Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL, 2nd Edition

Packages

In this section, we discuss the optional packages that are available with PEAR, how to find out about them, how to find new ones, and how to install the ones you need. However, our focus is the optional HTML Integrated Template (IT) package , which is used to separate HTML presentation from PHP code. We show you how to use templates in an application, present working examples, and detail the key functions from the package and its extended child ITX templates. A longer template case study is presented in Chapter 16.

After our discussion of the IT package, we list the other packages that are available, and point to where selected packages are used in other chapters of this book.

Installing, Upgrading, and Understanding Packages

This section describes how to install and upgrade PEAR packages, and how to find out more information about them. For Unix platforms, including Mac OS X, the instructions are valid for PHP 4.3.0 or later versions. For Microsoft Windows, PEAR installation and upgrade is available after PHP 4.3.2.

Finding out about packages

At the time of writing, the PEAR documentation available at http://pear.php.net/manual/en/ was incomplete. However, you'll find some useful information there, particularly about the core components and a handful of the popular optional packages.

To go beyond the limited documentation, the first step is to access the package browser at http://pear.php.net/packages.php or search for a known package directly at http://pear.php.net/package-search.php ...