In Case You Missed It...The Week of July 4, 2005

This week we saw:

If you're using anything that is remotely related to XML-RPC (PostNuke, Nucleus, phpAdsNew, phpPgAds, phpMyFAQ, Serendipity, Wordpress, Drupal, and Xoops, just to name a few), you need to pay attention. The official word from Secunia is that with this latest exploit "Input passed in an XML document is not properly sanitised before being used in an "eval()" call. This can be exploited to inject arbitrary PHP code via a specially crafted XML document." You should check with your vendors for upgrades (in case they have added anything else with the new package) and/or upgrade your own version of XML-RPC if you have it on your servers. To download this package or read about the changelog, you can go to http://pear.php.net/package/XML_RPC/, or simply use the "PEAR upgrade" command to upgrade an existing installation.

Although the final release is planned for July 11 (according to http://www.php.net) you can download and begin testing the latest release right now. This release also includes the upgraded version of PEAR's XML-RPC. To download the latest, go to http://qa.php.net/~derick/.

There are several PHP books that have recently been released including:

• PHP5 for Dummies, by C. Braun.
• PHP & MySQL Every Day Apps for Dummies, by Janet Valade
• PHP & MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual Quick Pro Guide (2nd Edition), by Larry Ullman

And soon to be released (so keep your eyes open):

• No Nonsense XML Web Development with PHP, by Thomas Myer
• Extending and Embedding PHP, by George Schlossnagle & Wez Furlong
• PHP-Nuke: Mastering Internet Content Management, by Jens Ferner
• Web Standards Programmer's Reference: HTML, CSS, Javascript, Perl, Python, and PHP, by Steven M. Schaefer
• PHP 5 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach, by Jon Stephans, et al
• PHP Application Design Handbook, by Kevin Tatroe , Tobias Ratschiller

Of course, all of these titles (along with practically everything else in existence) can be purchased through Amazon.com.

The recent release of phpMyAdmin is stable now, so feel free to upgrade to your heart's content. To get the package, go to http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php. And for a complete list of all the changes (there are numerous), go to http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php?relnotes=0.

The good folks at the phpMyAdmin project are also seeking translators to assist them in translating phpMyAdmin strings. For full info, see number 7.2 of the FAQ found at http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/docs.php. To see what languages are desperately in demand, go to http://www.cihar.com/phpMyAdmin/stats/translations.php.

I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't include what's new at PEAR and PECL. Recent PEAR releases include:

See you next week with more news and tidbits from the PHP world!