Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 5.3.2:

Improved LCG entropy. (Rasmus, Samy Kamkar)
Fixed safe_mode validation inside tempnam() when the directory path does not end with a /). (Martin Jansen)
Fixed a possible open_basedir/safe_mode bypass in the session extension identified by Grzegorz Stachowiak. (Ilia)
Key Bug Fixes in PHP 5.3.2 include:

Added support for SHA-256 and SHA-512 to php’s crypt.
Added protection for $_SESSION from interrupt corruption and improved “session.save_path” check.
Fixed bug #51059 (crypt crashes when invalid salt are given).
Fixed bug #50940 Custom content-length set incorrectly in Apache sapis.
Fixed bug #50847 (strip_tags() removes all tags greater then 1023 bytes long).
Fixed bug #50723 (Bug in garbage collector causes crash).
Fixed bug #50661 (DOMDocument::loadXML does not allow UTF-16).
Fixed bug #50632 (filter_input() does not return default value if the variable does not exist).
Fixed bug #50540 (Crash while running ldap_next_reference test cases).
Fixed bug #49851 (http wrapper breaks on 1024 char long headers).
Over 60 other bug fixes.
For users upgrading from PHP 5.2 there is a migration guide available here, detailing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.3.

Further information and downloads:

For a full list of changes in PHP 5.3.2, see the ChangeLog. For source downloads please visit our downloads page, Windows binaries can be found on windows.php.net/download/.

I’ll demonstrate a simple example on how to connect to MySQL using PHP’s PDO class. Just some of the benefits of PDO is that it’s fast and if you use the PDO::prepare() method it will prevent SQL injection attacks by calling the PDO::quote() method. The other pros is that there are several databases it will support. So let’s dive right into the code:

Fatal Error new PDO Instance

Just an important note that if you receive the following type of fatal error in your development environment:

Looks pretty messy and hard to decipher. When trying to decipher error code I usually look at the first error which led me to see why it was reporting an “Unknown database” when it was existing. The extra quotes also gave me a hint as to the problem. So I concluded the problem resulted in the placement of extra quotes around the values of host and/or dbname. The following will generate the previous error:

So if you do not use variables then do not add the single quotes for the values of host and dbname. In other words, use the following code instead:

This is a simple test to connect to your mysql database or any other support database. Just for your information if you wish to connect to PostgreSQL which is another popular and robust database use the following code in place of the line of instantiation:

If you’re in a development environment and wish to display your errors directly to the screen you can specify the errors displayed. You need to set your display_errors settings to ‘on’ in your php.ini file. So set your error attributes after instantiating the PDO class like so:

There are three types of error report settings for PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE:
PDO::ERRMODE_SILENT = error codes
PDO::ERRMODE_WARNING = E_WARNING
PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION = Throw exceptions

Here’s an example of implementing PDO::ATR_ERRMODE:

Don’t confuse this with the errors generated from the php setting of error_reporting. The errors from PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE apply to the sql query and its results. I’ll dive into the error settings and the different outputs of the php.ini error_reporting settings and PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE report settings in a future article.

The market is full of developers in different languages like ASP.net, C#, VB.net, Coldfusion, Java and last but not least PHP. Among all the great time has come for PHP developers in India and abroad. The reason is simple. They are highly in demand due to domestic and international requirement. Let me explain how.

Due to the recent recession, most of companies and government organizations have started cutting corners, IT expenditure is among the worst sufferer out of any other expenditures. Because IT expenditure is not considered as Core source of Direct Income, so it’s going to feel the heat. Now need of having up to date online information without losing the customer faith is also important. Its true for government and private organization. But that cost goes higher and higher in licensing and development. The response to that was simple, open source technology adoption. And what is the easiest and best to start is PHP development.

PHP development is not only providing the cost effective solution but its known for its robust features on internet. Above all the great community support has made it un disputed leader in web development solutions. It’s definitely giving a second thought to existing proprietary programming language owners.  

The other reason for PHP popularity is the simplicity and structure that is based on OOP. The programmers are taught OPP during their academics, so migrating to PHP from any other language becomes easier than ever. That adds to its rapid expansion among the developers in India and abroad.

The role of India has become vital here, worldwide India is the leading provider of developers, and that gives an edge to India for Open source revolution also. Most famous PHP based open sources like Joomla, Drupal, Oscommerce have their India based community chapters.

Advice to ASP.net Developers and coldfusion developers, don’t neglect PHP now, it could surely save your job in future.