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

Levels of detail and purpose


How much detail you put into a UML diagram is typically directly proportional to the amount of time it takes to author the diagram. Sometimes it makes sense to spend more time on it, at other times it doesn't. The level of effort you put into it should be determined by the purpose of the diagram. On the lower end of the effort scale is the situation where you are sketching a process or relationship of your software to quickly communicate functionality or design details to other members of your team. This might happen during design meetings with one team member sketching something out on a white board or a piece of paper for others to see.

A technical lead or architect might spend a little more time refining a diagram and give it to a coder to implement the design. In such a case, it makes sense to spend a bit more time considering some of the details of the diagram. Whatever the diagram conveys to the coders doesn't need to be etched in stone, but the more consistent...