Hello.World

Going by recent talk in the PHP community a lot of developers are getting on the framework bandwagon. From my reading there seems to be 2 reasons for this renewed enthusiasm:

1. The release of PHP 5.0 and 5.1 with better OO support
2. The increasing popularity of Rails, a web framework for the Ruby language

This is an important time for the community – especially those developers who want to ensure they are using the best tools for the job. The most recent PHP frameworks to generate enthusiasm are the upcoming Zend Framework and the recent announcement of the eZ Components framework which is available in beta version right now. It will pay to keep an eye on these two frameworks over the next few months.

Here are some links to get you up to speed…

Zend Framework

• Zend Collaboration Project
• Overview by Wez Furlong
• php|architect Webcast (uses Flash)

ez Components

• ez Systems Product Page
• ez Components: New Competition for the Zend Framework

I recently discovered webERP – a web based accounting/ERP software package produced by an ongoing community of accounting software developers. It is developed using PHP and MySQL which means that you can look at the source code, customise it and integrate it with other applications like SugarCRM. It's worth a look.

There is a great tutorial on the IBM developerWorks site showing how to build an OO graphics library in PHP5. The goal is to have a library that allows you to work with graphics as objects (lines, rectangles, ovals) rather than as a series of pixels etc. If nothing else it is a nice example of clean OO code in PHP5. Check it out and see what you think.