What PHP application design/design patterns do you use?

Question

Please share your favorite application design / design patterns for use in PHP with me. Some things I'd like to know:

• How your folders are designed
• How you use object oritentation in your PHP applications
• Do you have a standard way of dealing with CRUD, pagination, or any other common tasks?
• How do you avoid using repetitive code? What's your approach to libraries/sharing common code, etc?
• What are ways in which you can make your code more elegant?

You don't have to answer all of these, answering any or a few of these will be helpful.

The reason I'm asking this,is because I'm very tired of writing repetitive, ugly code in PHP and I want to make a small framework for my freelancing projects which will make programming easier and let me focus on the challenging/business tasks rather than form validation, pagination, and the other mundane activities which make up 80% of programming work in PHP

All opinions appreciated!

Answer 1

I might get voted down for this, but if you really do want to write your own framework, I say go for it because you will learn a lot from the experience. The other frameworks mentioned here are great and tested and you wouldn't be making a bad decision using them, but it's your choice.

Before starting to write your framework, look at the other frameworks (at their syntax, directory structure, naming schema, design patterns, etc) and try to figure out why they did what they did and what, if anything, you would do differently. Try out a few tutorials and play with their code, make a few sample apps. If, after doing that, you don't like using them, then go ahead and start planning your framework, keeping what worked and improving what didn't.

If you do decide to roll your own, here are a few things I would recommend from my own experience:

• Make Security Your Top Priority - If you write a data access layer, use bound parameters. If you write a form class, guard against CSRF and XSS. Catch your exceptions and handle your errors. Make sure that your PHP environment is secure. Don't try coming up with your own encryption algorithm. If you don't concentrate on security, it's not worth writing your own framework.
• Comment Your Code - You will need comments to help you remember how your code works after a while. I usually find that docblock comments are more than enough. Beyond that, comment why you did something, not what you did. If you need to explain what, you may want to refactor.
• Single Responsibility Classes and Methods - Most of your classes and methods should do one thing and only one thing. Especially watch out for this with the database - Your pagination class shouldn't rely on your data access object, nor should almost any other (low-level) class.
• Unit Test - If each of your methods does only one thing, it should be far easier to test them and it will result in better code. Write the test first, then the code to pass the test. This will also give you greater freedom to refactor later on without breaking something.
• Abstract Similar Classes - If you have more than one class that does similar things, create a parent class that uses the similarities between the classes and extend it.
• Delegate and Modularize - If you're writing a validation system (and chances are you probably would), don't include each validator as a method in some super validation class. Separate them into individual classes and call them as needed. This can be applied in many areas: filters, languages, algorithms, validators, and so on.
• Protect and Privatize - In most cases, it's better to use getter and setter methods rather than allowing direct access to class variables.
• Consistent API - If you have a render() method and a draw() method that do the same things in different classes, pick one and go with it across all classes. Keep the order of the parameters the same for methods that use the same parameters. A consistent API is an easier API.
• Remember Autoloading - The class names can get a little clunky and long, but the way Zend names the classes and organizes the directories makes autoloading a lot easier. Update: As of PHP 5.3, you should begin using namespaces.
• Never echo or print anything - Give it as a return value and let the user decide if it should be echoed. A lot of times you'll use the return value as a parameter for another method.
• Don't Try to Solve the World's Problems - Solve your own first. If you don't need a feature right now, like a class for localizing numbers or dates or currency, don't write it. Wait until you need it.
• Don't Preoptimize - Build a few simple applications with your framework before fine tuning it. Otherwise, you can spend a lot of time on nothing productive.
• Use Source Control - If you spend countless hours creating a masterpiece, don't risk it getting lost.

Answer 2

I have to agree with the above posters. If you're not using a framework when programming in PHP you're really programming with your hands tied behind your back. I personally recommend CodeIgniter. It's the fastest framework around, it's very easy to learn, and has a very active community. All of your questions will be answered by the framework:

* How your folders are designed

CodeIgniter (or any framework for that matter) separates your logic into views, models, and controllers, each with their own folder.

* Do you have a standard way of dealing with CRUD, pagination, or any other common tasks?

CI has a pagination library, and it has 3rd party libraries like DataMapper for wrapping your CRUD calls in an object oriented way (ORM).

* What are ways in which you can make your code more elegant?

The seperation of the model, view, and controller make for very elegant code.

(The 2 questions I didn't answer are pretty much implied when using the framework)