Moodle

  Moodle is an open-source course management system designed using sound pedagogical principles with the goal of helping educators create effective online learning communities. It can scale from anywhere a single-teacher site to a 40,000-student University. [1574]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://moodle.org/
  Author:
  Martin Dougiamas
  [1]
  Reviewed:Friday, December 16th, 2005 @ 6:09 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Moodle educationmysqlopen sourcephpsoftware
   

• 12.PHPUnit

  Based on JUnit for Java, PHPUnit is an open-source framework for test-driven development with the PHP programming language. This is the online/ebook version of the same from O'Reilly and this author. PHP 5 is recommended, though you can get by with PHP 4. [1573]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://phpunit.de/pocket_guide/2.3/en/
  Author:
  Sebastian Bergmann
  [1]
  Reviewed:Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 @ 9:11 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  PHPUnit ebookframeworkjavaopen sourcephpprogramming
   

• 13.Debugging Techniques for PHP Programmers

  This article details various methods for debugging PHP applications, including turning on error reporting in Apache and PHP, and by placing strategic print statements to locate bugs in a sample PHP script. Also introduces PHPEclipse and DBG for Eclipse. [1572]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-debug/
  Author:
  Tyler Anderson
  [1]
  Reviewed:Thursday, December 8th, 2005 @ 2:18 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Debugging Techniques for PHP Programmers apachedebugphpprogramming
   

• 14.WASP

  Web Application Structure for PHP is a powerful MVC Web application framework built from the ground up in pure Object Oriented PHP 5. WASP allows Web developers to make great applications with more fun and less code, but in the familiar playground of PHP. [1546]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://wasp.sourceforge.net/content/
  Author:
  Brian Fioca
  [1]
  Reviewed:Wednesday, October 26th, 2005 @ 7:40 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  WASP developerframeworkoopphpprogramming
   

• 15.MediaWiki

  If you're looking for a Wiki package written in PHP, then look no further than MediaWiki, a free implementation developed by the fine folks at Wikipedia and related sites. MediaWiki uses a MySQL database backend and installation is incredibly simple. [1541]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
  Author:
  Wikimedia Foundation
  [1]
  Reviewed:Saturday, October 15th, 2005 @ 11:41 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  MediaWiki developerinstallmysqlphpwiki
   

• 16.Atlanta PHP

  Right up there with the best localized PHP developer community groups like NYPHP (New York) and PDX (Portland, OR) is Atlanta PHP. A great source for news, job openings and more. If you live in the Southeast, or are planning a move, look up Matt or Ben. [1540]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://atlphp.org/
  Author:
  Matt Kern
  [1]
  Reviewed:Saturday, October 15th, 2005 @ 3:00 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Atlanta PHP communitydeveloperphp
   

• 17.Joomla!

  From the same team that brought you the award winning Mambo CMS, OSM has taken their final stable version of Mambo (4.5.2.3), given it a spring clean and named it Joomla! 1.0, and it includes several features that were going to be released in Joomla! 1.1. [1533]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://joomla.org/
  Author:
  OpenSourceMatters
  [1]
  Reviewed:Wednesday, October 5th, 2005 @ 9:35 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Joomla! apachecmsmysqlopen sourcephp
   

• 18.PHundamentals

  From the NYPHP, one of the largest and most active PHP user groups, is this growing series of articles contributed by many of the diverse members of the PHP development community. Categories include AMP setup, site development and programming techniques. [1531]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://www.nyphp.org/phundamentals/
  Author:
  Community
  [22]
  Reviewed:Tuesday, October 4th, 2005 @ 6:05 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  PHundamentals apacheconfighowtomysqlphpprogramming
   

• 19.Drupal

  Drupal is a multi-platform Content Management System (CMS) that supports both MySQL and PostgreSQL backends, with a database abstraction layer that can be extended to add other RDBMS. Version 4.6+ is PHP 5 compatible. Too many features to enumerate here. [1520]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://drupal.org/
  Author:
  Drupal Community
  [1]
  Reviewed:Sunday, August 28th, 2005 @ 7:20 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Drupal cmsmysqlopen sourcephppostgresql
   

• 20.The Horde Project

  An object-oriented, open-source, open-standards framework for developing Web applications in PHP, as well as a set of existing applications including IMP, Turba, Kronolith, Nag and Mnemo. Phew! Supports localization features such as Unicode and RTL text. [1510]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://horde.org/
  Author:
  Horde Core Team
  [1]
  Reviewed:Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005 @ 9:54 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  The Horde Project developerframeworkoopopen sourcephpstandardsunicode
   

• 21.Savant

  A lightweight PHP templating system which, unlike Smarty, does not compile your templates or use a separate markup syntax. Instead, it uses normal PHP syntax, so there is no parsing overhead involved. Additional features include an OOP plugin/filter API. [1497]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://phpsavant.com/yawiki/
  Author:
  Paul M. Jones
  [1]
  Reviewed:Thursday, August 18th, 2005 @ 7:12 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Savant apimarkupoopphp
   

