By focusing on these packages for key development activities, this book is an in-depth guide to get the best from this resource a powerful coding. You will become a master of various PEAR packages that help you with important tasks of PHP development, such as: * Accessing databases with MDB2 * Displaying data in various formats (HTML, Excel spreadsheets, PDF) * Creating and parsing XML documents * PHP objects to XML Serialization, and unserializing XML documents to PHP objects * Consuming and offering web services * Accessing Web APIs including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Technorati What you will learn from this book? Chapter 1 shows you how to access databases with the MDB2 package. It teaches you: * Create powerful data table is easy with HTML_Table package * Advanced HTML_Table_Matrix table format with * Creating Excel spreadsheets dynamically with Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer * Adding to this spreadsheet format including colors, patterns, formulas and formatting numbers * Creating a flexible, grid sortable data Structures_DataGrid * Adding a column to the grid, the paging controls, select the source data, and presenters * Using File_PDF to create PDF documents on the fly Chapter 3 covers the use of PEAR packages to work with XML and emphasis on: * Create an XML document with XML_Util, XML_Fastcreate * Transformation of PHP objects into XML format with XML_Serializer * Creating applications with Mozilla XML_XUL * Parsing XML with XML_Parser * Processing of XML documents to PHP objects with XML_Unserializer * Parsing RSS with XML_RSS Chapter 4 is an extensive tutorial on working with web services and PEAR packages using the Web API. We cover the following topics: * Consuming web services * Consuming web services XML-based RPC * Accessing the Google API * Blog entries Search by Services_Technorati * Access the Amazon web service * Accessing Yahoo APIs * It offers web services XML-based RPC * Offering a SOAP based web services * Offering a REST-based services using XML_Serializer Chapter 5 covers PEAR date and time functions using the PEAR:: Calendar and PEAR:: Date package such as: * Create, manipulate, and compare Date objects * Data_Span arithmetic * Handling time zones with Date_Timezone * Keeping track holidays with Date_Holiday * Using the Calendar class to display the HTML calendar Approach Equipped with code samples, each topic is explained in a clear practical.