Developing better PHP projects

Md Emran Hasan

phpXperts seminar 2010Nov 06, 2010

Who are you?

• Team / Project lead ?

• Development Manager ?

• Senior Developer ?

• Freelancer ?

Why you need this ?

• Better project organization

• Improved teamwork

• Adaptable to change

• Predictable and maintainable

Elements

• Quality of code

• Project structure

• Development practices

• Use of tools

Project Structure

Common types

• Stand-alone

• Framework

• Hybrid

Stand-alone

index.php

login.php

account.php

...

inc/

config.php

common.php

lib/

email_sender.php

alldb.php

xmlwriter.php

ezSql/

tcpdf/

Stand-alone (cont’d)

• Separate files

• All variables are global

• Difficult to manage

• Almost no separation of concern

Framework

library/

Zend/

application/

config/

application.ini

controllers/

Auth.php

Page.php

models/

User.php

Page.php

views/

script/

auth/

login.php

forgot.php

Framework (cont’d)

• Built on top of Library Collection

• Applications extend from it

• Focuses on 20% of the 80-20 rule

Hybrid

.htaccess

index.php

Pages/

Login.php

Account.php

Home.php

...

Models/

User.php

Page.php

Lib/

ezSQL/

Zend/

tcpdf/

Hybrid (cont’d)

• Improved version of stand-alone

• Utilizes other Library Collection (Zend,

PEAR)

• Uses Front Controller approach

Development Practices

Planning

• Collaborate with customer

• Estimate team-wise

• Break total work into iterations

• Daily stand-up meeting

Design

• Prefer simple design over complexity

• Adhere to a coding standard

• Avoid guessing by doing coding spike!

Coding

• Write unit tests first

• Collective code ownership

• Optimize last

• Refactor mercilessly

First make it work,

then make it right,

then make it fast.

- Kent Beck

Use of tools

Choosing tools

• Having a process helps choose tools

• Choosing Inappropriate tool can do harm

• Build a process if you don’t have any

Type of tools

Release Management

Development Management

Product Management

Product Management

• Should allow building requirements (use

cases, screen mockups, etc)

• Must be collaborative

• Must be shared among project members

Development Management

• Need to allow multiple developers to work

together (version control)

• Need to keep codebase under control

(code review)

• Need to deal with bugs (issue tracking)

Release Management

• Needs to allow setting project timeline

• Should allow scheduling of milestones

• Should measure development team velocity

Suggestion for Newcomer

• Version Control: Subversion

• Issue/Feature Tracking: Spreadsheet (Excel,

Google Docs)

• Collaboration: Dropbox, Google Docs

• Communication: IM, Email, Meetings

Suggestion for Intermediate

• Version Control: Subversion, Git/Mercurial

• Issue/Feature Tracking: trac, Mantis, Flyspray

• Collaboration: Wiki, Google Docs

• Code Review: Peer-to-peer review

• Communication: IM, Email, Meetings

Suggestion for Experts

• Version Control: Git/Mercurial

• Integrated Project Management: JIRA, Redmine, Trac

• Collaboration: Wiki, Google Docs

• Code Review: Review Board, Crucible

• QA Automation: Selenium, Watir, phpUnit

• Continuos Integration: Hudson, CruiseControl

Tips for picking right tool

• Tool that you can configure easily

• Tool that complements your process (does

not fight you)

• Tool that your team can adjust with easily

Summary

Take-aways

• Structure your project properly (use

framework if possible)

• Maintain good coding practice in team

• Use tools to increase team efficiency

Questions?

References

• Subversion

• Git

• Mercurial

• Google Docs

• Review Board

• JIRA

• Mantis

• Basecamp

• Redmine

• Trac

• Selenium

• Watir

• Hudson

• Cruise Control

• Flyspray

• Dropbox