Patterns help us to put objects together. Two popular ways to instantiate new objects are via the Factory and the Builder patterns. Let’s take a closer look at the impact these patterns have on our code. by Chris Tankersley

One of the interesting things about programming is that when faced with a similar problem, developers tend to build the same solution. They may call their implementations different names, or there may be slight differences at a superficial level, but ultimately the architectural design is the same. At a base level, we tend to call […]

ORMs are great for Rapid Application Development. You can get started very quickly. The price you pay is the vast complexity they hide under the hood. As your system grows, that complexity can bite you if you are not careful enough. What is more, ORM packages create heavy objects that can make your life hard […]

How do the building blocks come together to form a whole? Most resources on Design Patterns look at each pattern in isolation, allowing you to focus on the pattern and its uses without being distracted by side issues. What’s missing, I have found, are examples of fitting those patterns into a working system. This month we’ll look at a feature involving […]

Programming languages are vastly different when it comes to syntax. Some may look so similar that they create an entire family of languages, just like real-world languages. PHP belongs to what is known as the C-style family, which constitutes languages that use curly brackets for flow control and ignore whitespace. Python does not belong to […]

The applications that we build are usually portals for users to view and manipulate data. That data may be as simple as a web page pulled from a database or a collection of raw data. An admin section may display graphs of various analytical data on one page, while another may show configuration data.

Technical debt is always, and continuously, a challenge. Needs change. This month we’re looking at an approach for being continually prepared for change—refactoring, with unit tests in place.

The first article in this series, found in the November 2019 issue, focused on the “what” in object-oriented programming; that is, fundamental concepts and related features offered by PHP and what those features do. While this article does a bit more of the same, it focuses more on the “how” of object-oriented programming, particularly principles which guide how you use these features to build out your applications.

Any career today requires continual learning and curiosity for success. Building web applications with PHP is not exempt. The PHP of today is light-years better than the scripts that initially made up “Personal Home Page/Form Interpreter.” In this issue, we examine moving between frameworks, understanding your mental health, contributing to open source, and more.

Last month, I talked about the basic idea of what dependency injection is and its importance. Now that we’re more familiar with it, we’ll look at examples of using dependency injection for managing object coupling, moving object creation externally, and keeping your classes concise.