Blissful REST

By Anant Narayanan

Building Next Generation Web Services

If you’ve ever wondered what all the fuss about web services was about, here’s your chance to understand it. This article will provide you with a brief introduction to web services and focus on a specific type of web services called REST – or Representational State Transfer. We’ll also look into how you can design and implement a RESTful web service and client in PHP.[Read More]

Debunking the Myths and Hype Surrounding AJAX

By PHP Magazine

Beyond Window Dressing For Your UI

In Greek mythology, Ajax, was the King of Salamis, the legendary hero in Homer's Iliad, who despite not receiving any personal assistance from any of the gods in the Trojan war, was not wounded in any of the battles. In modern times, Ajax is Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, a new concept, methodology, which everyone is talking about, and no one is agreeing about. Is Ajax all about superficial cool effects and window dressing for your user interface? What is the real potential this exciting combination of technologies for the next generation Web?[Read More]

Generating XUL Pages On the Fly with PHP

By Amir Mohammad Saied

A Primer to Using XUL with PHP

Have you ever wanted to write a Web application that truly seems like a desktop application and has its functionality too? And did the tons of CSS you’d have to do scare you? Gecko-based browsers are awesome to render pages properly and are compatible with the latest standards. You can use XUL’s magic to make a Web application look exactly like its desktop alternate. The article explains XUL and how to use PEAR’s XUL package to generate XUL pages on the fly.[Read More]

Open Source Network Security Tools

By PHP Magazine

A Lowdown On the Choices

Open source security tools have witnessed a rapid metamorphosis. Nessus has gone closed-source and OpenBSD's pf firewall has found its way into Windows host protection (CORE Force). Get the lowdown on the entire gamut of open source network tools, ranging from vulnerability and application-specific scanners to packet sniffers, to port scanners and more.[Read More]

Beginner’s Guide to PHP

By Marc Isikoff

Introduction to OOP and Classes

Last issue I furthered the introduction to PHP, with an overview of functions. This is a core PHP programming skill, especially when it comes to knowledge of passing in parameters by value or by reference. As you expand your knowledge of objects through an introduction to classes in PHP, you will learn that it is critical to isolate when you are updating the value of an object’s property or updating a particular instance of an object’s property. In this issue I introduce Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), which is essentially 'classes' in PHP 5.[Read More]

The AJAX Application Delivery Challenge

By Lorrie Mac Vittie

A Look Into Security and Performance Challenges

Users are demanding rich, interactive browser-based applications. Security administrators require these applications be secure on both ends of the wire. Server and systems administrators insist that the application not consume more than its fair share of resources, and network administrators are eyeing up your application and calculating the charge-backs with a gleam in their eye, wringing their hands gleefully while anticipating the probability of funding their next upgrade based solely on the cost of bandwidth needed to deliver your application.[Read More]