• 22.PHP Regular Expression Clinic

  This PDF slideshow format tutorial on the PHP PCRE extension is an outstanding resource for developers new to regular expressions. Exceptionally well designed, the presentation requires no speaker to inform the reader. Over 200 pages, with many examples. [1486]

  ★★★★★
  URI:http://www.gravitonic.com/downloads/talks/phpworks2004/regex_clinic_p...
  Author:
  Andrei Zmievski
  [1]
  Reviewed:Saturday, August 13th, 2005 @ 11:24 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  PHP Regular Expression Clinic pcreperlphpregexresourcestutorial
   

• 23.Mambo

  Mambo is probably the most popular open-source Content Management System (CMS) on the Web. Built on Apache, MySQL, and of course PHP. Runs on Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. SourceForge hosts several bundled distributions of Apache/MySQL/PHP plus the CMS. [1482]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://mamboserver.com/
  Author:
  Miro International
  [1]
  Reviewed:Thursday, August 11th, 2005 @ 9:01 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Mambo apachecmsmysqlopen sourcephp
   

• 24.PHP Cookbook

  Why reinvent the wheel? A collaborative collection of techniques, code examples and comments from the PHP development community. Anyone can contribute, or submit comments and improvements. Not to be confused with the O'Reilly books of the same name. [1479]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/PHP
  Author:
  Open Source Community
  [14]
  Reviewed:Thursday, August 11th, 2005 @ 12:42 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  PHP Cookbook codehowtophpresources
   

• 25.Tuning Apache and PHP for Speed on Unix

  To supplement John's detailed Optimizing PHP analysis, is this collection of tips, howtos and links for getting the most out of your PHP and Apache installation. My suggestion: pass arrays and objects by reference, both into and returning from functions. [1469]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://phplens.com/phpeverywhere/?q=node/view/8
  Author:
  John Lim
  [2]
  Reviewed:Friday, August 5th, 2005 @ 5:55 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Tuning Apache and PHP for Speed on Unix apacheconfigperformancephpunix
   

• 26.Markdown Extra

  An enhanced version of PHP Markdown, of which I am a huge fan. This release includes support for inline HTML, block-level elements, definition lists, tables, and new rules for emphasis and backslash escapes. Kudos to Michel, nice work! [1463]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/
  Author:
  Michel Fortin
  [3]
  Reviewed:Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 @ 10:28 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Markdown Extra blogmarkupphpprogramming
   

• 27.PHP Editors

  A mega-resource site that focuses on reviewing PHP editors and IDEs. In truth, that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's also news, templates, tutorials and articles, resources, book reviews, forums, programming contests, and jobs including freelancing. [1430]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://www.php-editors.com/
  Author:
  PHP Editors
  [1]
  Reviewed:Sunday, July 24th, 2005 @ 12:54 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  PHP Editors directoryeditorsforumhowtoidenewsphpreviews
   

• 28.Vanilla

  Is an open-source PHP/MySQL forum package. Several things make this product stand out: an intuitive and nicely styled, extensible interface, and it is built with semantic and valid XHTML markup free of tables that separates both presentation and behavior. [1426]

  ★★★★★
  URI:http://getvanilla.com/
  Author:
  Mark O'Sullivan
  [1]
  Reviewed:Thursday, July 21st, 2005 @ 10:18 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Vanilla cssforummysqlopen sourcephpxhtml
   

• 29.Advanced PHP Resources

  A list of resources intended to improve your PHP programming techniques, including such things as OOP and PHP, development tools, class libraries, repositories and extensions, frameworks, recommended reading, PHP5, and communities and blogs. Thanks Harry. [1424]

  ★★★★★
  URI:http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78687
  Author:
  Harry Fuecks
  [2]
  Reviewed:Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 @ 11:36 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Advanced PHP Resources debugeditorsideooppatternsphpprofileprogrammingrepositoryresources
   

• 30.Comfortable PHP Editing with VIM

  And here's an example of phpm in action. If you use Vim, this article will explain how you can set up the editor so one keystroke will display the PHP syntax for function under your cursor. But that's only the start, many more productivity tricks here. [1398]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://schlitt.info/applications/blog/index.php?/archives/331-Comfort...
  Author:
  Tobias Schlitt
  [2]
  Reviewed:Thursday, July 14th, 2005 @ 4:09 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Comfortable PHP Editing with VIM configeditorsphpvim
   

