Book Image

Expert PHP 5 Tools

By : Dirk Merkel
Book Image

Expert PHP 5 Tools

By: Dirk Merkel

Overview of this book

Even if you find writing PHP code easy, writing code that is efficient and easy to maintain and reuse is not so straightforward. Self-taught PHP developers and programmers transitioning from other languages often lack the knowledge to work with PHP on an enterprise level. They need to take their PHP development skills to that level by learning the skills and tools necessary to write maintainable and efficient code.This book will enable you to take your PHP development skills to an enterprise level by teaching you the skills and tools necessary to write maintainable and efficient code. You will learn how to perform activities such as unit testing, enforcing coding standards, automating deployment, and interactive debugging using tools created for PHP developers – all the information in one place. Your code will be more maintainable, efficient, and self-documented.From the design phase to actually deploying the application, you will learn concepts and apply them using the best-of-breed tools available in PHP.Experienced developers looking for expertise in PHP development will learn how to follow best practices within the world of PHP. The book contains many well-documented code samples and recipes that can be used as a starting point for producing quality code.Specifically, you will learn to design an application with UML, code it in Eclipse with PDT, document it with phpDocumentor, debug it interactively with Xdebug, test it by writing PHPUnit tests, manage source code in Subversion, speed up development and increase stability by using Zend Framework, pull everything together using continuous integration, and deploy the application automatically with Phing – all in one book. The author's experience in PHP development enables him to share insights on using enterprise tools, in a clear and friendly way.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Expert PHP 5 Tools
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

Writing your own framework


Writing a framework is almost a rite of passage for most PHP developers. Granted, most frameworks don't end up being as comprehensive as the Zend Framework, but that doesn't mean they are not frameworks.

I have personally been through this cycle and I know several other developers that have done the same. You start by realizing that the same basic problems need to be solved in most of the applications you work on. Initially, you copy code to solve the problem from one project to another. Then you start to make enhancements and before you know it, you're working on your own framework.

Eventually, you come to realize that maintaining and optimizing a framework is a lot of ongoing work. Especially when you realize that some of your early design decisions are creating some problems in the long run. At this point, most developers start looking at and using other frameworks. Or better yet, you can start contributing to your framework of choice and have a say in the direction...