In the following podcast I go over the key factor when determining how to structure a PHP project.
In a nutshell, it comes down to the size and complexity of the job. For the details, listen to me yap:
php-podcast-project-structure
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
www.killerphp.com
Hi,
The people at Packt Publishing just sent me a free sample chapter (in PDF format) of their latest PHP book (PHP5 CMS Framework Development) for me to pass on to you guys.
I haven’t had a chance to read the book, so I can’t comment on it. If any of you have, please feel free to post a comment.
The PDF:
PHP5 CMS Framework Development - Chapter 6 Access Control.
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PHP5 CMS Framework Development
This book guides you through the design and implementation decisions necessary to create a working architecture for a PHP5-based content management system. Each of the major areas and decision points are reviewed and discussed. Code examples, which take advantage of PHP5’s object oriented nature, are provided and explained. They serve as a means of illustrating the detailed development issues created by a CMS. In areas where the code is too voluminous to be reproduced in detail, the design principles are explained along with some critical pieces of code. A basic knowledge of PHP is assumed.
OK, I just tricked you! This article is not going to teach you how to build a content management system with PHP from scratch.
Why not?
… Because building a content management system from scratch is (probably) a really dumb idea!! Now that I come to think about it, building any of the most commonly used software from scratch, is kinda stupid.
Things you should not build from scratch:
The Top 3 Rules in Programming
The real estate business has a famous set of rules - the top three rules in fact:
The idea behind this rule, is to stress how important location is to a piece of property. In software development (programming), we have a similar set of key rules:
Hi,
After teasing you guys for a week or so, I’ve released the entire video tutorial course on building a PHP based shopping cart.
There is a small charge ($19.99) to download the entire course, but it is more than worth it since you get 140 minutes of top notch nerd training … and we include the source code too.
The course outline:
PART 1: INTRODUCTION
Duration: 4:49
We’ll quickly go through what the end result our project is supposed to look like and some of the tools that will help us get there.
PART 2: TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
Duration: 10:42
A better look at the technologies as well as some of the tools we’re going to be used to build our PayPal shopping cart. We’ll also do a bit of refactoring and explain some of the benefits of using an IDE (integrated development environment).
PART 3: BUILDING AN XML CATALOG
Duration: 17:22
Using XML as our data storage format, we’re going to create a catalog of items for our shopping cart.
PART 4: BUILDING THE CATALOG PAGE
Duration: 15:30
We’re going to put some skin on that catalog and start making it look a little more like a page to buy items and a little less like the index of a phone book.
PART 5: FINISHING THE CATALOG TEMPLATE
Duration: 12:54
With our catalog completed, we’re going to tidy up – or refactor – our project and get ready to build the ShoppingCart object.
PART 6: MAKING AN “ADD TO CART” PAGE
Duration: 15:58
We’ll cover how we can use the $_SESSION array in PHP to store our customer’s order as they navigate our website and add items to the shopping cart. We’ll also start building the Shopping Cart class and look at some object-oriented programming concepts.
PART 7: BUILDING THE SHOPPING CART
Duration: 15:54
We will be adding the major functionality of our shopping cart class in this video and getting it ready for calculating subtotals and totals with shipping costs.
PART 8: CALCULATING COST
Duration: 7:37
We’ll be creating templates for our checkout page in order to have a proper line-item for each product with the necessary cost details.
PART 9: SHIPPING COST
Duration: 10:09
Now that we have the individual items lined up in our checkout page, we can add the shipping costs.
PART 10: FINISHING THE CART TEMPLATE
Duration: 8:38
We’re finally done writing our shopping cart class! Now we can put it to work with our newly created checkout page.
PART 11: SENDING DATA TO PAYPAL
Duration: 11:36
PayPal requires a collection of preset hidden form elements on form submission. These elements act as the glue between our shopping cart and their website, and we’re going to flush them out in this video.
PART 12: PAYPAL SANDBOX INTEGRATION
Duration: 12:31
We’re going to go through the steps needed to create a PayPal Sandbox account. This tool lets us complete transactions without having to pass money through PayPal.
PART 13: A QUICK LOOK AT PAYPAL’S IPN
Duration: 5:47
PayPal’s IPN (Instant Payment Notification) is a handy way of knowing when a transaction has been completed succesfully. We’ll quickly go over how we can pick up data collected by PayPal and how it can be used to track orders after they’ve been placed.
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Should you have any questions or comments, please feel to post them.
PS: I will have more new FREE PHP and Dreamweaver CS4 videos coming out soon.
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
Hi,
One of my reasons for creating killerphp.com, was to make learning PHP easier for web designers. I also wanted to bring awareness to the web design community of the importance of PHP.
… I happen to think that PHP is a key technology in the web design stack, to the point that I believe that all web designers should learn at least some PHP.
That said, I thought it made sense to look at web design tools (such as Dreamweaver) to demonstrate how PHP works in that context.
So … I just released a 6 page article on soon to be released Dreamweaver CS4 detailing its’ PHP and database features.
Check it out: Dreamweaver CS4 Introduction to the PHP toolset.
I also plan on creating a bunch of supporting dreamweaver CS4 video tutorials to help fill in the details not covered in this chapter. I hope you find it useful.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com
