Evert Pot has posted to his blog about a CalDAV library he's worked up to allow for read/write access to calendaring that's compatible with the normal CalDAV systems.

My main goal is to create a general-purpose CalDAV library, rather than a consumer-ready server app. I'm hoping people will be able to use this library to enable CalDAV functionality in their existing applications.

You can get more information on the installation of the library from the SabreDAV wiki and to get at the code, you'll need to do a subversion checkout to get it.

In a recent post to his blog Idrish Laxmidhar walks you through the process of getting Mercury set up for local mailing and used by an XAMPP installation for debugging.

Had tried to make php mail() work on localhost. But had failed. So gave up. This was around 8 months back. Now again some days back had to use the Php mail function on one project. [...] A lot of google searching and some simple steps, I could make it work. So here sharing my experience with you.

He starts with a list of requirements to follow along with his process - a web server, a mail server (in this case Mercury) and a mail client - and then starts into the steps. Each one is accompanied by screenshots showing you exactly what each of the screens should look like as you follow along. In the end you'll have a local mail server you can connect to and test with without ever having to send out a public email.

New from the Web Developer Juice blog there's a tutorial looking to help you get a memcached server up and running and make it accessible to your PHP applications.

Thinking of implementing caching for your php application , you are at a right place. Just in 10 simple (copy and paste) steps you can install and access Memcached Server.

Their steps use the yum package manager, but several other linux distributions with other packaging systems will probably have similarly-named packages. Since the install process requires loading system libraries and being able to restart the web server, you might needs to have a privileged account to make the installation work. It's a pretty simple process though - install the lib, install memcached, start up the server and test your PHP installation to be sure a sample script can reach it.

Richard Thomas author of the "Solar Shorts" series has branched out from just talking about the framework and has a new short article posted about security in PHP applications in general.

A search for the phrase "secure php" on Google returns a ton of results but scanning through the first couple pages of results it becomes clear that when you talk about security and PHP people tend to focus on 2 things, the code and PHP itself.

He talks about what should be considered when it comes to PHP applications security, some of the software tools you can use and a few questions to ask yourself to help you get your site along the path to being more secure (like asking about temporary folders, excess packages or firewalls that may or may not be active).

On his blog today Abhinav Singh has an interesting post describing how to use PHP and XMPP (the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) to get real-time notifications of the status of your servers and applications via instant messenger.

There are several open and closed source softwares in the market which can generate almost real time notifications for you. Most famous one being Nagios. In this blog post I will discuss, how to generate real time system notifications using PHP and XMPP. Specifically, I will present sample script using Jaxl (Jabber XMPP Client Library) for generating real time system load notifications, which can be received using any Instant Messengers.

The code for a class that uses and extends the Jaxl library is included. It sends the messages via Jabber after grabbing the contents of the "/proc/loadavg" file on the local system. You'll need to check out the latest Jaxl source and create a configuration file with your IM information, but that's about it. The rest is handled by the script - you can see an example here.

Danne Lundqvist has a new post showing how to get MS SQL Server support to work with your PHP installation on linux with the help of the FreeTDS tool.

Adding support for MS SQL Server in PHP is not very difficult. Searching (Google/Bing/whatever) reveals lots of information on how to do this with Windows - naturally - but very little on how to go about it using Linux. Most people use precompiled PHP installations and I will show how to add MS SQL Server support to a precompiled PHP installation here. Those of you compiling PHP yourselves will probably understand what to do and what not based on the information here as well.

You'll have to get and install (compile) the latest version of the FreeTDS software, install the mssql extension from the PECL repository and install the extension into your PHP instance. With it installed and working, you can change the configuration file to add in whatever server information you'd like.

Ruslan Yakushev has written up a new post detailing how you can set up an IIS server (traditionally only able to handle one PHP version instance at a time) to use multiple versions depending on your needs.

This post describes how to configure IIS to support multiple versions of PHP on the same server. This kind of setup is useful in development environments where it is necessary to test an application with different PHP versions. Also, it is often used in production environments, where many PHP applications are hosted on the same server and some of them have dependency on a particular PHP version.

He gives instructions for three IIS versions - 5.1, 6.0 and 7.0 and later. The trick to it is in the FastCGI configuration file. His technique lets you set up alias to the different PHP installations (as many as you want) and a "Types" section where it can easily be swapped out. With IIS 7.0 and later, some of this can be done through the IIS control panel.

Fabien Potencier has written up a post detailing a PEAR channel server manager he's developed, Pirum.

Pirum lets you setup PEAR channel servers in a matter of minutes. Pirum is best suited when you want to create small PEAR channels for a few packages written by a few developers. Pirum consists of just one file, a command line tool, written in PHP. There is no external dependencies, no not need for a database, no need to setup credentials, and nothing need to be installed or configured.

All you need to do to get the tool is download the pirum file and go. It includes features like per-channel HTML pages and Atmos feed release tracking along with several other standard PEAR channel features.

There's already been one project that's made the swtich - PHP_Depend.

Hasin Hayber has posted about a new library he and his group have created to interface directly with the RackSpace Cloud Server API - phprackcloud.

So we have spend our time for last two days and developed a PHP client library to use RackSpace cloud server API from inside a PHP application. [...] There is plenty of documentation and example included. The code is mostly self explanatory. Please don't forget to check the Wiki page to get some idea on how to use this library and how far you can go. We have covered all available methods by RackSpace cloud server in our client library.

Davey Shafik also added a comment to the post about an interface of his own that uses parts of the Zend Framework to make and handle the request.

Chris Jones has pointed out a new article on the Oracle Technology Network about using PHP on the Oracle HTTP Server for 11g.

Oracle HTTP Server is the web server component in Oracle Fusion Middleware. Based on the Apache infrastructure, Oracle HTTP Server allows developers to program their site in a variety of languages and technologies. [...] Although PHP interpreter, language and server side module (mod_php) do not ship with the Oracle HTTP Server 11g release, Oracle will assists customers in configuration and inclusion of mod_php into Oracle HTTP Server. Note that Oracle does not support the PHP interpreter and language but it supports Oracle HTTP Server 11g release with mod_php included.

The tutorial steps you through the installation of a PHP component on the Oracle HTTP server to get the latest version of the interpreter up and running (PHP 5.3 as of the time of this post). The main part of the install is getting the mod_php extension for the server installed and working with the needed Oracle (OCI8) support. You'll need to be able to configure and make/make install to get it all working so be sure either you have the rights (or a handy admin is nearby).