Tag Archives: Software engineering

PHP Coding Style: Large IF Statements

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Have you ever seen some PHP code like that:

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if ($condition1 && $condition2 && $string1 == $string2 . $string3 && $string4 != $string5 . $string6) {
   // write some code here!?
}

It is ugly, isn’t it?

I’d prefer to make it clearer! What about that?

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if ($condition1 
   && $condition2
   && $string1 == $string2
                . $string3
   && $string4 != $string5
                . $string6
) {
   // write some code here
}

PHP Functions: realpath()

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Watch Out – Hard Code

Perhaps every developer knows that hard coded paths are no good! The code’s good to be flexible and extensible, but what the way to achieve that? In a typically developed application you’re completely sure the way the folders are nested will be permanent and no change will occur, and that’s maybe true, but however don’t be completely sure.

An Example

Let’s take a typical example. You’ve to access a uploaded file with PHP. By default the files are uploaded in the /tmp folder with PHP given name. That’s why immediately after the upload (the form submit) you’ve to process the _POST and the _FILES arrays and perhaps move the uploaded file somewhere else.

However you’d like to access this file wherever the application is – on the production servers or on the development server or even on the localhost!

I ran into that kind of problem/task. The thing I’d like to achieve was a bit different. I constructed the path with the dirname() function, but there were still ‘/../../’ chunks in it. So the solution is the realpath() function that removes those chunks and converts the path into one “calculated” real path to the file.

Let me show you an example:

// get the uploaded file path
$scriptPath = dirname(__FILE__);
 
// get the realpath to avoid the /../ part of the path
// with dirname they remain in the path
$uploadFolderPath = realpath($scriptPath . '/../../folder_name/');

If you were using dirname() you’d get something like that:

/folder1/folder2/folder3/../../folder2/file.txt

Now with realpath() the result is:

/folder1/folder2/file.txt

That’s more clear and even both are working correctly I’d prefer the second one!

PHP Associative Arrays Coding Style

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No PHP programmer writes code without arrays. Sound strange, but as many programmers there are, as many ways to format the array notation there are.

My advice is to rely on a defined standard. I personally use the Zend Framework’s coding style.

So how to format the code? The first way is on the same line:

$myArray = array('key1' => 'value1',
		 'key2' => 'value2');

And the other, perhaps more clear way is to place the associative pairs on a new line:

$myArray = array(
	'key1' => 'value1',
	'key2' => 'value2',
);

Note that in the second example there’s a comma after the second pair. This is correct PHP syntax and is strongly encouraged!

It’s up to you which way to take. However it mainly depends on the case, but please use standards.

Debugging in Zend Framework

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Perhaps “debugging” is a bit too strong. However when you’re dumping an array in PHP, you’d probably prefer the print_r or var_dump.

echo '<pre>';
print_r($array);
echo '</pre>';

But did you know that in Zend Framework there’s a built in Zend_Debug?

Zend_Debug::dump($array);

Does pretty much the same thing!

Inline Scripts with Zend_View_Helper_InlineScript

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Once I’ve posted about Zend Framework and script injections into the view of the app. However back than I didn’t mentioned the way the scripts can be injected on whatever place into the markup. This job’s done by Zend_View_Helper_InlineScript and that’s only an abstraction over the HeadScript.

However thus the PHP code goes quite clean and maintainable.

$scripts = $this->view->inlineScript();
$scripts->appendFile('/scripts/production.js');

This is quite interesting because in the case of multiple scripts you can chain them into this:

$scripts = $this->view->inlineScript();
$scripts->appendFile('/scripts/production.js')
            ->appendFile('/scripts/development.js')

But that’s not everything. Although it looks very pretty and clean, PHP gives you the correct syntax of something like this:

$scripts = $this->view->inlineScript();
$scripts
            ->appendFile('/scripts/production.js')
            ->appendFile('/scripts/development.js')

And that’s particularly good when it comes to fast switching between production and development scripts includes.

$scripts = $this->view->inlineScript();
$scripts
 //        ->appendFile('/scripts/production.js')
            ->appendFile('/scripts/development.js')

You’d ask why I’d to comment my script includes. Because as it appears to be fashionable the JavaScripts are concatenated and compressed. This gives you performance benefits on the client side when downloading and executing the script. So it’s usual to have one compressed/minified and several development scripts. That’s why this commenting strategy is very useful.