Mar 2

20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

Web applications have made huge leaps and bounds in improving user experience thanks to a lot of recently developed Ajax technology. When you combine some neat functionality courtesy of PHP with the cleverness of javascript you can produce some pretty cool results. In an effort to help you take it up a notch, we’d like to share some methods for helping your site anticipate a user’s next move.

The list below is made up of the best 20 FREE PHP Components and Tutorials that you will likely need in many of your projects, they are all of the highest quality and more or less easy to configure. Give them a try.

1. Charts

pChart is a PHP class oriented framework designed to create aliased charts. Most of todays chart libraries have a cost, our project is intended to be free. Data can be retrieved from SQL queries, CSV files, or manually provided. This project is still under development and new features or fix are made every week. Focus has been put on rendering quality introducing an aliasing algorithm to draw eye candy graphics. Rendering speed has been dramatically enhanced since the first version, we’ll still continue optimising the code!

Php-components1 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

2. PHP components: Autosuggest

PHP component ready to use to implement a search form with an autosuggest feature using PHP and MySQL.

Php-components2 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

3. Animated Ajax Record Deletion Using MooTools

If you are a huge fan of WordPress’ method of individual article deletion where you click the delete link, the menu item animates red, and the item disappears. Here’s how to achieve that functionality with MooTools javascript.

if(isset($_GET['delete']))
{
	$query = 'DELETE FROM my_table WHERE item_id = '.(int)$_GET['delete'];
	$result = mysql_query($result,$link);
}

Php-components3 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

4. Sanitize and Validate Data with PHP Filters

Data validation is an integral part of working with forms. Not only can invalid submitted data lead to security problems, but it can also break your webpage. In this tutorial we’ll take a look at how to remove illegal characters and validate data by using the “filter_var” function.

Php-components4 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

5. How to Build a Login System for a Simple Website

In this tutorial you will learn how to build a login system with PHP and MYSQL. Many, many features will be covered; including MySqli, Prepared Statements, jQuery, Classes, Sessions, Cookies, etc.

Php-components5 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

6. Building Your First Simple CMS

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a simple PHP class that will:

  • Create a database
  • Connect to a database
  • Display a form with two fields
  • Save the form data in the database
  • Display the saved data from the database

Php-components6 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

7. HOW-TO: Reddit-style Voting With PHP, MySQL And jQuery

If you are a regular at Reddit, you must have noticed the way people vote there. You can either vote up or vote down. Pretty interesting, huh? This tutorial will show you how to create such a voting system with jQuery, PHP and MySQL.

Php-components7 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

Check out the demo here

8. Easy Pagination with PHP and Mootools

This is a PHP Page class that handles the database queries, generating ajax page navigation and even creates the Javascript for you.

Php-components8 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

Check out the demo here

9. Caching Dynamic PHP pages easily

Looking for a solution to cache heavy pages and just serve a static html version for a little while now, and here is a solution in output buffering.

Php-components9 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

Check out the demo here

10. Directory trees with php and jquery

A simple way to keep track of many files is to use a directory tree. A directory tree lists out files and directories so that it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. In this tutorial, we will create a directory tree using PHP and jQuery.

Php-components10 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

Check out the demo here

11. jQuery – PHP & Ajax with the Twitter API

Learn how you can use jQuery, PHP and a little ajax to connect up to the Twitter API and return results. When you load your HTML it will call the javascript function getSearch() to return Twitter Search API results every 30 seconds.

12. How to Make a Password Strength Meter Like Google

Password strength meters are becoming more and more popular amongst web services. Google uses one when creating a Google account. Here is how to create one yourself.

Php-components12 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

Check out the demo here

13. Backup Your Database into an XML File Using PHP

Backing up data is extremely important. Most of the time the database is the most important piece of the puzzle. Imagine losing all of the data in your database — it would be tragic. Here’s a PHP snippet that outputs your database as XML. Here is how the output will look like.

