How often have you written a piece of code that's a "spike solution" - it works well on good data - and then spent just as long as you took to do most of the work in fixing errors? I know I have!

These days, I plan my error strategy from minute 0 of hour 0 of day 0. "How to handle errors" is a critical part of application design and ... here's how I do a lot of it in PHP.

a) Set a variable (e.g. $error) to 0 at the start of the code.

b) Whenever an error is found, $error++ and perhaps add a message to $errstr, both of which are global variables declared in all functions that can throw an exception.

c) When the analysis logic is completed, decide whether to display the next screen or recycle the current one with a simple if ($error) test.

Gone are the days of ....
if ($_POST[month] < 1 or $_POST[month] > 12 or $_POST[day] < 1 or $_POST[day] > 31 or (not eregi( '^[A-Z]{1,2}[0-9]{1,2}[[:space:]]+' ,$_POST[postcode])) or (not ereg( '[[:digit:]]{4}', $_POST[phone])) or (not ereg('@',$_POST[email)) or $startdate < time() ....
.... Thank Goodness!
(written 2007-08-27 18:49:13)

 H115 - Designing PHP-Based Solutions: Best Practice
  [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)
  [1321] Resetting session based tests in PHP - (2007-08-26)
  [1194] Drawing hands on a clock face - PHP - (2007-05-19)
  [1182] Painting a masterpiece in PHP - (2007-05-10)
  [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)

H117 - Security in PHP
  [2025] Injection Attack if register_globals in on - PHP - (2009-02-04)
  [1779] Injection Attacks - avoiding them in your PHP - (2008-08-31)
  [1747] Who is watching you? - (2008-08-10)
  [1679] PHP - Sanitised application principles for security and useability - (2008-06-16)
  [1542] Are nasty programs looking for security holes on your server? - (2008-02-17)
  [1396] Using PHP to upload images / Store on MySQL database - security questions - (2007-10-19)
  [1387] Error logging to file not browser in PHP - (2007-10-11)
  [1086] Injection attacks - safeguard your PHP scripts - (2007-02-20)
  [947] What is an SQL injection attack? - (2006-11-27)
  [920] A lion in a cage - PHP - (2006-11-10)
  [345] Spotting a denial of service attack - (2005-06-12)

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Tktable - Laying out data in a matrix - Tcl/Tk
GUI design - Sketch it out first! (Java / Swing example)
Java - Client side applet applications as well as server side
Well House Manor appoints a General Manager
Easy handling of errors in PHP
Flash - is it available to your web page?
Perl for Larger Projects - Object Oriented Perl
Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business
Well House Manor - feature comparison against the old place!