[PHP] Re: Recommended Reading?
I liked Schlossnagle's 'Advanced PHP Programming' http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0672325616/qid=1129664190/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6178615-3953615?v=glances=booksn=507846 It has a little primer on a variety of things but is for the php5 user. You might also want to read a book called Code Complete http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735619670/qid=1129664509/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6178615-3953615?v=glances=booksn=507846 It's probably written more for the C/C++/Java crowd, but is meant to mostly be language neutral. It gives some great pointers on software construction. Some seems fairly obvious, but if you're self-taught (like I am) then you're sure to take a few things away from it. Ben On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 14:43:36 -0400, Alan Lord [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, Forgive this long diatribe, a bit off-topic I know, but it might stimulate a good discussion... I have built a few small apps in PHP before and, whilst they work, I can't but help feeling that I go about the whole thing the WRONG way... I am not a professional software person (far from it) but I am reasonably competent in most things technical. I trained in Electronics, build my own PCs and Linux systems from scratch, have used - just for fun - Java, Delphi, Visual Basic, PHP and a little C/C++. I am now wanting to write my own application (using PHP of course) to do something really useful. And I am looking for some recommendations on reading [books or links] about how to design my application and how to think about the design in it's abstract form before I start writing code. Normally I end up writing little bits of code to solve small problems and then sort of kludging them together to do something useful. I would really like to try and go about this one the RIGHT way. Thanks in advance. Al -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
[PHP] Re: Recommended Reading?
From a practical view: *For big web projects:* Make a plan! Do not start to write code before you exactly know what you want to do. An important concept in the development of large web applications is the MVC princinple (Model View Controller) which basically urges you to seperate the data and the display. Get an insight into MVC, it will help you in designing your application and it will come in handy if you decide to implement more ways of displaying your data than you thought of in the first place. *For a certain problem:* Do not reinvent the wheel! PHP is a language with a really large function library. The amount of extensions that are directly available is so high that chances are good you'll find a solution right there as a function ready to use. So: Dig through the documentation at php.net! Learn what extensions there are. Use the comments in the documentation, they provide valuable examples. If you can't solve your problem with the internal functions: Search the web! The PEAR repository offers a lot of packages solving a lot of problems BUT they are not always the best solution. Projects like AdoDB, Propel etc. show that there are often more solutions than you wanted. So do not compromise too much: If a solution does not exactly fit your needs, continue the search. *For the next project:* DRY (Don't repeat yourself)! Code you've written once can come in handy for the next project. So start to seperate the code you write into application specific code and library code. You can reuse your library for all of your projects. *For any large development:* It's a good idea to use a versioning system. Subversion is free and ready to install on any Apache server. With PHP it's also an ideal solution for deployment: Just make a release tag and check it out on your production server. Add some config and off you go! Happy Development! OLLi You see, Mr. President: The worlds hates America. And for good reason. (I wont bother going into details) [24 319] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
