Christopher Pitt - Pro PHP 8 MVC: Model View Controller Architecture-Driven Application Development

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So much has happened in the years since I first wrote about this topic. The language has evolved to be useful in more contexts. Package management is a solved problem. Frameworks like Laravel and Symfony are mature and widely used.

When I think back to what PHP development was like, eight or ten years ago, I am amazed by where we find ourselves. It is easier than ever to get started and to make a living building applications using PHP.

Each new section builds on the same application and prior knowledge, so that more complex topics stay manageable. The previous edition was depressingly academic, and my goal for this edition is to make it as practical and useful as possible.

Well be using features new to PHP 8 and diving deep into how popular frameworks implement the same features we do.

A question occurs to me as I begin writing this revision.

Do we still need MVC?

The term was coined in the 1970s by Trygve Reenskaug . It jumped over to web development where frameworks like Django and Rails embraced it.

While it is true that modern web development is a very different environment to where MVC was first thought up, it remains a useful separation of the concerns of an application.

In fact, its almost impossible not to see these divisions when talking about or building a nontrivial PHP application. As we talk about building modern applications, well see bits from many frameworks, and well learn what they have to do with this separation.

I want us to focus on the core elements of building a web-accessible application in PHP. Well start with accepting a request from the browser and serving a response.

Everything else should build upon this process.

As we continue, well look for ways to add more to this process. As such, I encourage you to follow along with the example application. Well be building a website for a new space exploration company, called Whoosh.

Whoosh needs a website to sell their space rockets and recruit new astronauts to their cause. Well start simple, but by the end, Whoosh will have a website that looks great and works well!

Were going to write secure and bug-free code, to the best of our knowledge. While it should be to the level that you can safely use the code we write in production, I dont recommend that you do.

Writing your own framework is an excellent way to learn how other frameworks solve similar problems, and it should also be an opportunity to reflect on how much work and pressure popular frameworks can take off your hands.

You get to decide how much of your own code you want to write, but it would be foolish to use 100% of your own code in production.

There are many ways to learn PHP. This book will teach things that may be unfamiliar to a new developer, but the goal isnt to be the best place for someone to learn programming (or even PHP) for the first time.