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How to Build, Install, Secure & Optimize PHP
geekmedia writes "Open Network Architecture has an excellent article up entitled "How to Build, Install, Secure & Optimize PHP.""
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I've been doing PHP development for nigh 6 years I think [since just after v4 was released]
:
....
:
php is oft derided for "mixing data & presentation" because in the Learn php in 24 hours style books you get examples like
<?php
if ($something) {
?>
<html> etc
<?php
} else {
?>
<html> otc....
<?php
}
?>
which is really bad style.
if you look through my [modern] code you would see something more like this simplistic example
<?
require_once 'html.class';
requre_once 'database.class';
class page extends html {
function add_links(&$db) {
foreach($db->get_links() as $url=>$txt) {
$this->add_href($url, $txt);
}
}
}
$p = new page();
$db = new database('website');
$p->add_links($db);
echo $p->get();
?>
which would generate a valid html page.
Of course I've got the advantage of building up by database & html class over time but that's what re-usuable code is all about 8)
the thing that stands PHP apart from Perl is that the focus has been on Web development rather than a general purpose language [although recently development has added more command line functionality]. To this end the common things needed for web development are built into the distribution. Database access, IMAP access, treating http:// as a stream, etc.etc.
To non-programmers PHP is the sort of thing that is easy to pick up, I know this from the people I have met that use it. All the examples around have generally been about generating web pages. Perl source code is legendary for it's obscurity. PHP keeps things simple.
It's not a perfect beast. Passing by reference can be awkward, requiring extra non-anonymous variables, and the ugly face of backward comaptibility has meant that keywords & built-ins are inconsistent in name and parameter order.
(
In particular the original array manipulating functions are called stuff like count() whereas if that was introduced today it would be called array_count().
parameter order is a subtle source of confusion
consider
strpos ("abcdef", "d")
give me the position of "d" in "abcdef"
and
explode(" ", "hello world")
split "hello world" using " "
the subject of the function is reversed
not a big deal but it often means a quick trip to the manual to find out which one it is this time.
)
If I was suggesting a programming language to learn programming PHP would not be it, Python or C or Limbo would be my suggestions there.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter