With PHP's object-oriented (OO) language features, if you aren't already creating your applications with OO principles in mind, these seven habits will help you get started in the transition between procedural programming and OO programming.

Each of the seven OOP habits have more details below them, but here's the short list:

• Be modest.
• Be a good neighbor.
• Avoid looking at Medusa.
• Embrace the weakest link.
• You're rubber; I'm glue.
• Keep it in the family.
• Think in patterns.

In each there's a "bad habit" and a "good habit" to explain the concept a bit more fully, everything from error handling to interfaces.

On the old site, I started a series of tutorials named "PHP Application Design". I planned for at least three parts, and while I did publish the first two and wrote at least half of part three, I found myself out of time to make it to the finish. Still dedicated to writing reusable and extensible PHP code and spreading the knowledge, this is a restart of the series, renamed as simply "OO PHP"

In part one he looks at the basics of OOP (terms, defining properties/methods, autoload, exceptions, type hinting, etc) with some code examples sprinkled through out. Part two looks at the "boring OOP principles" like polymorphism, encapsulation and heuristics.

I've released my tutorial on Object Oriented PHP in Spanish. You can download the PDF. Many thanks to Javier W. Barbieri from Iquitos Peru.

Check out the KillerPHP.com site for more great tutorials - including videos - released to learning PHP.

I've released a new video that basically covers the content covered in the PDF: Classes and Objects. It is the last bit object oriented PHP theory before we jump in and start writing actual PHP code.

The video only runs about five minutes and covers the items from the PDF - a lot of the basics you'll need to know before getting into programming with objects and classes in PHP.

With the release of php5 (in 2004,) php programmers finally had the power to code with the 'big boys'. Like Java and C#, php finally had a complete OOP infrastructure. In these videos, you will be guided (step-by-step) through the process of building and working with objects using php's built-in OOP capabilities

There's two videos currently:

• Introduction to Object Oriented PHP
• Why learn Object Oriented PHP

As well as a PDF file to accompany the "Why OOP?" video for more reference information.]]> Mon, 30 Jul 2007 07:57:00 -0500 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/8251 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/8251 From the PHP in Action blog today, there's a new post that (briefly) shows how to run your tests directly from a popular unix text editor - vim.

I created my own test runner to run tests inside Vim, I can't remember how long ago. Must be a year or two. I never shared it with the world. It was too primitive for anyone else to use. Then, recently, I decided to try re-implementing it in a more serious way.

The "more serious way" meant using Vim script to its full potential, including the ability to work with objects and already has its own testing framework. He includes a screenshot but no download just yet. It looks promising and makes running tests as simple as hitting F11 and watching it go.

One of the attractions to PHP on System i is the low skills barrier to entry. Anybody who has written a lick of procedural PHP on any other platform can develop System i applications. But one of the lesser known advantages of PHP is its capability to scale up into the realm of object-oriented (OO) development to create more sophisticated applications. OO development was the basis for an award given to System i consultancy Independent Computer Services (ICS) by Zend, the company behind PHP.

The article goes on to talk about who ICS is, what they do in the technology market, why they chose PHP and what they developed to deserve the award.

In my previous entry, I ranted about the use of globals in popular PHP applications, and how they make embedding said applications difficult. I develop using object-oriented practices, and can honestly say I can't recall ever having slung a global variable around in my own code. Globals seem hackish to me, and as a result, trying to get applications that use them to behave correctly has been a challenge.

In the first part, he notes an interesting find about the $GLOBALS value and illustrates with a code example how he was able to get around it in his instance (wrapping a Serendipity instance in a Zend Framework app).

In part two, though, and uses another code example to show what kind of issues he was seeing with the $GLOBALS - a script that sets some globals in different instances and echoes the results back out.

Most modern programming languages are based on an OO approach and don't even allow for procedural coding anymore (for instance in languages as Java, C++, C#, Python, and Ruby). Explaining OOP goes beyond the scope of this article, so for understanding OOP in PHP I'd like to point you in this direction. For now let's just say that OOP is about creating relatively small objects with specific functions that interact with each other to form a complete application.

Right off, he lists two advantages to using OOP methods (reusability and better structure) and a disadvantage (can be more time consuming to write). He does still recommend it though to any "serious PHP developer taking on serious projects". He illustrates the point with some of his own experience - an application for a real estate firm.