Book Image

The PHP Workshop

By : Jordi Martinez, Alexandru Busuioc, David Carr, Markus Gray, Vijay Joshi, Mark McCollum, Bart McLeod, M A Hossain Tonu
Book Image

The PHP Workshop

By: Jordi Martinez, Alexandru Busuioc, David Carr, Markus Gray, Vijay Joshi, Mark McCollum, Bart McLeod, M A Hossain Tonu

Overview of this book

Do you want to build your own websites, but have never really been confident enough to turn your ideas into real projects? If your web development skills are a bit rusty, or if you've simply never programmed before, The PHP Workshop will show you how to build dynamic websites using PHP with the help of engaging examples and challenging activities. This PHP tutorial starts with an introduction to PHP, getting you set up with a productive development environment. You will write, execute, and troubleshoot your first PHP script using a built-in templating engine and server. Next, you'll learn about variables and data types, and see how conditions and loops help control the flow of a PHP program. Progressing through the chapters, you'll use HTTP methods to turn your PHP scripts into web apps, persist data by connecting to an external database, handle application errors, and improve functionality by using third-party packages. By the end of this Workshop, you'll be well-versed in web application development, and have the knowledge and skills to creatively tackle your own ambitious projects with PHP.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Introduction

In the previous chapter, you were presented with the ways in which PHP can be used to interact with a filesystem in order to process uploaded files, write in text files, and create files and directories, to name but a few aspects. Also, you were shown how a SQL server can be used with PHP to manipulate structured data, such as user accounts or a contacts list.

Handling errors in an application is very important and keeping an eye on them leads to early bug detection, performance improvements, and the overall robustness of the application. Errors can be triggered to signal a number of malfunctions—missing data, bad syntax, deprecated features, and more, and can bring a halt to the script process, depending on severity. For example, when a database connection is not possible, the application would emit a fatal error, which could be handled by writing in a log file, sending an alert email to maintainers/developers with rich trace information (such as connection...