Archive for January, 2008

I’m regularly reviewing candidates for PHP development positions, and I’ve noticed some very interesting trends with regard to the qualifications people list on their resumes. As with anything, here’s the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. (more…)

The vast majority of PHP applications out there use native PHP files for configuration. One or more standard PHP files declares a number of variables used for configuration. Given the syntax constraints of PHP - e.g. you can’t put a quote inside quoted values - a culture of developers insisting on managing config files is pretty much standard. But it doesn’t have to be.

YAML, or YAML Ain’t Markup Language, is a “human friendly data serialization standard”. It’s essentially a very basic format for storing data, and uses far less syntax than standard PHP. Here’s a sample of YAML:

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It seems the web is always abuzz when another web 2.0 startup releases an API. Everyone starts putting together little mashups; some take off, most don’t. Yet few seem to be familiar with the Yahoo! APIs: with immense power on offer, and with a serialized PHP output option, they’re great for PHP developers. Read on to see just how much power is available, and some cool tricks.

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There’s always a bridge between textbook knowledge of programming - syntax, procedure etc. - and the real world knowledge that you get from actually developing real applications. Here are five things every PHP developer should be familiar with before they begin developing web applications in PHP.

1. Frameworks
Frameworks are arguably one of the most important areas of PHP development. With no single accepted way of developing web applications in PHP, a number of open source frameworks are available, helping you code quicker, more consistently and more effectively. Some of the best include CakePHP, Symfony and CodeIgniter. A lot of the frameworks also follow the MVC design pattern, which you should definitely be familiar with should you ever have to work on code that follows it. After a while, you may even feel inclined to create your own framework to meet your needs.

2. Templating engines
If you’re not using a framework that enforces a specific design pattern, chances are you want to be using a templating engine. Whether you create your own or using one of the existing options (like Smarty), a templating engine allows you to entirely seperate your code logic from your HTML interface code (and associated CSS/JS/etc.). This considerably simplifies your code, allows quick and easy modifications to the actual front-end of your application, and makes it easier for non-developers to modify your application’s visuals.

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Code reuse: a great boon for web development. With large repositories of PHP code out there, from snippet archives to class databases, PHP is arguably one of the best languages when it comes to existing reusable code.

Of course, it isn’t nearly that simple. Everyone writes code differently; different naming conventions, different approaches to achieving common tasks (e.g. configuration), even different ways of interacting with the code (functions, classes static/non-static etc.). The problem is compounded when you start using a framework, with the intention of enforcing some basic convention - convention which your existing code libraries may not follow.

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For 2008 we decided we would aim to be more helpful and more useful than ever. One of the things we decided on was adding a blog covering not only coding and design but other important webmaster related topics. So without further ado we welcome you to the Developer Tutorials Webmaster Blog and look forward to your participation and readership.

Thanks,
Ducani.