[thelist] PHP PEAR tutorials/hosting

Simon Willison cs1spw at bath.ac.uk
Tue Jul 29 05:07:03 CDT 2003


Hi David,

Tuesday, July 29, 2003, 6:25:32 AM, you wrote:
> I've been looking into implementing several PEAR packages in a product
> I'm developing.  I'm already using the DB abstraction class, but that's
> only because database functions are pretty much straightforward.  The
> rest of the packages' documentation that I've looked at are pretty
> cryptic and non-explanatory and offer short, non-descriptive examples on
> rare occasions.

> Is there an easier-to-read resource for learning how to use PEAR
> packages than the PEAR documentation (http://pear.php.net)?

The documentation for most PEAR packages is either poor or non
existent, which is one of the main reasons I rarely use PEAR code (I
always find it very hard to resists the urge to write something
myself - inefficient I know). Luckily there are a number of excellent
tutorials for the various PEAR modules, which have been collated here
by the guys at PHP Kitchen:

http://www.phpkitchen.com/staticpages/index.php?page=2003041204203962

> Also, does anyone know if many hosting providers have installed PEAR on
> their servers yet, or is this not very widespread yet?

I have no idea how widespread PEAR installation on hosts is, but since
it's included as part of PHP in recent versions I'd imagine it "sneaks
in" to quite a lot of hosting packages without the host necessarily
even realising. In any case, I've never seen this as a problem since
there's nothing to stop you dropping the PEAR files you need in to a
directory within your own account and including them from there.

Hope that helps,

Simon Willison
-- 
http://simon.incutio.com/



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