A quick overview on project structure, development practices and use of tools to improve the overall quality of your PHP projects.

1. Developing better PHP
projects
Md Emran Hasan
phpXperts seminar 2010
Nov 06, 2010

2. Who are you?
• Team / Project lead ?
• Development Manager ?
• Senior Developer ?
• Freelancer ?

4. Why you need this ?
• Better project organization
• Improved teamwork
• Adaptable to change
• Predictable and maintainable

5. Elements
• Quality of code
• Project structure
• Development practices
• Use of tools

6. Project Structure

7. Common types
• Stand-alone
• Framework
• Hybrid

8. Stand-alone
index.php
login.php
account.php
...
inc/
config.php
common.php
lib/
email_sender.php
alldb.php
xmlwriter.php
ezSql/
tcpdf/

9. Stand-alone (cont’d)
• Separate files
• All variables are global
• Difficult to manage
• Almost no separation of concern

10. Framework
library/
Zend/
application/
config/
application.ini
controllers/
Auth.php
Page.php
models/
User.php
Page.php
views/
script/
auth/
login.php
forgot.php

11. Framework (cont’d)
• Built on top of Library Collection
• Applications extend from it
• Focuses on 20% of the 80-20 rule

12. Hybrid
.htaccess
index.php
Pages/
Login.php
Account.php
Home.php
...
Models/
User.php
Page.php
Lib/
ezSQL/
Zend/
tcpdf/

13. Hybrid (cont’d)
• Improved version of stand-alone
• Utilizes other Library Collection (Zend,
PEAR)
• Uses Front Controller approach

14. Development Practices

15. Planning
• Collaborate with customer
• Estimate team-wise
• Break total work into iterations
• Daily stand-up meeting

16. Design
• Prefer simple design over complexity
• Adhere to a coding standard
• Avoid guessing by doing coding spike!

17. Coding
• Write unit tests first
• Collective code ownership
• Optimize last
• Refactor mercilessly

18. First make it work,
then make it right,
then make it fast.
- Kent Beck

19. Use of tools

20. Choosing tools
• Having a process helps choose tools
• Choosing Inappropriate tool can do harm
• Build a process if you don’t have any

21. Type of tools
Release Management
Development Management
Product Management

22. Product Management
• Should allow building requirements (use
cases, screen mockups, etc)
• Must be collaborative
• Must be shared among project members

23. Development Management
• Need to allow multiple developers to work
together (version control)
• Need to keep codebase under control
(code review)
• Need to deal with bugs (issue tracking)

24. Release Management
• Needs to allow setting project timeline
• Should allow scheduling of milestones
• Should measure development team velocity

25. Suggestion for Newcomer
• Version Control: Subversion
• Issue/FeatureTracking: Spreadsheet (Excel,
Google Docs)
• Collaboration: Dropbox, Google Docs
• Communication: IM, Email, Meetings

26. Suggestion for Intermediate
• Version Control: Subversion, Git/Mercurial
• Issue/FeatureTracking: trac, Mantis, Flyspray
• Collaboration: Wiki, Google Docs
• Code Review: Peer-to-peer review
• Communication: IM, Email, Meetings

27. Suggestion for Experts
• Version Control: Git/Mercurial
• Integrated Project Management: JIRA, Redmine,Trac
• Collaboration: Wiki, Google Docs
• Code Review: Review Board, Crucible
• QA Automation: Selenium,Watir, phpUnit
• Continuos Integration: Hudson, CruiseControl

28. Tips for picking right tool
• Tool that you can configure easily
• Tool that complements your process (does
not fight you)
• Tool that your team can adjust with easily

29. Summary

30. Take-aways
• Structure your project properly (use
framework if possible)
• Maintain good coding practice in team
• Use tools to increase team efficiency

31. Questions?

32. References
• Subversion
• Git
• Mercurial
• Google Docs
• Review Board
• JIRA
• Mantis
• Basecamp
• Redmine
• Trac
• Selenium
• Watir
• Hudson
• Cruise Control
• Flyspray
• Dropbox