We asked our developers, who to follow or what to monitor on social networks and where they find new tips and current topics in their field of interest. Based on their references we compiled a following** list of interesting people and accounts** of various PHP frameworks or debating communities for selected social networks:

Who to follow on Twitter

• Zend Technologies – 26 000 followers The primary sponsor of the Zend Framework open source project for developing web applications and services using PHP
• Andi Gutmans – 4 553 followers An Israeli PHP developer and co-founder of Zend Technologies
• Symfony – 13 600 followers An Open Source distributed PHP framework
• Fabien Potencier – 18 700 followers Symfony founder and project lead
• Cakephp – 10 600 followers An open source web application framework which follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach and is written in PHP
• Larry E. Masters – 2212 followers CakePHP Founder/Lead Developer
• James Watts – 204 followers CakePHP Core Member and Community Manager
• Doctrine project – 1 403 fllowers An object-relational mapping (ORM) tool for PHP application development
• Benjamin Eberlei – 2 890 followers Doctrine project lead and IT-Consultant for quality assurance and software architecture
• Rasmus Lerdorf – 28 700 followers Famous for creating the PHP scripting language, authoring the first two versions of the language and participating in development of later versions

Interesting groups on LinkedIn

• PHP Developers – 87 627 members
• LinkedPHPers – 47 373 members
• The PHP Developer Network (LAMP, Open Source, Perl, Linux, Mysql, Drupal, Joomla, Zend) – 20 000 members
• PHP Developer Network – 18 931 members
• Zend Framework Developers – 12 153 members
• Symfony – 10 401 members
• CakePHP Developers – 5 000 members

Where to talk on Facebook

Facebook is designed more for entertainment than professional discussion. However, there is one active group where you can discuss topics about your field of interest:

• PHP – 18 720 members

Communities to join on Google+

• PHP Programmers – 2 680 members
• PHP Developers – 19 470 members
• Symfony – 1 603 members
• Official CakePHP Community – 1 507 members
• Zend Framework 2 – 549 members

Do you use social networks? Which ones? Do you miss someone or something in the list? Feel free to discuss it in comments.

Today I want to show you a new feature of ORM Desigener for Doctrine ORM. It is an ability to define prefix for a whole module by which ORM Designer exports every entity with a name composed of this prefix and stand-alone name. In the past we received several requests from Zend Framework users for this feature, so here it is ;-).

This feature is the most useful for Zend Framework users, but might be used by every Doctrine ORM user. When using Doctrine ORM with Zend Framework you have to create the names of your entities with prefixes as Default_Model_Entity_Name or Forum_Model_Entity_Name (more about this topic is described in the article Doctrine1 Integration with Zend Framework).

And how does it work? Here is a screenshot of an example model:

In this model we’re using simple and nice entity names like “parent” or “child”. To “entity_prefix” attribute of each module we enter common prefix for all entities. After that when we export the model to the YAML file, we get a following result:

APPLICATION_child:
  columns:
    id:
      primary: true
    parent_id:
  relations:
    APPLICATION_parent:
      foreign: id
      local: parent_id
APPLICATION_parent:
  columns:
    id:
      primary: true
MODULE_derived:
  columns:
    id:
      primary: true
  inheritance:
    extends: MODULE_external
    type: simple
MODULE_external:
  columns:
    child_id:
    id:
      primary: true
  relations:
    APPLICATION_child:
      foreign: id
      local: child_id

I hope this function will help you a bit more with you everyday work ;-)