PHP Programming Tips

PHP developers try to maintain backwards compatibility in PHP programming such that a script written for an older version will still run without changes in a newer version. Two of the most important recent changes that affect old code are:

• The deprecation of the old $HTTP_*_VARS arrays which should be indicated as global when used inside a function or method. The following superglobal arrays were introduced in PHP » 4.1.0. They are: a) $_GET; b) $_POST; c) $_COOKIE; d) $_SERVER; e) $_FILES; f) $_ENV; g) $_REQUEST, and; h) $_SESSION. The older $HTTP_*_VARS arrays like $HTTP_POST_VARS are also available. In PHP 5.0.0, the long PHP predefined variable arrays may be disabled with the register_long_arrays directive.

• By default, external variables are no longer registered in the global scope, meaning in PHP » 4.2.0 the PHP directive register_globals is off by default in php.ini. These values can be accessed through the superglobal arrays.

4. Zend Optimizer - is a closed source solution which is purely a code optimizer with no code caching feature. This makes Zend Optimizer different from other PHP accelerators. Also, Zend Optimizer is very useful in running some types of protected scripts. However, one major setback is that the time taken to optimize scripts may exceed the performance gains, hence, resulting to an overall slowdown.

5. Zend Platform - originally Zend Cache and then Zend Accelerator, this commercial product was, at first, sold for $995.00 and $1495.00 US dollars per server. In 2006, this pricing was removed from Zend.com.

6. ionCube PHP Accelerator (PHPA)– is claimed to be the first freely available PHP performance solution to rival the peformance of the commercial Zend Cache product. It was launched in 2001 and was intended to maximize the performance potential of PHP. However, PHPA is now discontinued, although there is an announcement regarding the development of a more advanced replacement.

7. Turck MMCache – though discontinued, Turck MMCache is still widely used today.

A PHP accelerator is an extension created to improve the performance of software applications written using the PHP programming language. Here is a list of PHP accelerators:

1. Alternative PHP Cache – a free and open framework used for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code. The latest stable version is 3.0.18. It works with all PHP versions including PHP5.2.

2. eAccelerator – Originally part of the Turck MMCache project, eAccelerator used to have a PHP encoder and loader but was removed after December 2006. Its latest stable version is 0.9.5.3 and it supports PHP4 and all PHP5 releases including 5.2.

3. Xcache – is a powerful and stable PHP opcode cacher which can run on production servers under high load. It has been also tested on linux and supports ThreadSafe/Windows. Its latest stable version is 1.2.2 and supports PHP_5_1 PHP_5_2 HEAD (6.x)

In case this may come in handy, here is a list of editors which can be used with the PHP scripting language.

Windows

ConTEXT - version 0.97.4; freeware
Crimson Editor - version 3.60; freeware
Programmer’s Notepad -
PSPad - version 4.3.0; freeware
Notepad++
NuSphere PhpED - version 5.0; commercial
NuSphere Nu-Coder - version 1.4; commercial

Mac OS X

skEdit
Smultron - version 1.0.1; freeware
TextWrangler
TextMate
Coda

Linux

Bluefish - version 1.0; other
Geany
gedit
gPHPEdit
Kate - version 2.2; freeware
Quanta Plus - version 3.2.1; freeware

Multiple OS

NetBeans
Eclipse
Aptana
Emacs - version 21; freeware
jEdit - version 4.1; freeware
SciTE - version 1.53; freeware
Vim - version 6.1; freeware
nano

In PHP, common tasks like ftp, encrypt passwords in MD5, or send email from a web page all are built in hidden code, and as PHP is Open source there is a lot
of free code available for PHP.

Unlike PHP there is no hidden code with ASP. If you need to upload files, then you would need a third party component like ASP upload, also if you need to send mail you need another component and so on.

Although PHP is better in many aspects, ASP offers more security than PHP.

Price Compared to ASP, PHP installations are absolutely cheaper to install. PHP perfectly runs on Linux (which is a free OS) and programmers use MySQL .(which also comes FREE) ASP runs on the IIS Server (Internet Information Server) which requires Windows N.T/2000/2003 Servers or better. Aside from that ASP mostly uses MS-SQL Server as the back end which is really expensive. PHP obviously is cheaper than ASP.

Cross Platform compatibility
PHP programs run on a wide variety of Operating Systems Unix, Linux, Solaris and Window’s.ASP on the other hand only works flawlessly with Windows and not with other platforms. PHP offers more versatility than ASP.

Speed
Relatively, PHP is much faster and stable than ASP, this is because ASP is built on a COM-based architecture so whenever a program tries to connect to a database or calls for a COM object, there is an overhead on the server, and this COM overhead adds up and slows things down.
While in PHP, everything runs in PHP’s memory space , this implies that PHP code will run faster because there is no overhead of communicating with different COM objects in different processes.
In addition to this ASP is slower and is a more memory intensive application than PHP’s model because each ASP language compiler runs in its own process.

What is PHP?
PHP or (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is Open Source’s scripting language designed for the construction of dynamic web pages. PHP is largely used in server-side scripting, but can also be used from a command line interface or in standalone graphical applications.PHP commonly runs on a web server, taking the PHP code as its input and creating web pages as output. It can be set up on most web servers and on almost every operating system and platform for free.

What is ASP?
Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft’s scripting language for building dynamic web sites, web applications and web services., First released in January 2002 , along with the version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, ASP.net is the successor to Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. ASP.NET is made on the Common Language Runtime, allowing programmers to write ASP.NET code via any supported .NET language such as VBScript and Jscript.

Learning PHP can be great however it can also be very frustrating to lessen that frustration know more about error reports.

One very important thing to know about PHP is the error reports. You need to have to turn on error reporting immediately preferably on Maximum Level. In this level it will be able to declare a variable ahead of time, reference a variable and use a define that is not set.

It will seem that this is not important but only until you develop structures programs with many functions and classes. It would help lessen the errors as well as long hours of fixing your work due to misspelled variables.

Put this line at the top of the PHP document: error_reporting(E_ALL); It places error reporting into highest level. You’ll be able to receive warning messages that will identify possible wrong elements of the document.

PHP Programming has become one of the trends today. To learn more about it, you can first start through the internet. Although you may also try books however internet provides more comprehensive information. Think what topics about PHP are you most interested about. You can visit and join forums discussing PHP programming. You can even ask questions in the forums. Friends who are into the field of programming might help.

If you want to know more about PHP Programming, it should not be limited to that there are also other areas that you need to learn about like JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is helpful to always have knowledge on the latest trends and innovations regarding PHP Programming.