PHP Look Back 2005

A new year is upon us, and as is customary in the PHP world,it is time to reflect on the events of the past year. DerickRethans, a PHP internals developer, has been publishing a PHP LookBack for a few years, now, and this year, we saw it fitting topublish it in php|architect. Happy 2006!—by Derick Rethans

Internationalize Your Web Application With Less PHP Code

Internationalization of a web application can be tricky, butit doesn’t need to be. Author Carl McDade introduces a simple i18ntechnique which uses less PHP code, and consists mainly of easy tomaintain HTML.—by Carl McDade

FPDI in Detail

Most PHP developers have the ability to create PDF documentson the fly, but are they able to build documents from existingtemplates? PDFLib has supported this through its PDI interface, butthe free classes didn’t external documents, until author Jan Slabonreleased FPDI for FPDF. Join him in his discussion on how to useFPDI.—by Jan Slabon

If you’ve been developing for any length of time,you’ve probably been tasked with to generating PDFs at somepoint. In this article, an excerpt from Beginning PDF Programmingwith PHP and PDFlib, Ron Goff discusses the process of combiningdata from many sources into a single PDF—from installation ofthe block tool, to creating the blocks in Adobe Acrobat, and thenfinally working with the blocks via PDFlib.—by Ron Goff

Security Corner: Email Injection

This month, for the second anniversary of Security Corner,Chris Shiflett takes a look at email injection, a common exploitthat targets PHP applications that use the mail() function. Youwill see a few example email injection attacks and some simple andeffective methods of prevention.—by Chris Shiflett

Tips & Tricks: Output Buffering

Output is generally sent from calls to echo or print, or fromoutside PHP code blocks, and once it’s sent, it’s gone.However, using PHP’s output buffering functionality, it ispossible to capture this output and further manipulate it beforesending to the client. In this month’s Tips & Tricks,columnist Ben Ramsey shows you why and how to control output withoutput buffering.—by Ben Ramsey

Test Pattern: Why is it Taking so Long?

How long does it take to push out a new feature? Not theman/hours spent coding, but the actual dates. From the point ofdeciding to implement something, by what date are the usersactually using it? Marcus Baker discusses “lead time.”It’s not just an academic measure; it’s actually themost important measurement a development team can make, even ifit’s a little simplistic.—by Marcus Baker