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Community News: Latest Releases from PHPClasses.org

• unlimg
• CouchDB Session Handler
• Proxy
• Apinstall
• Automatic Priority Setting
• GraphML Generator
• DS Create table
• Search Files
• Simple record set
• Fibonacci
• Stream Steganography
• MySQL & Session
• MPO Extractor
• Query Build Exec

CMStr.com: How to manually install Joomla 1.5+

From CMStr.com there's a new tutorial showing you how to set up Joomla manually just in case something happens with the install and you need to change things yourself.

Why would I want to do a manual install when my web host has this Fantastico thingy that will install Joomla for me? Good question. [...] If you are building websites for a living, and or plan on using Joomla a lot, then you really need to start doing your own installs. [...] If you are an experienced parachute jumper, you would pack your own chute right? This is no different.

Screenshots are included to help make the process easier as they walk you through setting up the basics like language settings and database information. They also touch on the FTP setting (off for security) and removing the admin user's information to help make things a bit more secure. It's not a comprehensive list of the things you'd need to do to get it 100% configured for just what you need, but it's a start.

Kavoir.com: Just Hashing is Far from Enough for Storing Passwords (Dictionary & Rainbow Attacks)

On Kavoir.com there's a new post that reminds you that hashing isn't enough anymore to protect your users and their passwords. They offer a suggestion or two of what you can do to help lock things down a bit more.

The common practice is to hash the user password and store the hash string of the password in the database. When the user tries to log in and supplies his password, it is used to generate a hash string to be compared to the one stored in the database. [...] This approach may be secure in the 70s of the last century, but barely any more.

Computing has evolved enough to where hashed can be matched, sometimes in less than two or three minutes. Their answer to the problem? Generate a random salt each time you create the hash with a constant being used as a base. A code snippet calling a user-defined function and the sha1 function are included.

Brandon Savage's Blog: Upgrades In Open Source

Brandon Savage has posted his own response to the "don't be afraid of the upgrade" thread that's been going around concerning updating to PHP 5.3. He takes a different approach to the matter, though - one of a bit more caution.

When it comes to open source projects endorsing PHP 5.3 as their one and only PHP platform, I encourage caution. When it comes to open source projects that use PHP, there are three main issues that I believe should be considered before making the leap to PHP 5.3 (or any new release of any new software).

He sees three considerations projects and companies should consider before making the upgrade on their servers - the amount of control you have over the environment, deciding if the upgrade is worth possible backwards compatibility breaks and how much support you want to still provide for the pre-5.3 version(s).

PHPClasses.org Blog: Neural Networks in PHP

New on the PHPClasses.org blog there's an article on neural networks written up by Louis Stowasser looking specifically at creating a neural mesh with PHP.

Neural networks are a relatively new technology that aims to reverse engineer the functionality of the brain within a mathematics model. This may sound daunting and complex but the underlying concepts are very simple and Neural Mesh does the hard work for you. In a Web environment NNs (neural networks) are considered too slow and complex to warrant effort on what might even be a trivial task. To solve this, Neural Mesh has been heavily optimized. It uses caching to speed up running and training of networks.

He explains what a neural network is on a base level and talks about it's ability to learn from the training its given (supervised or unsupervised). He also talks about how the networks can be useful and how to use the framework (found here) to create a simple network.

Zend Developer Zone: Creating Scalable Vector Graphs with PHP

A new tutorial has been posted to the Zend Developer Zone today looking at making scalable vector graphics with PHP and the hep of one of two charting packages - ezcGraph or SVGGraph (examples are provided for both).

Programmatically generating graphs and charts using SVG requires a deep understanding of the SVG specification and the various SVG primitives, as well as a fair amount of time for research, experimentation and debugging. Or, in other words, that's your entire weekend shot! Fortunately, help is at hand. There are a number of open-source PHP libraries that support SVG chart generation, and using them can significantly reduce the amount of work involved in adding this feature to a Web application.

He shows how to create simple images like bar, line and pie charts as well as adding in other things like a legend, custom titles and a sample where the user can define the sizes of a pie chart via some form input fields. Screenshots are included for all code examples to give you a better idea of the end result.

php|architect: Static methods vs singletons: choose neither

On the php|architect site there's a recent post that splits apart the singletons versus static methods debate that seems to com up every once and a while with a better suggestion - dependency injection.

Much more important than performance is the fact that both static methods and singletons suffer from major drawbacks. When it comes to deciding between the two, you might forgo the benchmark comparison and choose the third-party candidate: dependency injection.

He mentions the "dark side" of both static methods and singletons and how dependency injection can help rid your code of both. Instead of focusing just on the benchmark numbers, DI helps you keep your code more well-structured and "smarter" by scoping things to where they need to be and making them easier to test.

DZone.com: Q&A with Jason Gilmore: The Zend Framework

On DZone.com today there's a new interview by Lyndsey Clevesy with Jason Gilmore looking at the Zend Framework and some of the general things to expect in coming versions.

This week's DZone Refcard is about Getting Started with the Zend Framework. The card introduces you to the basics of the Zend Framework and sets you on the path to creating your first project. I met the author, Jason Gilmore, to find out more about the topic.

They talk about some of what the framework currently has to offer developers, what kind of involvement he's had with it, who it supports as far as advanced PHP features and what's to come in version 2.0. The Zend Framework RefCard mentioned can be viewed or downloaded here - a six-page quick reference for some of the more common Zend Framework tasks.

Community News: Latest PECL Releases for 03.09.2010

Latest PECL Releases:

• WinCache 1.1.0
• timezonedb 2010.5

Alvaro Videla's Blog: Erlang as a Fast Key Value Store for PHP

Alvaro Videla has submitted a new post he's written up combining PHP and Erlang yet again, but this time he's using it to just store key/value pairs rather than for session data.

In this post I want to show you some of the neat things that can be done with the PHP-Erlang Bridge extension: A Key Value Store. Erlang comes packed with a Key Value store in the form of the ETS module. This is database is pretty fast and efficient for storing the Erlang terms in memory.

He tried a proof of concept to see how well the system would respond and was able to push over 150k items into the storage in one second. Sample code and instructions on getting the bridge working are included in the post.

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