• 31.phpm: The PHP Manual Revisited

  Now this is clever. What this guy has done is taken the XML source to the PHP manual, extracted out the syntax of all the function calls, and written a PHP shell script so you can access this information without having to go to a browser to look them up. [1397]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://phpvolcano.com/articles/manual/
  Author:
  Håvard Eide
  [1]
  Reviewed:Thursday, July 14th, 2005 @ 3:47 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  phpm: The PHP Manual Revisited docbookhelpmanualphpshellxml
   

• 32.Regular Expressions Tutorial

  And specifically the Perl regular expression (PCRE) functions in PHP. Which are the ones everyone should be using. The expression syntax is more powerful than the ereg() functions, and they are much faster. But please, only use regex when you need to! [1384]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://weblogtoolscollection.com/regex/regex.php
  Author:
  Madhujit Ghosh
  [1]
  Reviewed:Saturday, July 9th, 2005 @ 11:56 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Regular Expressions Tutorial howtopcrephpprogrammingregex
   

• 33.phpXplorer

  An open-source file management system written in PHP. It enables you to work on a remote file system through a Web browser. There are dialogs for editing HTML, PHP, image, Apache, compressed and email files. And its modular design makes it extensible. [1381]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://phpxplorer.org/phpXplorer/webIndex.php
  Author:
  phpxplorer.org/
  [1]
  Reviewed:Friday, July 8th, 2005 @ 3:34 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  phpXplorer apachebrowserhtmlphpweb
   

• 34.PHP Filters

  Because data originating from an end-user is highly insecure, it should be treated with the utmost care. In the Perl world, this is referred to as "taint checking." PHP Filters is a collection of functions for doing just this: sanitizing user inputs. [1376]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://owasp.org/software/labs/phpfilters.html
  Author:
  Gavin Zuchlinski
  [1]
  Reviewed:Wednesday, July 6th, 2005 @ 10:39 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  PHP Filters phpprogrammingsecurityweb
   

• 35.PHP SmartyPants

  Another PHP port from Michel, this time it's SmartyPants. This text filter converts ASCII punctuation characters to their corresponding typographic entities such as curly quotes, en/em dashes and ellipsis. Use with Smarty, WordPress, or your own programs. [1372]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://michelf.com/projects/php-smartypants/
  Author:
  Michel Fortin
  [3]
  Reviewed:Monday, July 4th, 2005 @ 3:10 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  PHP SmartyPants blogencodingmarkupperlphpprogrammingtypography
   

• 36.Scuttle

  Scuttle is an open-source del.icio.us clone written in PHP with a MySQL backend. Use it as your private bookmark manager, share your links with everyone or selected members, or download and incorporate the software into your own site or application. [1364]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://sourceforge.net/projects/scuttle/
  Author:
  Marcus Campbell
  [1]
  Reviewed:Saturday, July 2nd, 2005 @ 8:07 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Scuttle del.icio.usdeveloperfolksonomymysqlopen sourcephpprogrammingtagging
   

• 37.Yellow Duck

  An object-oriented framework for developing PHP applications which uses Smarty templates for its presentation layer. Other features include support for RSS and Atom feeds, multiple database backends, XML-RPC, authentication, shopping carts and more. [1362]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://yellowduck.be/ydf/
  Author:
  Pieter Claerhout
  [1]
  Reviewed:Saturday, July 2nd, 2005 @ 2:03 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Yellow Duck atomdatabasedeveloperframeworkoopphpprogrammingrpcrssxml
   

• 38.PHP Magazine

  An outstanding international online and print magazine for PHP professionals. News, articles, columns, book reviews, discussion forums and more. Available on newsstands, in CD and high-quality PDF. All source code to the articles is available online. [1355]

  ★★★★★
  URI:http://phpmag.net/
  Author:
  Software & Support Verlag
  [1]
  Reviewed:Thursday, June 30th, 2005 @ 8:15 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  PHP Magazine ezinephpprogramming
   

• 39.phpWebSite

  An open-souce CMS system designed for community-driven Web sites. Generates valid XHTML 1.0 markup, and meets the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative requirements. Web-based administration allows for easy maintenance, and is extensible via modules. [1334]

  ★★★★★
  URI:http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/
  Author:
  Web Technology Group
  [1]
  Reviewed:Saturday, June 25th, 2005 @ 1:32 PM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  phpWebSite accessibilitycmsdevelopermodulephpw3cxhtml
   

• 40.Hotscripts: PHP

  A mind-boggling array of resources for PHP users, developers and programmers. Categories include books, scripts (of course), articles, communities, software and servers, text processing, tips and tutorials, and Web sites. Each one rated by visitors. [1332]

  ★★★★☆
  URI:http://hotscripts.com/PHP/?RID=N370426
  Author:
  iNET Interactive
  [1]
  Reviewed:Saturday, June 25th, 2005 @ 2:49 AM EST
  by:
  Douglas Clifton
  
  Hotscripts: PHP developerdirectoryphpprogrammingresources
   

• 41.