Category: PHP

Legacy PHP Application Tour & Upgrade

Posted on Posted in PHP

The process of migrating my applications from PHP 5.6 -> 7.3 has been a long one – mainly due to limited time to work on it, and additional tasks being added to the migration list. But I’ve finally made it through the low hanging fruit of easy client sites and am now migrating the first project with a significant amount of back end PHP code. In this case, it’s a legacy CMS I wrote 14+ years ago called LampLight Content Manager.

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Decision Time: PHP Framework Dilemma

Posted on Posted in PHP

My freelance business has grown, and reached a critical decision point for my future development. I’ve been puzzling over this for a while – why not puzzle it out in public!?

I need to pick a PHP framework. Or maybe not pick one. But my dilemma is kind of unusual. I’d love the opinions of other experienced PHP devs! But hear me out, my situation is a bit unique.

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The State Of PHP Today

Posted on Posted in PHP

You may have heard a few rumors going around…

“PHP is just a scripting language.”

“It’s only used by beginners.”

“PHP always ends up as spaghetti code.”

“PHP is insecure.”

“Only the smartest, sexiest people use PHP.”

Ok, maybe that last one was me… but hear me out! Much like the old stereotype of “only nerds play video games”, PHP definitely earned a few unflattering labels many years ago. Times have changed and developers in the know tell a very different story. Just like all the cool kids now play Fortnite (do they? I don’t know), PHP is nearly unrecognisable from its days as the scripting language ‘Personal Home Page’.

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PHP Podcast Picks

Posted on Posted in Learning, PHP

There are a surprising number of PHP and web development podcasts available to us, which is a great sign of the language’s popularity and passionate developers. Podcasts are nice because they allow us to keep current and learn while on the go. My preference is listening to them while doing chores, turning otherwise boring time into a chance to improve my technical knowledge. Over the last year I’ve listened to several podcasts specifically about PHP and web development, and here are the ones I’ve been following: Continue reading “PHP Podcast Picks” →

Bite Sized Code Refactoring – Redundant DB Connections

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I maintain and work on a number of legacy code applications. One of them has earned itself some refactoring. So I’ll try to share some of the changes I’ve been making to improve it. Today, a problem that’s bothered me for a while: the DB class connects to the database even if no queries are being used.

I should be thankful that this legacy app doesn’t have a bunch of mysqli_* calls all over the place. Back when I wrote it I at least had the presence of mind to wrap SQL functions in an abstraction class. So this change was quite easy to make.

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