Symfony – ORM TDD DRY RDP

If you must use PHP for your web application, and you really a fan of the rails way.

Compare Rails and Symfony, read this blog i hear a symfony rails vs the symfony php framework 

Try out Symfony:

” Symfony is a web application framework for PHP5 projects.

It aims to speed up the creation and maintenance of web applications, and to replace the repetitive coding tasks by power, control and pleasure.

The very small number of prerequisites make symfony easy to install on any configuration; you just need Unix or Windows with a web server and PHP 5 installed. It is compatible with almost every database system. In addition, it has a very small overhead, so the benefits of the framework don’t come at the cost of an increase of hosting costs.

Using symfony is so natural and easy for people used to PHP and the design patterns of Internet applications that the learning curve is reduced to less than a day. The clean design and code readability will keep your delays short. Developers can apply agile development principles (such as DRY, KISS or the XP philosophy) and focus on applicative logic without losing time to write endless XML configuration files.

Symfony is aimed at building robust applications in an enterprise context. This means that you have full control over the configuration: from the directory structure to the foreign libraries, almost everything can be customized. To match your enterprise’s development guidelines, symfony is bundled with additional tools helping you to test, debug and document your project.

Last but not least, by choosing symfony you get the benefits of an active open-source community. It is entirely free and published under the MIT license.

Symfony is sponsored by Sensio, a French Web Agency well known for its innovative views on web development.”

Here is the online version of Symfony Book,  if you want you can check the 1.1 version of the book, which will cover updates in upcoming 1.1.0 release.

PHPSpec BDD framework for PHP

PHPSpec is the first BDD framework for PHP, similar to RSpec in ruby. There are clear advantages of BDD over TDD suck as test against specification of behavior.

“PHPSpec is a simple framework. As the official description suggests you can write code examples which are repeatable. This means you write an example, and may repeat it as often as you wish to ensure the implementation code it relates to continues to abide by the example. PHPSpec is related to Unit Testing, but our Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) origins determine we use a clear plain English style API. This API, given it’s fluent style and approximation of natural language is therefore referred to as a Domain Specific Language (DSL). At a deeper level, PHPSpec was designed entirely with BDD in mind. Though similar to Unit Testing, the framework is being designed to support BDD from the ground so that learning, understanding and practicing BDD is as easy as possible.”

Install PHPSpec

PHP Spec Document

How To Install PEAR in Mac OS X Leopard

PEAR does not come installed on Leopard by default, though it is very easy to install, check this blog article on Click on Tyler

PHP Horde YAML Parsing and Dumping Routines

Rails framework used YAML for all most any configuration files. In PHP, there is n official support for YAML, eve though there are support for INI, JSON and XML.The current release is 0.2.0 beta. Check out this great tutorial PHP meet YAML, and official Horde YAML website. 

Rails Migration in PHP Zend Framework

Needless to say Migration is one of the best tools in Rails that make Ruby on Rails shine. If you are a PHP developer, check out this [Zend Framework: Zend_Db_Schema_Manager Component Proposal].

“Zend_Db_Schema_Manager maintains a database schema in a database agnostic format. This ensures that the same change can be applied to multiple databases and all changes can be stored in a version control system. The schema itself can be given in several formats like XML, PHP. Additional input formats could be integrated. “

Since this is still an early stage proposal, so there is no time line on when will this be available or even be accepted into the framework. But it’s always good to give your feedback to the proposal