Top 10 Open source tutorials and articles -- October 2009

	Tutorials
	Articles

Check out which Open source tutorials and articles developerWorks readers found most interesting last month.

1. Cook up Web sites fast with CakePHP, Part 1: Adding related information and services

   CakePHP is a stable production-ready, rapid-development aid for building Web sites in PHP. This "Cook up Web sites fast with CakePHP" series shows you how to build an online product catalog using CakePHP.

2. Create BlackBerry applications with open source tools, Part 1

   There is perhaps no bigger market-transformational technology than the cell phone. And within that classification of devices, perhaps none more recognizable than the BlackBerry from Research In Motion (RIM). Most people think it is just for business e-mail, but there is untapped potential in that addictive device. Despite being a popular platform, third-party applications are still needed for the BlackBerry platform. There is no better way to bring those applications to fruition than to enable the help from the open source community. Follow along as this tutorial lays the groundwork for an open source data-collection application, upon which an accessible and easy-to-use data-collection service is built.

3. Create BlackBerry applications with open source tools, Part 3: Building a social-networking application

   Examine the Personal Information Manager (PIM) data structures common to BlackBerry devices as you follow along and build a simple social-media application.

4. Create BlackBerry applications with open source tools, Part 2: Building an RSS reader

   Explore the RSS data-distribution format by creating a BlackBerry RSS reader suitable for taking news wherever you and your BlackBerry go.

5. Cook up Web sites fast with CakePHP, Part 2: Bake bigger and better with CakePHP

   Jumpstart your CakePHP application using scaffolding and Bake. This tutorial shows you the ins and outs of using CakePHP's access control lists (ACLs), what scaffolding is, and what it provides. You learn how to use Bake to generate the code for a scaffold, letting you tweak it as you go. You also explore ACLs: what they are, how to create them, and how to use them in your application. This tutorial builds on the online product application Tor created in Part 1.

6. Cook up Web sites fast with CakePHP, Part 4: Use CakePHP's Session and Request Handler components

   CakePHP is a stable production-ready, rapid-development aid for building Web sites in PHP. This "Cook up Web sites fast with CakePHP" series shows you how to build an online product catalog using CakePHP. Part 1 focuses on getting CakePHP up and running, Part 2 demonstrates how to use scaffolding and Bake, and Part 3 shows how to use CakePHP's Sanitize and Security components to help secure user-submitted data. This tutorial focuses primarily on the Session component of CakePHP.

7. Understanding the Zend Framework, Part 2: Model-View-Controller and adding a database

   In Part 1 of this series, you learn about the goals behind the Zend Framework, including easy-to-use components and an architecture based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. Now start to actually put that to use. This tutorial shows you how to use the Zend Framework to create the beginnings of your online feed reader, Chomp, creating a form and adding information to a database while getting to know the MVC pattern.

8. Learning PHP, Part 1: Register for an account, upload files for approval, and view and download approved files

   This tutorial is the first of a three-part series that takes you from the most basic PHP script to working with databases and streaming from the file system by documenting the building of a document workflow system. In this part, look at the basics of building a PHP script, including syntax, HTML forms, and database connections.

9. Debugging PHP using Eclipse and PDT

   The PHP Development Tools (PDT) plug-in, when installed with Eclipse Europa, gives you that ability to quickly write and debug PHP scripts and pages. PDT supports two debugging tools: XDebug and the Zend Debugger. Learn how to configure PDT for debugging PHP scripts and discover which perspectives you use when taking closer looks at your scripts.

10. Develop Android applications with Eclipse

    Android is Google's oft-discussed mobile, wireless, computer, and communications platform. This tutorial introduces Android application development with the Eclipse plug-in, otherwise known as Android Development Tools. The tutorial provides an introduction to Android development with a quick introduction, a tour of Android Development Tools, and includes the construction of two example applications.

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1. How to use Subversion with Eclipse

   From the beginning, Eclipse included tight integration with the Concurrent Versions System (CVS) in order to provide access to change-management capabilities. Now, many projects — notably those run by the Apache Software Foundation — are using a different change-management system: Subversion. Find out how to use Eclipse for projects that use a Subversion repository.

2. Developing applications using the Eclipse C/C++ Development Toolkit

   When most people think "Eclipse," they think "Java IDE." Eclipse is much more. With the proper plug-ins, you can use Eclipse to work with PHP, Ruby, and Groovy, C, and C++. In this article, you get started with the Eclipse C/C++ Development Toolkit (CDT). Build a simple application in C++ using the CDT and the C++ Standard Template Library (STL) to streamline the process and take advantage of some of the powerful features of C++.

3. Seven great PHP IDEs compared

   Discover what you should expect from an integrated development environment (IDE), and compare the cost and benefits of seven popular IDE choices.

4. Reading and writing the XML DOM with PHP

   Myriad techniques are available for reading and writing XML in PHP. This article presents three methods for reading XML: using the DOM library, using the SAX parser, and using regular expressions. Writing XML using DOM and PHP text templating will also be covered.

5. Developing Web applications with Tomcat and Eclipse

   Using Eclipse as a Web development platform is even easier when you integrate it directly with Apache Tomcat. Learn how to set up Eclipse and Apache Tomcat V5.5 to develop the quintessential Hello World servlet.

6. C/C++ development with the Eclipse Platform

   Get an overview of how to use the Eclipse Platform in your C/C++ development projects. Though Eclipse is mainly a Java development environment, its architecture ensures support for other programming languages. In this article, you'll learn how to use the C/C++ Development Toolkit (CDT), which is the best C/C++ toolkit available for Eclipse.

7. Build GUIs with the Eclipse Visual Editor project

   Like many Eclipse.org projects, the goal of the Visual Editor project is to build a tool for building tools—in this case, tools for building graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The Visual Editor project has released a reference implementation. The Visual Editor release 0.5 is a GUI builder for AWT/Swing applications, a long-awaited Eclipse feature. Release 1.0 includes support for SWT. Get an overview of Visual Editor and the technology behind it, along with a short demonstration of Visual Editor V0.5's features for building AWT/Swing applications and a preview of the SWT support in Visual Editor V1.0.

8. Debugging techniques for PHP programmers

   Explore various methods for debugging PHP applications, including turning on error reporting in Apache and PHP, and by placing strategic print statements to locate the source of more difficult bugs through a simple example PHP script. The PHPeclipse plug-in for Eclipse, a slick development environment with real-time syntax parsing abilities, will also be covered, as well as the DBG debugger extension for PHPeclipse.

9. Read and write Excel data with PHP

   Learn how to use the XML support in PHP to read the data from the XML exported from Microsoft Excel 2003. Also, learn to export data from your PHP application as Excel XML so your users can see their data in a real spreadsheet.

10. Five common PHP design patterns

    Design patterns are just for Java architects -- at least that's what you may have been led to believe. In fact, design patterns are useful for everyone. If these tools aren't exclusive to architecture astronauts, what are they, and why are they useful in PHP applications?

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