PHP HELP, PHP TUTORIALS, OBJECT-ORIENTED PHP5 PROGRAMMING

Over the course of my past two articles I’ve been showing you how to build a script capable of creating and displaying a dynamic signature image containing the latest status from a user’s Twitter feed. In the third installment in this series, I will be demonstrating how to add proper object-oriented error handling to the SignatureImage class.

In this sixth part of an eight-part series on helper classes, I finish developing the validation helper class created in the previous part. We'll add even more useful validation methods to expand its functionality.

When it comes to checking incoming data in web applications, PHP 5 provides developers with a huge arsenal of functions that permit them to perform this process in a pretty straightforward way. Indeed, checking integers and float numbers, IP and email addresses, alphabetic strings and so forth is a process that must be tackled frequently by programmers. Fortunately, validating data types is not a huge production with PHP.

Helper classes seem easy to build -- almost deceptively so. If you're building a helper class to assist with a crucial function, however, such as validation, the approach you need to take may seem a bit less straightforward. This fifth article in an eight-part series on building helper classes walks you through the process, complete with hands-on examples.

In my last article we began putting together a solution that will allow us to display dynamic Twitter signature images in forum posts and emails. In this article we’ll continue where we left off by adding the functions that will harness the power of GD to create the actual image.

Among the enhancements that were introduced originally in PHP 5, there’s one powerful extension that has been all but ignored by many programmers until now, quite possibly because they weren’t aware of its existence. Yes, as you might have guessed, I’m talking about the filter library -- a handy set of filters and functions that allow you to validate different types of data with remarkable ease.

Twitter is the latest and greatest craze in social networking sites. As such, many developers and businesses are using it as a marketing technique. Today we’re going to come up with a method for creating a dynamic signature image for forum posts and emails that will automatically load your Twitter feed and display your latest Twitter status. We’ll be using PHP to grab the content along with GD2 support to create the image.

Are you a PHP developer wishing to find an approachable guide that walks you through building different kinds of helper classes in PHP 5? Then look no further, because this group of articles may be the material that you really need.

Welcome to the fourth part of a series covering the use of filters in PHP. In this article, you'll learn some very useful ways to take advantage of the capabilities of the filter extension to validate Boolean values in arrays; we'll also show you how to validate float numbers.

Tuesday evening, August 4th, the musician Chamillionaire launched a live, first showing video on his website along with a Twitter-based chat client. While the Twitter chat client worked from a data perspective, based on what the code showed it looks like most browsers would crash.

In this third installment of a series on building helpers in PHP 5, I will provide you with the basic pointers for building a URL-handling helper class. The code examples, though simple, should serve to demonstrate how to create a helper that generates dynamic URLs.

Among the numerous libraries that come included by default with the PHP 5 distribution, there’s one that has been overlooked by many developers. This is a shame, because it can be really useful for validating incoming data in a truly simple fashion. I’m talking about the filter extension, a powerful set of functions that let programmers apply several filters to multiple PHP variables to perform all sorts of clever validations, ranging from checking for integer and float numbers, to verifying email addresses and URLs.

Theoretically defining the role of helper classes in PHP 5 (and other popular server-side scripting languages) is a pretty approachable process. As their name suggests, helper classes provide developers with a set of logically-grouped methods that allow them to easily perform certain repetitive tasks that are common to different web applications. This is the second part of an eight-part article series that shows you how to build a variety of useful helper classes and expand on their functionality.

As you know, when it comes to validating incoming data, PHP 5 comes bundled with a powerful set of native functions that allow you to perform all sorts of clever validations on a given variable. This includes checking for numeric values, arrays, strings, and objects as well. However, the best feature of the helpful validation capabilities offered by default by PHP 5 is its handy filter extension, even though it has been overlooked by many programmers so far.

Tired of repetitive coding for tasks such as generating web site breadcrumbs? PHP 5 provides a number of interesting ways to reuse your code so you can let the boring stuff take care of itself. This eight-part series will show you how to create helpers to take care of repetitive tasks and free up your precious coding time for the real challenges.