PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice

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Summary: 2 key ideas in programming
Review: As languages which were not originally object oriented grow in popularity, there is sometimes a trend to upgrade them, by adding in this functionality. C++ can be regarded as an upgrade of C, in this respect. Or how Visual Basic now as VB.NET has quite impressive OO features. So Zandstra's book attests to this trend and to the popularity of PHP. It describes how the OO enhancements in PHP 4 were extended into version 5. You are shown how to use objects to the full extent allowed in PHP 5.

The book is also aimed at a reader who might never have formally learnt to use objects or design patterns. In the last 15 years, these have been two very important ideas in programming, independent of the languages used. Which gives us another merit of the book. You are not just learning PHP 5, though that may be good in itself. By understanding and using the book's ideas, you should be able to apply these in other languages. A valuable increase of your skill set and hence marketability.

You should also read carefully the section on bad practices. Sometimes, just being able to avoid these in your code may be enough to produce a successful program.

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Summary: Proper enterprise level respect for PHP5
Review: Fact of the matter is that PHP5 is a serious enterprise level development system. This book takes it seriously and presents both practical and architectural material at a level that used to be reserved for J2EE and .NET works. This relatively short book is packed full of well written and insightful content. It stars with the basics of PHP5 OO programming with detail about the mistakes in PHP4 that have now been rectified. That is taken all the way through advanced topics like reflection.

The author then switches gears and gets into the design of object oriented applications. Now that we have the right tools, how we should use them to make better systems, right? UML is covered, and so are design patterns.

The later chapters of the book cover solid software engineering practices, like version control and unit testing, amongst other.

Not only will this book give you new ideas at a coding level, it will also open your mind as an engineer and get you headed in a direction toward architecture and large scale application design.

An excellent book. A must have for any serious PHP developer.

Rating:
Summary: Great book IF you already know some PHP
Review: The author of this book assumes a basic understanding of the PHP language and focuses on how to take advantage of the new features of PHP5. The book includes best practices, tools, and principles on how best to write, document and implement a project.

The three primary divisions of the book follow along with the title and are sequenced as Objects, Patterns, and Practice. The Objects section covers the history of PHP and how it evolved to include a focus on object-oriented programming. This section contains some of the more basic information in the book including the principles behind objects, classes and inheritance. The section on Patterns examines problems of software design and ways to approach and resolve these problems. In this section the reader learns basic design principles that should be implemented on all projects to make them easier to troubleshoot or expand on later. The last section covers the practices and tools that can be used to correctly manage a project. The focus is on managing your code, managing your project, tracking bugs, collaboration between programmers, and making the project easy to install. It includes a section on Concurrent Versions System (CVS) which allows multiple programmers to work on the same code without overwriting each other's work.

Although it assumes some knowledge of PHP programming it does not assume any knowledge of object-oriented programming and that appears to be one of the primary purposes of the book - to take PHP4 programmers and teach them to take advantage of the abilities of PHP5. This is not to say that you can't get a lot of value from the book without prior knowledge of PHP. If you have programmed before and have a basic PHP syntax reference guide available then this book will still be a valuable read. PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice is highly recommended for PHP programmers making the move to PHP5 and PHP5 programmers that need a handle on best practices.