Painting a masterpiece in PHP

In PHP, you can write a program that looks like a Rembrandt, or one that makes the dog's dinner look tidy. It's not only the mechanism of the language you need to learn to do a good job, but how to apply it.

This week, on my public PHP course, I have a group which is very IT professional in background, and very much concerned with writing good code efficiently, with easy maintainabiliy, enhancability, and element re-use across projects. So rather that use my mores standard "here is a program to ...", I've been writing new examples with a different twist as I go.

It's easy enough to code a box on a form to echo back what was on the previous form. But remember the user may enter all sorts of special characters that you need to deal with. And remember you need to do this multiple times. And remember that you need to be able to re-present the same form if the fields aren't correctly filled. And remember you would like to reuse near-identical logic on the next page. You're looking for nicely structured code - the Rembrandt not the dinner!
• Make good use of functions.
• Have common error handling logic.
• Put everything that varies into a single specification.
• Save the common code into an include file.
• Use good error messages.

I've put the example I finished with last night up on line - the source code is here and you can run it here. There ARE things still to be done ... - the error messages are common at the moment, and it's all in one file rather than using an include (a good way to do it for initial testing, after all!)
(written 2007-05-10 07:46:15)

Associated topics are indexed under

H115 - Designing PHP-Based Solutions: Best Practice
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  [2430] Not just a PHP program - a good web application - (2009-09-29)
  [2221] Adding a newsfeed for your users to a multipage PHP application - (2009-06-06)
  [2199] Improving the structure of your early PHP programs - (2009-05-25)
  [1794] Refactoring - a PHP demo becomes a production page - (2008-09-12)
  [1694] Defensive coding techniques in PHP? - (2008-07-02)
  [1623] PHP Techniques - a workshop - (2008-04-26)
  [1533] Short and sweet and sticky - PHP form input - (2008-02-06)
  [1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
  [1487] Efficient PHP applications - framework and example - (2007-12-28)
  [1482] A story about benchmarking PHP - (2007-12-23)
  [1391] Ordnance Survey Grid Reference to Latitude / Longitude - (2007-10-14)
  [1390] Converting from postal address to latitude / longitude - (2007-10-13)
  [1389] Controlling and labelling Google maps via PHP - (2007-10-13)
  [1381] Using a MySQL database to control mod_rewrite via PHP - (2007-10-06)
  [1323] Easy handling of errors in PHP - (2007-08-27)
  [1321] Resetting session based tests in PHP - (2007-08-26)
  [1194] Drawing hands on a clock face - PHP - (2007-05-19)
  [1181] Good Programming practise - where to initialise variables - (2007-05-09)
  [1166] Back button - ensuring order are not submitted twice (PHP) - (2007-04-28)
  [1052] Learning to write secure, maintainable PHP - (2007-01-25)
  [1047] Maintainable code - some positive advice - (2007-01-21)
  [945] Code quality counts - (2006-11-26)
  [936] Global, Superglobal, Session variables - scope and persistance in PHP - (2006-11-21)
  [896] PHP - good coding practise and sticky radio buttons - (2006-10-17)
  [839] Reporting on the 10 largest files or 10 top scores - (2006-08-20)
  [572] Giving the researcher power over database analysis - (2006-01-22)
  [563] Merging pictures using PHP and GD - (2006-01-13)
  [426] Robust checking of data entered by users - (2005-08-27)
  [394] A year on - should we offer certified PHP courses - (2005-07-28)
  [340] Code and code maintainance efficiency - (2005-06-08)
  [261] Putting a form online - (2005-03-29)
  [237] Crossfertilisation, PHP to Python - (2005-03-06)
  [123] Short underground journeys and a PHP book - (2004-11-19)

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Two new pages / sites
Themes for the web site
Finding resources - some pointers
Improving searches - from OR to AND?
Painting a masterpiece in PHP
Conjugation
Sizing sheets and other domestic issues
Ducking stool for Melksham?
Sorting out for a site map

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