The Problem with PHP’s Prepared Statements
“PHP’s prepared statements (for database access) are fantastic. Not only do they help secure your database queries, but they’re also particularly more efficient for larger products. However, there are a couple issues that appear to make these methods less flexible than we’d hope. For one, we must utilize the bind_result method, and pass in a specific number of variables. However, what happens when this code is within a class, and we won’t immediately know how many variables to pass? Luckily, there’s a solution! I’ll show you what it is in today’s video tutorial.”
How to Use CakePHP’s Access Control Lists
“If you’re building a CMS, you’ll probably need different user roles—superusers, admins, users—with different permission levels. Too complicated to code? Enter CakePHP’s ACL (Access Control Lists). With the right setup, you’ll be checking user permissions with just one line.”
How to Create Blog Excerpts with PHP
“Ever visited a blog, and noticed that each posting’s overview only contained a hundred characters or so, which is then followed by “…”? Ever wondered how to do that yourself? It’s not quite as easy as you might think. What if character number 100 occurs in the middle of a word? Do you want to display half of a word on the page? Of course not. In this video tutorial, I’ll show you how to compensate for this, as well as a host of other neat little things, like working with MySQL’s LEFT() function, using PHP’s strrpos, and substr, creating the beginning’s of an actual blog, and more.”
Deciphering Magic Methods in PHP
“PHP provides a number of ‘magic’ methods that allow you to do some pretty neat tricks in object oriented programming. These methods, identified by a two underscore prefix (__), function as interceptors that are automatically called when certain conditions are met. Magic methods provide some extremely useful functionality, and this tutorial will demonstrate each method’s use.”
Web Dev Q&A #2 – PHP Sessions, HTML5 Doctypes, and Form Styling
“We’re back with the second entry in the Nettuts+ Q&A series. Today, we discuss the difference between LESS and Sass, how to pass server-side values to your JavaScript, how to work with PHP and cookies, and the HTML5 doctype. Here we go!”
Object-Oriented PHP for Beginners
“For many PHP programmers, object-oriented programming is a frightening concept, full of complicated syntax and other roadblocks. As detailed in my book, Pro PHP and jQuery, you’ll learn the concepts behind object-oriented programming (OOP), a style of coding in which related actions are grouped into classes to aid in creating more-compact, effective code.”
A Beginner’s Guide to Design Patterns
“Design patterns are optimized, reusable solutions to the programming problems that we encounter every day. A design pattern is not a class or a library that we can simply plug into our system; it’s much more than that. It is a template that has to be implemented in the correct situation. It’s not language-specific either. A good design pattern should be implementable in most—if not all—languages, depending on the capabilities of the language. Most importantly, any design pattern can be a double-edged sword— if implemented in the wrong place, it can be disastrous and create many problems for you. However, implemented in the right place, at the right time, it can be your savior.”
How to Authenticate Users With Facebook Connect
“Lately, there’s been quite a fuzz about lazy registration. It turns out that the less the user has to think, the higher the conversion rates are! What a thought! If everybody seems to have a Facebook profile, why not add a one-click user registration? I’ll show you how to do that today.”
Why you Should be using PHP’s PDO for Database Access
“Many PHP programmers learned how to access databases by using either the mysql or mysqli extensions. Since PHP 5.1, there’s been a better way. PHP Data Objects (PDO) provide methods for prepared statements and working with objects that will make you far more productive!”
Simple PHP Class-Based Querying
“Though it is usually advisable to use some sort of framework or CMS, sometimes a project is small enough such that those options would weigh down the development. However, even in smaller projects, separating presentational elements from backend querying should not be ignored. This tutorial will walk you through creating a basic class-based querying engine for PHP and MySQL.”
