Praise for Essential PHP Tools: Modules, Extensions, and Accelerators: "Sklar's writing is clear, concise, and accurate ... The book is a definite recommendation for intermediate to advanced programmers both as a text and as a reference. It certainly has earned itselfa spot on my frequently used bookshelf!" -Timothy Boronczyk, Codewalkers (www.codewalkers.com) ''The tools are easy to find and useful, the documentation excellent, and the writing style easy to follow. All this makes Essential PHP Tools a highly recommended book for anyone using PHP on their web server." -Harold McFarland, Midwest Book Review (www.midwestbookreview.com) "From Pear packages to parsing XML files, this book is a huge time saver to developing your own solutions." -Richard Testani, AppleTalk weblog (www.apple-sauce.com/blogger /blogger.html) Essential PHP Tools: Modules, Extensions, and Accelerators DAVID SKLAR APress Media, LLC Essential PHP Tools: Modules, Extensions, and Accelerators Copyright ©2004 by David Sklar Originally published by Apress in 2004 AII rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN 978-1-59059-280-9 ISBN 978-1-4302-0714-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4302-0714-6 Trademarked names may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Technical Reviewer: Adam Trachtenberg Editorial Board: Steve Anglin, Dan Appleman, Gary Cornell, James Cox, Tony Davis, John Franklin, Chris Mills, Steve Rycroft, Dominic Shakeshaft, Julian Skinner, Jim Sumser, Karen Watterson, Gavin Wray, John Zukowski Assistant Publisher: Grace Wong Project Manager: Kylie Johnston Copy Editor: Kim Wimpsett Production Manager: Kari Brooks Production Editor: Noemi Hollander Proofreader: Thistle Hill Publishing Services, LLC Compositor: Kinetic Publishing Services, LLC Indexer: Valerie Perry Artist: Kinetic Publishing Services, LLC Cover Designer: Kurt Krames Manufacturing Manager: Tom Debolski The information in this book is distributed on an "as is" hasis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author(s) nor Apress shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this work. Contents at a Glance About the Author ................................................... ix Acknowledgments .................................................... xi Introduction ...................................................... xiii Part One Databases ........................................... 1 Chapter 1 Accessing Databases with DB ........................ 3 Chapter 2 Accessing Databases with ADODB ................... 23 Part Two HTML ................................................ 53 Chapter 3 Using HTML_QuickForm for Form Processing ........ 55 Chapter 4 Templating with Smarty ............................. 93 Part Three XML ................................................ 149 Chapter 5 Performing Event-Based XML Parsing with XML Parser ......................................... 151 Chapter 6 Developing Lightweight Web Services with XML RPC ....................................... 171 Chapter 7 Developing Heavyweight Web Services with SOAP .......................................... 187 Chapter 8 Performing Easier XML Parsing with SimpleXML .......................................... 215 Part Four Networking ........................................ 223 Chapter 9 Sending Mail ....................................... 225 Chapter 10 Working with Authentication, Users, and Passwords ...................................... 241 Contents at a Glance Part Five Debugging, Caching, and Optimizing .......... 263 Chapter 11 Understanding PHP Internals ...................... 265 Chapter 12 Profiling and Debugging with Xdebug ............. 275 Chapter 13 Accelerating with Code Caches .................... 297 Index .............................................................. 331 iv Contents About the Author ................................................... ix Acknowledgments .................................................... xi Introduction ...................................................... xiii Part One Databases ...................................... 1 Chapter 1 Accessing Databases with DB ................ 3 Exploring a Simple DB Example .................................... 3 Introducing DSNs ................................................... 4 Sending Queries and Retrieving Results .......................... 5 Understanding Quoting and Placeholders .......................... 9 Examining Data Retrieval Convenience Methods .................. 13 Understanding Query Information ................................. 16 Running a Query Multiple Times .................................. 17 Introducing Sequences ............................................. 20 Introducing Error Handling ....................................... 20 Chapter 2 Accessing Databases with ADODB ........... 23 Connecting and Simple Queries ................................... 23 Introducing Record Sets .......................................... 27 Understanding Error Handling ..................................... 32 Introducing Sequences ............................................. 35 Generating HTML ................................................... 36 Caching ............................................................. 49 Exporting Data ..................................................... 50 Part Two HTML ............................................ 53 Chapter 3 Using HTML_QuickForm for Form Processing ...................................... 55 Creating and Displaying a Form .................................. 55 Processing Submitted Data ........................................ 78 Setting Validation Rules ......................................... 82 v Contents Chapter 4 Templating with Smarty ...................... 93 Installing and Configuring Smarty ............................... 94 Understanding Basic Smarty Concepts ............................. 96 Implementing Conditional Logic ................................. 110 Looping and Cycling Through Data ............................... 113 Including Other Files and Templates ........................... 124 Processing Text .................................................. 129 Caching Template Output ......................................... 140 Putting It All Together ......................................... 144 Part Three XML ............................................ 149 Chapter 5 Performing Event-Based XML Parsing with XML Parser .............................. 151 Handling Tags and Character Data ............................... 152 Handling Processing Instructions ............................... 160 Handling Nested Tags ............................................. 163 Using Per-Element Methods ....................................... 165 Specifying Character Sets ....................................... 168 Chapter 6 Developing Lightweight Web Services with XML RPC. ................................. 171 Choosing XML-RPC ................................................. 171 Calling XML-RPC Procedures on Another Server ................. 177 Serving XML-RPC Methods ......................................... 180 Chapter 7 Developing Heavyweight Web Services with SOAP ...................................... 187 Choosing SOAP ..................................................... 187 Installing SOAP .................................................. 188 Making SOAP Requests ............................................. 188 Serving SOAP Requests ........................................... 199 Exploring Further ................................................ 213 vi Contents Chapter 8 Performing Easier XML Parsing with SimpleXML ...................................... 215 Creating SimpleXML Objects ...................................... 215 Working with SimpleXML Objects ................................. 217 Working with Namespaces ......................................... 220 Searching with XPath ............................................. 221 Part Four Networking ................................. 223 Chapter 9 Sending Mail. ................................. 225 Sending Plain-Text Mail Messages with PEAR Mail .............. 225 Sending MIME Mail Messages with Mail_mime ..................... 229 Chapter 10 Working with Authentication, Users, and Passwords .................................. 241 Using the Auth Module ........................................... 241 Auth HTTP ......................................................... 260 Part Five Debugging, Caching, and Optimizing ........................... 263 Chapter 11 Understanding PHP Internals ............... 265 Going from Source File to Output ............................... 266 Seeing How a Code Cache Works .................................. 272 Seeing How a Debugger Works .................................... 272 Examining Some Differences Between the Internals of PHP 4 and PHP 5 ............................................ 273 Chapter 12 Profiling and Debugging with Xdebug .... 275 Installing Xdebug ................................................ 275 Tracing Functions ................................................ 276 Profiling ......................................................... 283 Using Remote Debugging .......................................... 286 vii Contents Chapter 13 Accelerating with Code Caches ............ 297 Working with APC: The Alternative PHP Cache .................. 298 Working with ionCube PHP Accelerator .......................... 307 Working with Turck MMCache ...................................... 317 Benchmarking Cache Performance ........... ...................... 328 Index ............................................................. 331 viii