15+ Useful PHP Components, Techniques and Tutorials: "
PHP is one of the most popular development languages for building dynamic web applications today. Some of the most influential and popular open source CMS/Publishing platforms like Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal all rely on PHP and many others do to. PHP offers many advantages; it is fast, stable, secure, easy to use and open source. Being familiar with PHP and having a good toolbox for working effectively with PHP is essential for most Web Developers because you will run into some PHP code anyone will run into PHP now and then!
In this article I have compiled a list of useful PHP Components, Techniques and Tutorials that any php developer should be aware of and which will make their life easier.
PHP Distributions to GET STARTED FAST
Many people know from their own experience that it’s not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl.
XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.
PHP Frameworks
You can find more Frameworks for PHP here.
cakephp
CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP that provides an extensible architecture for developing, maintaining, and deploying applications. Using commonly known design patterns like MVC and ORM within the convention over configuration paradigm, CakePHP reduces development costs and helps developers write less code.
CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. If you’re a developer who lives in the real world of shared hosting accounts and clients with deadlines, and if you’re tired of ponderously large and thoroughly undocumented frameworks
pear.php.net
PEAR is a framework and distribution system for reusable PHP components. It is really useful to know how to use it as it makes it much easier to download and install packages. You can find more information using PEAR packages in the online manual and the FAQ.
Symfony
Symfony is a full-stack framework, a library of cohesive classes written in PHP.
“It provides an architecture, components and tools for developers to build complex web applications faster. Choosing symfony allows you to release your applications earlier, host and scale them without problem, and maintain them over time with no surprise.”
PHP Chart Solutions
pChart – a PHP class to build charts
pChart is a PHP class oriented framework designed to create aliased charts. Most of todays chart libraries have a cost, this project is intended to be free. Data can be retrieved from SQL queries, CSV files, or manually provided. This project is still under development and new features or fix are made every week.
Creating a Bar Graph using CSS and PHP
Richard Clark created this vertical bar graphs with css and php, a must see tutorial.
Image_Graph
Image_Graph (formerly known as GraPHPite) utilizes PHP’s object oriented model to enable users/developers to create highly versatile graphs in a simple way. There are 14 highly customizable chart types including line, bar, area, pie, impulse, dot/scatter, step, candlestick, box & whisker, radar, etc.
The free script requires PHP4 or PHP5 support with GD 2 support for optimal performance and PEAR package, including Image_Color and Image_Canvas package. The site offers over 80 samples of how the tool can be used.
Libchart
Libchart is is a simple PHP-library. You can create Line-, Bar- (horizontal and vertical) and Piecharts. The tool requires PHP compiled with GD Graphics Library and FreeType. Libchart is a free software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
JpGraph
JpGraph is a Object-Oriented Graph creating library for PHP. The library is completely written in PHP and can be used in any PHP scripts. The library can be used to create numerous types of graphs either on-line or written to a file. Line plots, filled line plots, step line plots, bar and pie charts, ring and scatter plots, polar and canvas plots as well as Gantt Charts. The designs of charts aren’t that impressive, but they don’t have to.
PHP Coding Tips and useful Components
Query – PHP & Ajax with the Twitter API
This tutorial will show you how you can use jQuery, PHP and a little ajax to connect up to the Twitter API and return results. Focus is unauthenticated calls to the search API but you may also find this article interesting Authenticating Twitter API calls with PHP & jQuery.
Sanitize and Validate Data with PHP Filters
Data validation is an integral part of working with forms. Not only can invalid submitted data lead to security problems, but it can also break your webpage. Today, we’ll take a look at how to remove illegal characters and validate data by using the “filter_var” function.
Backup Your Database into an XML File Using PHP
Backing up data is extremely important. Most of the time the database is the most important piece of the puzzle. Imagine losing all of the data in your database — it would be tragic.
10 PHP code snippets for working with strings
Strings are a very important kind of data, and you have to deal with them daily with web development tasks. In this article, I have compiled 10 extremely useful functions and code snippets to make your php developer life easier.
Caching Dynamic PHP pages easily
Solution to cache heavy pages and just serve a static html version using output buffering.
3 ways to compress CSS files using PHP
When you’re using a sophisticated design, CSS files can quickly become very long, and takes time to load. I have compiled 3 interresting ways of compressing CSS files by using PHP.
How to Build a Login System for a Simple Website
This is a video tutorial where you’ll see how to build a login system with PHP and MYSQL. Many features will be covered; including MySqli, Prepared Statements, jQuery, Classes, Sessions, Cookies, etc.
PHP components: Autosuggest
A PHP component ready to use to implement basic autosuggest feature. For all Ajax beginners this is the most simple way to implement it (just with 8Kb) and the only thing you have to do is modify some parameters.
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