David Powers - PHP 8 Solutions: Dynamic Web Design and Development Made Easy

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PHP 8 is a major update of one of the most widely used languages for developing dynamic web sites. It was released in November 2020. So how could a book released less than 12 months later have managed to get to its fifth edition? Quite simply, this is the fifth iteration of my book PHP Solutions that was first published in 2006. When the fourth edition came out in 2019, it was felt important to indicate which version of PHP it covered. So, although the structure of the book remains close to the original, the code has gone through major revision each time.

The fact that PHP Solutions has remained so popular owes a great deal to the concept of the books first editor, Chris Mills. He wanted a book that dealt with practical problems in easily digestible bites; but we agreed that it shouldnt be yet another code cookbook, a format that was popular at the time. The problem with the cookbook approach is that the reader is presented with a potentially useful block of code but no indication of how it might be used in a real-world situation. PHP Solutions aims to provide solutions to practical problems rather than a series of meaningless exercises.

Ive always felt concerned about unduly raising readers expectations with the subtitle of this book, Dynamic Web Design and Development Made Easy. PHP is not difficult, but nor is it like an instant cake mix: just add water and stir. Every web site is different, so its impossible to grab a script, paste it into a web page, and expect it to work. My aim is to help web designers with little or no knowledge of programming gain the confidence to dive into the code and adjust it to their own requirements.

You dont need any previous experience of PHP or another programming language to be able to use this book; but it does move at a fast pace. After the first few chapters, you start working with relatively advanced features of the language. Dont let that put you off. Regard it as a challenge.

How you use the book will depend on your level of experience. If youre new to PHP and programming, start at the beginning and work your way gradually through the book. Its organized as a logical sequence with each chapter building on knowledge and skills gained in previous ones. When describing the code, I try to explain what it does in plain language. I avoid jargon, but not technical terms (each new term is described briefly when its first encountered). If you have more experience with PHP, you can probably jump straight into whatever interests you. Even if the code makes sense to you without my explanations, I hope the text throws light onto my thought processes when solving a problem with PHP.

Because hosting companies are often slow to upgrade the version of PHP that they offer, previous editions of this book provided workarounds for older versions of PHP. This time, I dont. In some respects, this is a gamble. As of mid-2021, less than one percent of web servers running PHP were using PHP 8. This means code that works perfectly in a local testing environment is likely to break when its uploaded to a remote server unless you have upgraded to PHP 8. However, active support for the last version of PHP 7 (7.4) ends in November 2021, shortly after this books publication.

PHP isnt like that old car youve been running for years and doesnt need changing as long as you give it sufficient love and oil. PHP is constantly being updated, not only to add new features but also to fix bugs and security issues. Even if youre not interested in the new features, you should be interested in security fixes. The Internet can be a wild place with lots of unsavory characters trying to find exploitable holes in web sites. This book contains a lot of advice on security, but it cant protect you from security issues that are uncovered in the PHP core. Making sure that your remote server is kept up to date is an indispensable insurance policy to minimize your risks. And it shouldnt cost you any extra because PHP is free (although hosting companies charge for their services).

If you really need code thats compatible with PHP 7, check out the fourth edition of this book. Better still, make the move to the most up-to-date version of PHP.

All the code has been extensively reviewed and updated to take advantage of time-saving new features in PHP 8, including named arguments, constructor property promotion, and the match expression. This particularly affects the custom classes in Chapters onward because the only significant change PHP 8 makes to interacting with a database is that PDO (PHP Data Objects) now throws an exception by default when it encounters an error. Nevertheless, each chapter has been thoroughly reviewed and revised.

All the files necessary for working through this book can be downloaded from the Apress web site via the Download Source Code button located at www.apress.com/9781484271407 .

Set up a PHP development environment, as described in Chapter . Unzip the files and copy the php8sols folder and all its contents into your web servers document root. The code for each chapter is in a folder named after the chapter: ch01 , ch02 , and so on. Follow the instructions in each PHP solution, and copy the relevant files to the site root or the work folder indicated.