<database name="my_database">
	<table name="wp_comments">
		<columns>
			<column name="comment_ID" blob="0" maxlength="" multiple_key="0" not_null="1" numeric="1" primary_key="1" table="wp_comments" type="int" default="" unique_key="0" unsigned="1" zerofill="0" />
			<column name="comment_post_ID" blob="0" maxlength="" multiple_key="1" not_null="1" numeric="1" primary_key="0" table="wp_comments" type="int" default="" unique_key="0" unsigned="0" zerofill="0" />

Check out the demo here

14. Add Custom Google Search Results to Your Site with PHP

Learn how to integrate a custom google search results on your site, and style it to your liking.

15. Send Hassle Free and Dependable HTML Emails With PHP

A simple straightforward function that sends HTML e-mails with a plain text counterpart for those over 80 and still using AOL 2.5.

16. How to Validate Forms in both sides using PHP and jQuery

In this tutorial we are going to learn how to validate your forms using PHP and jQuery in both sides: client side (using javascript with jQuery) and server side (using PHP). It will be interesting to see how to use regular expressions to validate different kind of e-mails, passwords and more.

Php-components16 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

Check out the demo here

17. Create a shoutbox using PHP and AJAX (with jQuery)

how to create a dynamic ajax based shoutbox with jQuery from scratch. It will be very interesting to know how to use the ajax function of jQuery and how it can be used to insert and recover data from a MySQL database via PHP in a way asynchronous.

Php-components17 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

Check out the demo here

18. 3 ways to compress CSS files using PHP

When you’re using a sophisticated design, CSS files can quickly become very long, and takes time to load. Here are 3 interresting ways of compressing CSS files by using PHP.

19. Smart Image Resizer

The major advantage of this script is that it allows you to resize and crop any image on my website without touching the actual image or writing any code.

Php-components19 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

20. PHP Contact Form Script

This contact form will return a validation message if the message was sent succesfully. It will also display an error message if you try to send an empty message or if the e-mail is invalid.

Php-components20 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

Check out the demo here

21. PHP & jQuery image upload and crop v1.2

This PHP script will allow you to upload a JPG image, resize it if required then crop it to given height and width.

Php-components21 in 20 Useful PHP Components & Tutorials for Everyday Project

65 Responses, Add Comment +

  1. ericb 2 March 2009

    WOW this is really an amazing post! I’m a complete beginner on PHP/MySQL these tutorials would really help a lot. Thanks for sharing!

  2. Danno 3 March 2009

    Hope to see some of these come out as Wordpress plugins. Good list.

  3. Stephen 3 March 2009

    For charting, I have found that LibChart (http://naku.dohcrew.com/libchart/pages/introduction/) is much simpler to use.

    Thanks for the list

  4. covax 3 March 2009

    Awesome!!

  5. covax 3 March 2009

    Hope to see some of these come out as Wordpress plugins. Good list.

  6. Fabryz 3 March 2009

    Nice collection :D

    This night this page had a weird layout

  7. Bijal 3 March 2009

    thanks man..
    it’s superb..

  8. zoel 3 March 2009

    very – very superb! if u never bookmark this page, you will be lose ;-)

  9. Jeromy 3 March 2009

    Very detailed and well laid out, as per usual.

    Now if my little brain could only apply your info, I would be set:) I must admit, without any post secondary training in any component of web design, it is tuff to learn on my own. Is there a tool for writing php? i.e. there are plenty of html editors (so one doesn’t need to know everything about html).

    Thanks Noupe!

    Jeromy (aka hillbilly)

    • Joseph 3 March 2009

      Eclipse w/PDT or Zend IDE

    • Daniel 4 March 2009

      You can use a lot of editors for php. Lightweight is Programmers Notepad [free] and Kommodo [has ftp functionality embedded]. Btw great-post post beginers.

  10. Janckos 3 March 2009

    Excelente recopilacion, gracias!.

  11. Jamp Mark 3 March 2009

    Very useful indeed. One can create a login UI with validations, strength meter and using mysql with this list.

  12. Permana Jayanta 4 March 2009

    Great .. very useful … thanks for making this list

  13. Diego 4 March 2009

    Algunas cosas muy interesantes

  14. avanzaweb 4 March 2009

    I have to probe all these solutions.

