Regular Expressions: A Primer

Well, this morning I finally came across a problem where I couldn't avoid regular expressions anymore. Sure, I've used them in form validation, but I've pretty much always just copied existing code for validating email addresses etc, without much attention to the gibberish of characters that magically format or validate my string.

I busted out google and did a bit of searching; this is the page I found to be the most informative in the briefest amount of wordage:

http://www.webcheatsheet.com/php/regular_expressions.php

This page has a nice example chart at the bottom which for me really helped with my understanding of how it all works. I recommend anyone who hasn't bitten the bullet in this department to do a quick read over of this page, as regular expressions are pretty much a staple of any sort of semi-advanced programming.

And yes, you can now mock me for not bothering to learn this prior to now. Yay for self taught programmers!

Sarah Takes the Plunge into OOP. Finally.

Hello non existent blog readers.

*thanking Firefox for spell checking so I don't always spell existent wrong*

This is it. It's time to face the facts. I don't really know anything about Object Oriented Programming - beyond the abstract concepts. And I must. So here goes.

I'm going to be working on it from a PHP angle, as that's the OO language I'm the most comfortable with. I'm going to be starting from here:

http://www.codewalkers.com/c/a/Programming-Basics/Beginning-Object-Oriented-Programming-in-PHP/

Updates to follow of course. Wish me luck.

Learning Ajax, Json, with php and database manipulation.

I've been struggling today and last week to find some good tutorials or a well recommended book for getting the ball rolling in my quest to learn Ajax. I figure I might as well try to start off working with Json instead of wasting time with parsing string data. So far here are the links I've found useful:

Quick run down on JSON:
Understanding JSON: the 3 minute lesson
JSON on Wikipedia

Excellent Starter tutorial using Ajax (and ASP, but can be easily modified to a php date() function)
W3schools Ajax Example

More Advanced and In Depth Series on Ajax covering numerous topics, which I breezed through the first 3. A much longer read, but contains some really useful details:
Mastering Ajax: 11 Part Series from IBM developerWorks

After you do the W3 Schools Tutorial, I suggest moving on to this one, which uses Ajax, Json, Php, and Database manipulation. Heads up - I had to remove the $$link variable variables from the database functions in order for it to work.
Json Ajax Webchat Tutorial

Good luck, and if you know of some additional resources I would appreciate the links.