If are trying to get somewhere with the Digg API, I highly recommend this tutorial on accessing the Digg API with PHP. Remember to save the php files as a CodeIgniter library so that you can call it like this:

$this->load->library('diggclass');

Andrew Hegdes created a PHP Function reference widget that provides fast lookup of information about the PHP web programming language. Just turned version one, and he’s looking for a little feedback. Haven’t seen anything like this yet, so bookmarking when i switch full time to Mac.

PHP error_reporting() Cheat Sheet

Dave over at mezzoblue tells us his method of giving users a choice if they are viewing a site on a mobile device or tv (Wii, Playstation, etc.). This is a useful tip, even for those with iPhones and iPod Touchs (iTouch).

Before considering building my own, I’m looking for php/mysql implentations of Yahoo Answers. So far, the best examples is Askeet built by the symfony Web PHP Framework. I’m going to give it a try, but always looking for alternatives.

Smart Image Resizer - Done in PHP. I’m usually not a fan of activating a script through an image tag:

<img src="/image.php/coffee-bean.jpg?width=200&amp;height=200&amp;image=/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/coffee-bean.jpg" alt="Coffee Bean" />

But the author claims “Built-in caching keeps image variations for optimal performance” and there is cropping, so I think this might be useful. Worth a look. [ via David W ]

Probably a no-brainer, but still I just saw this on a client site another night and thought how to Force A Secure Page Using PHP was a good tip.

if($_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] != '443') { header('Location: https://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); exit(); }  

Here’s how you execute a POST using the PHP CURL library.

PHP Client Library for our Address Book API. Seems practical for social networking applications.

The Address Book API allows for a user to import their email contact list (from Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, and Hotmail) into any site. Our API is used on dozens of sites and applications, and is a way for users to invite friends to a site, share content with people in their address book, and import their social relationships.

Jaisen Mathai shows how he improved speed with PHP and .htaccess. There are endless schools of thought and execution on this, but worthy of a look.

This custom page slug plugin allows you to create a custom page slug then fill that page with any content (html, php, whatever) with “full access to the Wordpress and Plugin architecture”. This is nice for niche requests, although it’s minor coding without the plugin. Congrats to Leon.

Spellify is “an automatic text field spell checker” that’s available for download, with the following requirements:

- PHP 4+ with CURL library installed (developed using PHP 4.4.6)
- script.aculo.us 1.8.0 (only effects.js and scriptaculous.js required)
- Prototype JavaScript Framework 1.6.0

While i’m on the topic of Google Maps, I decided to bookmark Pamela’s other article which is more like an introduction on how to use Google Maps with a MySql database. Related article - Using PHP and MySQL to create KML.

Google Grabber: “Using a short amount of PHP code, you can query Google to retrieve the number of pages your domain has listed in Google.”

This topic comes up frquently enough to warrant a bookmark to Pamela Fox’s how-to on a Store Locator with PHP, MySQL & Google Maps. Being on the Google Geo APIs Team, i can’t wait to dive into this.

I’ve bumped into PHP scripts like this before, but haven’t bookmarked them until now.

I’m horrible in math. So I hope I never have to figure out how to select a random, weighted element from an array in PHP. But if I do, I now have something to refer to! Thanks Jesse!

Chyrp appears to be a light weight blogging engine, done in PHP/mySQL (some Ajax) and is “loosely based on the MVC design pattern.”. It’s been recently upgraded. I don’t like the fact you need to give an email for a live demo, but at least you can download the code.

Chyrp is a blogging engine designed to be very lightweight while retaining functionality. It is driven by PHP and MySQL (with some AJAX thrown in), and has a pimpin’ theme and module engine, so you can personalize it however you want.

John Gruber picked up on this (and so did i) that Cameron Hunt switched from Tumblr to Chyrp, an interesting endorsement.

You may think with “125.125.1.1″, you would want a VarChar type of field. That would be my first instinct until this tip made me think. If you are storing an IP Address in MySql (or any database for that matter) it’s better to store it as an Integer. MySQL has two built-in functions: INET_ATON() and INET_NTOA() to convert the IP. This allows for better storage and possible indexing.

