Modern PHP

Preface

There are a million PHP tutorials online. Most of these tutorials are outdated and demonstrate obsolete practices. Unfortunately, these tutorials are still referenced today thanks to their immortality on Google. Outdated information is dangerous to unaware PHP programmers who unknowingly create slow and insecure PHP applications. I recognized this issue in 2013, and it is the primary reason I began PHP The Right Way, a community initiative to provide PHP programmers easy access to high-quality and up-to-date information from authoritative members of the PHP community.

Modern PHP is my next endeavor toward the same goal. This book is not a reference manual. Nope. This book is a friendly conversation between you and me. I’ll introduce you to the modern PHP programming language. I’ll show you the latest PHP techniques that I use every day at work and on my open source projects. And I’ll help you use the latest coding standards so you can share your PHP components and libraries with the PHP community.

You’ll hear me say “community” over and over (and over). The PHP community is friendly and helpful and welcoming—although not without occasional drama. If you become curious about a specific feature that we discuss, reach out to your local PHP user group with questions. I guarantee you there are nearby PHP developers who would love to help you become a better PHP programmer. Your local PHP user group is an invaluable resource as you continue to improve your PHP skills long after our brief time together.

What You Need to Know About This Book

Before we get started, I want to set a few expectations. First, it is impossible for me to cover every way to use PHP. There isn’t enough time. Instead, I will show you how I use PHP. Yes, this is an opinionated approach, but I use the very same practices and standards adopted by many other PHP developers. What you take away from our conversation will be immediately applicable in your own PHP projects.

Second, I assume you are familiar with variables, conditionals, loops, and so on. You don’t need to know PHP, but you should at least bring a basic understanding of these fundamental programming concepts. You can also bring coffee (I love coffee). I’ll supply everything else.

Third, I do not assume you are using a specific operating system. My example code should run on OS X, Linux, and Windows. Command-line instructions are written with Bash and assume you use Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. They may also work on CentOS, RHEL, and OS X. If you use Windows, I highly recommend you spin up a Linux virtual machine so you can run the example code in this book. However, it is possible to install PHP, Bash, and Git on Windows as I demonstrate in Appendix A.

How This Book Is Organized

Part I demonstrates new PHP features like namespaces, generators, traits, and type hinting. It introduces you to the modern PHP language, and it exposes you to features you may not have known about until now.

Part II explores good practices that you should implement in your PHP applications. Have you heard the term PSR, but you’re not entirely sure what it is or how to use it? Do you want to learn how to sanitize user input and use safe database queries? This chapter is for you.

Part III is more technical than the first two parts. It demonstrates how to deploy, tune, test, and profile PHP applications. We dive into deployment strategies with Capistrano. We talk about testing tools like PHPUnit and Travis CI. And we explore how to tune PHP so it runs your application with optimal performance.

Appendix A provides step-by-step instructions for installing and configuring PHP-FPM on your machine.

Appendix B explains how to build a local development environment that closely matches your production server. We explore Vagrant, Puppet, Chef, and alternative tools to help you spin up a local PHP development environment.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

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Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.

Constant width

Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.

Constant width bold

Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.

Constant width italic

Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.

Tip

This element signifies a tip or suggestion.

Note

This element signifies a general note.

Warning

This element indicates a warning or caution.

Using Code Examples

Supplemental material (code examples, exercises, etc.) is available for download at https://github.com/codeguy/modern-php.

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if example code is offered with this book, you may use it in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Modern PHP by Josh Lockhart (O’Reilly). Copyright 2015 Josh Lockhart, 978-1-491-90501-2.”

If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at [e-mail].

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Acknowledgments

This is my first book. When O’Reilly approached me about writing Modern PHP, I was equally excited and scared to death. The first thing I did was a Walter Huston dance; I mean, O’Reilly wanted me to write a book. How cool is that!? Then I asked myself can I really write that many pages? A book isn’t a quick or small task.

Of course, I immediately said “yes.” I knew I could write Modern PHP because I had family, friends, coworkers, editors, and reviewers supporting me the entire way. I want to acknowledge and thank my supporters for their invaluable feedback. Without them, this book would never have happened.

First, I want to thank my editor at O’Reilly Media—Allyson MacDonald (@allyatoreilly). Ally was nice, critical, supportive, and smart. She knew exactly how and when to gently nudge me in the right direction whenever I got off track. I can’t imagine working with a better editor.

I also want to thank my technical reviewers—Adam Fairholm (@adamfairholm) and Ed Finkler (@funkatron). Adam is a brilliant web developer at Newfangled, and he is perhaps best known for his work on IMVDb—the popular music video database. Ed is well-known throughout the PHP community for his incredible PHP skills, his personality on the /dev/hell podcast, and his commendable Open Sourcing Mental Illness campaign. Adam and Ed both pointed out everything dumb, illogical, and incorrect in my early drafts. This book is far better than anything I could write on my own thanks to their brutally honest feedback. I am forever indebted to them for their guidance and wisdom. If any faults or inaccuracies wriggled their way into the final manuscript, those faults are surely my own.

My coworkers at New Media Campaigns have been a constant source of encouragement. Joel, Clay, Kris, Alex, Patrick, Ashley, Lenny, Claire, Todd, Pascale, and Henry—I tip my hat to all of you for your kind words of encouragement from beginning to end.

And most important, I want to thank my family—Laurel, Ethan, Tessa, Charlie, Lisa, Glenn, and Liz. Thank you for your encouragement, without which I would have never finished this book. To my lovely wife, Laurel, thank you for your patience. Thank you for accompanying me to Caribou Coffee and La Vita Dolce for so many late-night writing sessions. Thank you for letting me abandon you on weekends. Thank you for keeping me motivated and on schedule. I love you now and forever.