  15. Sarah 4 March 2009

    Awesome!!!

  16. Vincent Franco 4 March 2009

    Excellent list, especially the dynamic image resizer!

  17. Awesome post! But one thing is missing – some newsletters scripts.

  18. Awesome post! But one thing is missing – some newsletters scripts.

  19. Derrick 4 March 2009

    Wrong link posted on the last example.

  20. Mani 4 March 2009

    Hi,

    I have been following your posts for long and have found them really great.

    Thank you.

  21. Tom Norris 5 March 2009

    This is a very cool list, but a lot of people still use plain text for e-mail. Ever try to load a huge mail from tickcetmaster, livenation, or jinx on a cell phone? :)

  22. Eligio 5 March 2009

    Great tutorial, like to see the ajax image/upload crop on wordpress. This will be an awesome plugin!!

  23. ebookey 5 March 2009

    Great list, well worth bookmarking for the future. Thanks!

  24. DarkLight 6 March 2009

    Really nice post, thanks!

  25. superstoker 6 March 2009

    great post

  26. sky 8 March 2009

    wow..this is very useful for me..
    thank u..

  27. ranga 8 March 2009

    cool links . thanks !!

  28. inetis 8 March 2009

    Thanks for this great list

  29. Amir 9 March 2009

    Thanks for such a useful list, this gonna very helpful to me…

  30. ambshah 9 March 2009

    better be careful with what you use, on online business that has commercial transactions enabled needs to be outsourced to a professional , of course that’s just my opinion. you can always create your wish list using these resources for your developer…

  31. Mark 9 March 2009

    Great Job, I see at least 3 I will be using in the near future.

  32. Krystian 9 March 2009

    Thanks for password strength meter solution. Very usefull.
    Regards.

  33. ChristopherJacob 9 March 2009

    Seriously useful stuff here.

  34. Kestutis 10 March 2009

    Appears to me that the pChart project is dead. The frequent updates that were are no more. And the charts themselves are pretty bugged (added pChart to my project, and bit sorry about it.)

  35. Amber Weinberg 10 March 2009

    great links, i really like that email validation :)

  36. zohaib 10 March 2009

    Reddit style voting is quite good

  37. Brendon 10 March 2009

    I guess $result = mysql_query($result,$link) is supposed to be $result = mysql_query($query,$link), right?

  38. moneygiay 11 March 2009

    thank you!

  39. PHP Programmer 11 March 2009

    Great Post Thanks

  40. Randy 11 March 2009

    I am learning php now and have been wondering how so much of what is listed is done! Glad I stumbled here! Thanks!

  41. LANDLORDBUILDING 12 March 2009

    hope I could learn this..

  42. SPEEDUPYOURINTERNET 12 March 2009

    can anybody teach me how to do this..?

  43. Patternhead 13 March 2009

    Great resource. Thanks

  44. Dip 19 March 2009

    Hi,
    This is very useful article to jazz up the skill in PHP language. We also wrote a few posts that gives in depth idea about PhP. Please, feel free to take a look of the above Blog URL and have your feedback.
    Thank you,
    Dip

  45. ZAQINET 24 March 2009

    SERIOUSLY, VERY HAPPY!

  46. Th3luva 24 March 2009

    When I open this site..Whoah! It’s really good for beginner like me..keep up a good work guys. Thanks for every posts.

  47. mo7amed 28 March 2009

    this is wonderful tutorial .. i read it 3 times and get a fantastic results and sure i put a
    copy of this lesson on my site here

  48. andai 29 March 2009

    These are some great tutorials… thanks!

  49. shadi jordan 30 March 2009

    thanks for all this ..
    right and usefull

  50. Benny Han 1 April 2009

    Great list. Thank you!

  51. Conrad 1 April 2009

    Great post thanks

  52. CD 26 April 2009

    The title says 20 tutorials, but there are 21 tutorials :)

  53. ebu 6 November 2009

    i don’t care what is the tutorial is that …but one person she got comments is soo cute…whatever..

  54. Cazpa 6 December 2009

    Great list, number 7 is what I was looking for :))

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