I’m bookmarking this sample Facebook application with CodeIgniter mainly for the CodeIgniter aspect since i’m not really an active Facebook user. Still interesting, and worth a look.

Although it looks like there are plugins that accomplish this, it’s nice to know how to highlight author or admin comments in a Wordpress blog using the oldschool approach of php and css.

The fact that CodeIgniter 1.6 has hit the streets has got me excited about this php framework again. One or two new client projects will be built with this version in the coming weeks. I especially like how you can extend the helpers, but the biggest thing of all is that a CodeIgniter 2.0 might be in our future since development is accelerating.

PHP4 is still supported, and I would agree with that thinking since PHP5 is not yet everywhere in the shared hosting universe.

This is a bugger to figure out - basically I was using php to read a varchar value in a SQL database. Problem was, my returning value was cut off at around 255 or 256 characters. Even changing the mssql.textlimit and mssql.textsize values in the php.ini file didn’t help. The answer, it seems, is to preform a little conversation in your SQL SELECT statement:

select *, convert(text,bio) as bio from writers

So if “bio” is the field that is in the SQL database than contains more than 256 characters, the above should give you ALL those characters back.

FancyUpload looks very cool. Basically a great graphical way to upload multiple files (there’s even a php script for the actual uploading and validation). Not sure if this is currently being maintained, but if you are looking for a decent uploader this might be the answer. Platform and server independent, just needs Flash 8+. Plus you can limit uploads by file count and/or file size.

Stumbled on these, and I wanted to get them in my bookmarks for my fellow coders. Parsing ITunes Library.xml with ActionScript 3.0 and plist parsing in PHP.

Leon Chevalier claims to have created a PHP class that can “Improve website load time by 500%”. Although someone in the comments is correcting that figure to 80%. Regardless, it takes 3 lines of code to include and use. Bookmarking to later try.

PhpDelicious is a library for accessing the del.icio.us API. Recently upgraded so it’s now PHP 5 only, has an improved (more robust) HTTP request method, etc.

According to Derek Allard, CodeIgniter 1.6.0 “beta” is available and he’s giving a hint for additional (and bigger) updates in the near future. I’m glad to hear this, since CodeIgniter is my favorite PHP framework. Can’t wait to take a crack at it.

phpMyID is a “single user (though, if you were so inclined, you could easily turn it into a multi-user setup) IdP, or Identity Provider for the OpenID framework.” Just been updated to version 0.7. [ via full-speed ]

Although i’m a Codeignitor and CakePHP fan, i always like to bookmark interesting php frameworks. Simplicity uses EXT, seems to have a nice setup utility among other things…

Simplicity PHP Application Framework is an advanced, scalable and extensible PHP application framework to aid developers in creating high traffic, high availability Web 2.0 online applications. Integrating a solid MVC framework with some of the best Open Source projects around Simplicity aims to assist developers with any amount of experience in taking their applications to a new level.

[ via Ajaxian ]

Smashing Magazine has another list post of software frameworks covering most of the popular frameworks of php, rails, javascript, etc. Most of these follow the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture.

It’s not a complete list by any means, as additional frameworks are mentioned in the comments. But it’s a nice readable list to skim, and worthy of bookmarking.

Peter Elst shows how to get PHP 5.2.3 onto an iTouch. Do at your own risk, but bookmarking anyway. Looks like there’s a chance to get Perl, Python, Ruby, etc in your iTouch as well but would you really WANT to I wonder?

Troels Knak-Nielsen writes a good overview on how PHP relates to functional programming and might be where PHP is heading in the next version. PHP is dynamically-typed and weakly-typed. Ruby, Python are dynamically-typed and strongly-typed.

AMFPHP is a free open-source PHP implementation of the Action Message Format (AMF). AMF allows for binary serialization of Action Script (AS2, AS3) native types and objects to be sent to server side services. Apparently people have adapted it for use with Wordpress, CakePHP, and other frameworks.

How to suppress PHP errors from visitors and enable PHP error logging via htaccess.