Best Coding Practices in PHP

The word PHP programming and PHP coding are used interchangeably. In this article we will learn about best coding practices in PHP. There are several things you should take care about while coding in PHP. So let’s start:

Error Reporting Should Be Turn On

    Error reporting is very helpful feature in php. It must be turn on while a project is in the development phase. ‘E_ALL’ is a helpful feature. While it is turned on, it will give us all most all the warnings and errors. But it should should  be turned off while releasing the project. Otherwise user will get unwanted errors which are not relevant to him.

Proper Commenting

        Comments are necessary and must be used whenever it needed. Comments should be used in such a way that it make code more readable. If you follow certain standards in your comments then it will allow IDE and other tools to utilize it in different ways.

Consistent Indentation

        Indentation is also used to make code more human readable. Whatever indentation you like, be consistent in that throughout the project.

Consistent Naming Conventions

        There are different ways to follow in a naming convention in your code like camel-case(camelCase) and pascal-case(PascalCase). Adapt a proper naming convention and stick to it. It will make your code more readable and attractive.

Try An IDE

        If you use an IDE then it will make your programming easy. There are different IDEs available in the market. NetBeans is a recommended IDE to be used. If you are looking for some paid version give phpstorm a run(offers 30 days free trial).

Try a Php Framework

        A Framework will speed up your work. There are different framework available in market which you can use. CakePhp, WordPress & Codeigniter are some of them.

Learn The Dry Approach

        Dry approach is a platform independent approach. It applies to whatever language you choose for programming. This approach actually says that do not repeat yourself. It will help you not to write a redundant code.

Always Use <?php ?>

        Some programmers use short-tag like <? ?> and <% %>. But these are deprecated and discouraged to use. If you are using newer PHP version by default these tags are disabled. If enabled might through warning message. <?php ?> will give a guarantee to support in future versions.

Use Latest Version Of Php

Keep yourself update with PHP version. PHP 7 is releasing soon with host of new features. Some are using PHP 4 it’s the high time to upgrade to at least PHP 5 which introduced OOP concepts, majority of new frameworks are using PHP 5 as base and all standard web hosting providers have updated their PHP version 5.x.
So all the above points should be kept in mind while programming in php. There may be few more standards to be followed as far as php best coding practices are concerned.

I hope that you will have found this article useful and exciting. Let me know in comments if you have any questions regarding PHP Coding Practice.