International PHP Conference 2003

Sebastian Bergmann writes "The Call for Papers for the International PHP Conference 2003 Spring Edition has started. The conference will be held on May 8th and 9th in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Like its sister event, the International PHP Conference 2003 Fall Edition, the conference will gather both the PHP Development Team and PHP enthusiasts from all over the world for two days of discussion, sessions and workshops."

More Information

[Motherfucking Shit]

FYI, the deadline for submissions is January 31st. You can submit a proposal here [phpconference.de], and speakers should have at least two lectures to present. The topics covered at the conference will include:

• General PHP
  
• PHP & Business
  
• PHP & Databases
  
• PHP Design
  
• PHP Extensions
  
• PHP & XML
  
• PHP-GTK

Oh, and anyone who's invited to be a speaker/presenter will have their way paid by the conference.

They really need a session on security.

[Anonymous Coward]

How to cleanse user input etc..

Lots of articles about PHP security are a bit vague about things.

Re:They really need a session on security.

[lux55]

Try is_int() [php.net] or is_numeric() [php.net]. The latter will return true for strings that are all number as well (ie. '123').

You can also convert that string to a number via:

$num = (int) $num;

Validation/filtration is pretty easy in PHP. I agree though, the tutorials usually don't provide enough references as to what functions are useful. Regexes can only take you so far (quite far albeit) before your application shows a noticeable drop in performance.

It would be nice to see PHP Security added to the list of topics.

Re:They really need a session on security.

[KDan]

Checking with regex's isn't that hard either. If you get stuck with ASP (sometimes the choice isn't yours) and you find the type checking a bit wanting, you can always use regexes - they're supported even by ASP. Just get the matches for "^[XXX]*" and check if the match is equal to the input, where XXX can be, depending on what you want (and you can put several of them:

Alphabetic: A-Za-z
Numeric: 0-9
Underscore: \_
hyphen: \-
any other char: \yourchar
etc...

You can do this yourself easily without even thinking about it in any language with regex support, if you ever find you need custom, flexible input-validating functions.

Regular expressions are powerful stuff.

Daniel

PHB Conference

[MountainLogic]

What's the big deal about a PHB conference? PHBs are going to them all the time.

Oh, wait. Never mind.

PHP Wishlist

[the_mad_poster]

I've been holding off on PHP in favor of perl now for a significant amount of time because the lack of control in PHP scares me. There are some major sticking points: oop, variable scoping (BIGGIE) that I want to see come out of the next PHP release. Hopefully some meaningful discussion can be made on security issues as well.

However, the biggest thing the PHP community needs to start serious dialog on is how to meld it with the business world. PHP has so much potential and so much to offer the business world, but it won't get there until we shed the "kiddie" language aura that surrounds it.

We need dialog on how to make it a serious language in short...

Re:PHP Wishlist

[g_dancer]

With the upcoming major release (PHP 5) PHP [php.net] will overcome its deficits when it comes to object-oriented language constructs. Have a look at this [zend.com] for a list of new features of the Zend Engine 2, the compiling and executing kernel of PHP 5. The Script Running Machine (SRM) [vl-srm.net] completes PHP to an Application Server by providing a co-process to the web-server that runs persistent PHP objects.

The first thing ...

[Greedo]

... would be to stop spreading FUD like "the biggest thing the PHP community needs to start serious dialog on is how to meld it with the business world".

My company has used PHP since the very early days, and we've enjoyed year-over-year growth since then (granted, that has almost little to do with our choice to use PHP).

To claim that PHP isn't "ready for prime time" or whatever other crap gets spewed these days, is disingeneous. Maybe if you tell us what you think is missing, we can point you in the right direction.

Re:The first thing ...

[the_mad_poster]

... would be to stop spreading FUD like "the biggest thing the PHP community needs to start serious dialog on is how to meld it with the business world"

Ummm... or maybe we should try what I REALLY said: that the PHP community needs to start serious dialog on how to meld it with the business world. As in: PHP IS ready for the primetime, now the community needs to talk about GETTING it there, because like it or not... it's not there. Again, this is because it has a kiddie language attached to it. Attitudes like "PHP is too easy to learn - it must be weak" or "PHP is just a beginner's language, it doesn't try to provide real functionality" must be eliminated.

PHP, when learned properly, does not have the limitations that people place on it. However, now the PHP community needs to sell that point to the folks who count - everyone's favorites - the PHB's with money.