PHP: The "Right" Way
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PHP: The "Right" Way

Your guide to PHP best practices, coding standards, and authoritative tutorials.

About the Book

There’s a lot of outdated information on the Web that leads new PHP users astray, propagating bad practices and insecure code. PHP: The Right Way is an easy-to-read, quick reference for PHP popular coding standards, links to authoritative tutorials around the Web and what the contributors consider to be best practices at the present time.

There is no canonical way to use PHP. This book aims to introduce new PHP developers to some topics which they may not discover until it is too late, and aims to give seasoned pros some fresh ideas on those topics they’ve been doing for years without ever reconsidering. This ebook will also not tell you which tools to use, but instead offer suggestions for multiple options, when possible explaining the differences in approach and use-case.

This is a living document and will continue to be updated with more helpful information and examples as they become available.

About the Editors

Phil Sturgeon
Phil Sturgeon

Since 2010 I've worked as a freelancer, consultant, API lead, and CTO for several API-centric technology startups. Working as an internal API consultant for WeWork gave me a lot to write about, where I used my experience of things going horribly horribly wrong to help educate developers, define standards for API design and architecture, and implementing full API design lifecycles so we weren't all just building nonsense and hoping it was useful.

Trying to get loads of different questionably built APIs tidied up, playing nicely, and working quickly was a constant source of learning for me and everyone involved. I took a lot of that learning to Stoplight, and helped plan, build, and manage most of your favourite OpenAPI tools.

When I'm not banging on about APIs I'm riding, racing, or crashing various bikes, or saving the plant through Protect Earth, an environmental charity I co-founded in 2020. We create brand new woodlands, restore and extend ancient woodlands, and run around with machetes getting rid of invasive species.

Josh Lockhart
Josh Lockhart

Creator of the Slim Framework and PHP The Right Way. Senior developer at New Media Campaigns.

Table of Contents

  • 1. Language Highlights
    • 1.1 Xdebug
    • 1.2 Command Line Interface
    • 1.3 Standard PHP Library
    • 1.4 Programming Paradigms
    • 1.5 Namespaces
    • 1.6 Windows Setup
    • 1.7 macOS Setup
    • 1.8 Linux Setup
  • 2. Getting Started
    • 2.1 Common Directory structure
    • 2.2 Use the Current Stable Version (8.4)
    • 2.3 Built-in web server
    • 2.4 Complementary Testing Tools
    • 2.5 Test Driven Development
  • 3. Testing
    • 3.1 Behavior Driven Development
    • 3.2 Complex Problem
  • 4. Dependency Injection
    • 4.1 Containers
    • 4.2 Basic Concept
    • 4.3 Further Reading
    • 4.4 Data Filtering
    • 4.5 Web Application Security
    • 4.6 Error Reporting
    • 4.7 Configuration Files
    • 4.8 Register Globals
  • 5. Security
    • 5.1 Password Hashing
    • 5.2 Further Reading
    • 5.3 Benefits
    • 5.4 Compiled Templates
    • 5.5 Plain PHP Templates
  • 6. Templating
    • 6.1 Working with UTF-8
  • 7. Coding Practices
    • 7.1 The Basics
    • 7.2 Design Patterns
    • 7.3 Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n)
    • 7.4 Common ways to implement
    • 7.5 Gettext
    • 7.6 Date and Time
    • 7.7 PEAR
    • 7.8 Composer and Packagist
  • 8. Dependency Management
    • 8.1 Books
    • 8.2 People to Follow
    • 8.3 Other Useful Resources
    • 8.4 Video Tutorials
    • 8.5 Components
    • 8.6 PHP PaaS Providers
  • 9. Resources
    • 9.1 Frameworks
    • 9.2 From the Source
  • 10. Errors and Exceptions
    • 10.1 Errors
    • 10.2 Exceptions
  • 11. Caching
    • 11.1 Object Caching
    • 11.2 Opcode Cache
    • 11.3 Virtual or Dedicated Servers
    • 11.4 Shared Servers
  • 12. Servers and Deployment
    • 12.1 Platform as a Service (PaaS)
    • 12.2 Building and Deploying your Application
    • 12.3 Docker
    • 12.4 Vagrant
  • 13. Virtualization
  • 14. Code Style Guide
  • 15. Community
    • 15.1 PHP Conferences
    • 15.2 PHP User Groups
    • 15.3 ElePHPants
    • 15.4 Interacting with Databases
    • 15.5 MySQL Extension
    • 15.6 PDO Extension
    • 15.7 Abstraction Layers
  • 16. Databases
    • 16.1 PHPDoc
  • 17. Documenting your Code

Causes Supported

Protect Earth

https://protect.earth

We plant trees, wildflowers, and remove invasives to tackle the climate/biodiversity crises, and literally everyone can get involved! Registered charity 1192453

Protect Earth create, restores, and protects woodlands all over the UK. We plant tens of thousands of trees every year on low quality farmland, schools, wedding venues, council land, road verges, golf courses, or anywhere else that makes sense. Increasingly Protect Earth is securing its own land, restoring an ancient temporate rainforest in Cornwall, and creating a brand new temperate rainforest in Wales.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Defending your civil liberties in a digital world.
https://www.eff.org/

Based in San Francisco, EFF is a donor-supported membership organization working to protect fundamental rights regardless of technology.

From the Internet to the iPod, technologies are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense. EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990—well before the Internet was on most people's radar—and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.

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