A very busy week so far ... station pickups,
a PHP course, hosting an external luncheon meeting and
hotel guests at Well House Manor, and providing a venue for, and attending, a meeting of the presidents of some of the local chambers of commerce to discuss towns working together. And it's only just the end on Tuesday. Wednesday will bring ... well, you'll read some of it here.
On Monday, I "tunnelled" through PHP, producing a piece of code that worked for a benign user who put in sensible data. It coughed slightly with 'silly' values - it was obvious it had failed, and it looked really crappy - but it wasn't actually an injection attack risk. ("No - It's not nice - I will NOT publish it here"). And on Tuesday morning, I took that code and I said
DESIGN MATTERS - for the user, and for the maintenance programmer ... and I came up with the following list which I chose to implement to a lesser or greater extent - at least to an illustrative degree:
1. Code should be commented for programmer
2. Page should include instructions for the user
3. Forms should include a submit button, even if they only have a single input box which submits on "enter"
4. Code should echo user inputs
5. First page should not perform submission actions on nothing
6. Fields should usually be sticky
7. Data should be validated
8. Data should be secure against injection attacks
9. Common code should be grouped into functions
10. Generated HTML should conform to selected standard (XHTML?)
11. Program and design elements should be separated
12. Error messages should be good 'uns
You see - it's not JUST about making the algorithms accessible and workable - it's much MUCH more. Come to think of it ... as I write this note, I see that there are a few more things I should have done / documented. Some have been done already - second nature - others aren't actually present in my demo.
13. Help window
14. Search Engine Optimisation
15. Make it interesting
16. Should look good and be corporate branded!
17. Should provide support contact
18. Should provide links back to the calling ap / rest of site
Have a look at
the running application. Have a look at
the source code. See if you can work out which of those extras I have done something towards, and which are on my potential "to do" list.
There's a huge difference between a PHP script and a good web based application!
P.S. - part built program / source
[here] (written 2009-09-29, updated 2010-11-01)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
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[237] Crossfertilisation, PHP to Python - (2005-03-06)
[261] Putting a form online - (2005-03-29)
[340] Code and code maintainance efficiency - (2005-06-08)
[394] A year on - should we offer certified PHP courses - (2005-07-28)
[426] Robust checking of data entered by users - (2005-08-27)
[563] Merging pictures using PHP and GD - (2006-01-13)
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[936] Global, Superglobal, Session variables - scope and persistance in PHP - (2006-11-21)
[945] Code quality counts - (2006-11-26)
[1047] Maintainable code - some positive advice - (2007-01-21)
[1052] Learning to write secure, maintainable PHP - (2007-01-25)
[1166] Back button - ensuring order are not submitted twice (PHP) - (2007-04-28)
[1181] Good Programming practise - where to initialise variables - (2007-05-09)
[1182] Painting a masterpiece in PHP - (2007-05-10)
[1194] Drawing hands on a clock face - PHP - (2007-05-19)
[1321] Resetting session based tests in PHP - (2007-08-26)
[1323] Easy handling of errors in PHP - (2007-08-27)
[1381] Using a MySQL database to control mod_rewrite via PHP - (2007-10-06)
[1389] Controlling and labelling Google maps via PHP - (2007-10-13)
[1390] Converting from postal address to latitude / longitude - (2007-10-13)
[1391] Ordnance Survey Grid Reference to Latitude / Longitude - (2007-10-14)
[1482] A story about benchmarking PHP - (2007-12-23)
[1487] Efficient PHP applications - framework and example - (2007-12-28)
[1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
[1533] Short and sweet and sticky - PHP form input - (2008-02-06)
[1623] PHP Techniques - a workshop - (2008-04-26)
[1694] Defensive coding techniques in PHP? - (2008-07-02)
[1794] Refactoring - a PHP demo becomes a production page - (2008-09-12)
[2199] Improving the structure of your early PHP programs - (2009-05-25)
[2221] Adding a newsfeed for your users to a multipage PHP application - (2009-06-06)
[2679] How to build a test harness into your PHP - (2010-03-16)
[3539] Separating program and artwork in PHP - easier maintainance, and better for the user - (2011-12-05)
[3813] Injection Attacks - PHP, SQL, HTML, Javascript - and how to neutralise them - (2012-07-22)
[3820] PHP sessions - a best practice teaching example - (2012-07-27)
[3926] Filtering PHP form inputs - three ways, but which should you use? - (2012-11-18)
[4069] Even early on, separate out your program from your HTML! - (2013-04-25)
[4118] We not only teach PHP and Python - we teach good PHP and Python Practice! - (2013-06-18)
[4326] Learning to program - comments, documentation and test code - (2014-11-22)
[4641] Using an MVC structure - even without a formal framework - (2016-02-07)
[4691] Real life PHP application using our course training MVC example - (2016-06-05)
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[235] Preparation for a day's work - (2005-03-04)
[1722] PHP examples - source code and try it out too - (2008-07-26)
[2097] PHP Course - for hobby / club / charity users. - (2009-03-22)
[2222] A (biased?) comparison of PHP courses in the UK - (2009-06-07)
[2227] Learning PHP, Ruby, Lua and Python - upcoming courses - (2009-06-11)
[2400] Are you wanting to learn PHP? - (2009-09-08)
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[2589] Your PHP code does not work? Here is where to start looking. - (2010-01-18)
[2663] Improve your PHP on a weekend away - (2010-03-05)
[3025] Learning to Program ... in PHP. Course examples. - (2010-11-01)
[3530] A typical weekend?? - (2011-11-28)
[3952] PHP revision ... by example. - (2012-12-15)
[3966] Our examples work with any recent version of PHP - (2013-01-01)
[4314] PHP training - refreshed modern course, backed up by years of practical experience - (2014-11-16)
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