Professional PHPan open-source alternative for enterprise development

Thijs FerynFelix De Vliegher

19/11/’08, Katho Kortrijk

About us• ThijsFeryn

• Supportmanager&seniordeveloperatCOMBELL

• PHPdeveloperforabout5years

• ZendPHP5,cerGfiedengineer

• FelixDeVliegher

• Seniordeveloper&sysadminatCOMBELL

• PHPdeveloperforabout7years

• ZendPHP5,ZendFrameworkcerGfiedengineer

• Co‐founderPHPBelgium

• ContributortothePHPproject

About COMBELL• Founded in 1999

• 30 FTE and growing

• +25 000 customers

• Premium / Quality hosting segment

• Leading hosting provider in Belgium concerning hosting & domain names in the SME market

• + 60 000 domain names

• + 20 000 websites

• + 600 servers, owned & managed by COMBELL

• + 400 resellers

You?

• Experience with programming

• Experience with PHP

• Experience with PHP based applications

• OOP in PHP?

• Professional experience? (read: not katho)

Open source software• Development methodology

• Source code is available

• Use, change, improve

• Collaborative

• Common licenses: GPL, LGPL, MIT

• Free “as in beer”

LAMP stack

• First used in c't magazine in 1998

• Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP

• Open-source, free software

• Available everywhere

• Proven track recordApplication

PHPApache MySQL

Linux

Why PHP?Easy to learn

Why PHP?• Flexible in webserver environment

• Platform independent

• Lots of libraries, frameworks

• Huge community

• Code is freely available

•Documentation

• Commercial support

• Short TTM

PHP vs other languages• Dynamically typed

• Low entry barrier

• Stateless

• Platform independence (vs .NET)

• Interpreted language

• Extensions and libraries

• Built-in• Pecl• Pear

(let’s say Java?)

PHP is community friendly

PHP is community friendly

• Lots of PHP conferences / PHP UG’s

• Initiatives to contribute and learn

• Active and friendly support:

• forums• irc• twitter

Shiny statistics (sort of)

PHP 4 Yahoogoes PHP PHP 5 IBM & Oracle

endorse PHPMicrosoft

endorses PHP PHP 6?

PHP Applications

Used by

COMBELL customers using PHP

Support by

PHP in the enterpriseEvolution from a functional approach to enterprise fundamentals

The fundamentals

Functionality

• Language choice based on features

• Often the first and only concern

• Evolution towards:

• Frameworks

• Testing & debugging

PHP Frameworks

•Eases development

•More structure

•Glue (component) vs full-stack

•DRY

•No maintenance

•Extend or plugin where needed

PHP Frameworks• Zend Framework

• Component library and framework

• Symfony

• Full stack framework

• eZ Components

• Component library

• Loosely coupled

• Code Igniter

• Fast web application framework

Security1: Thou shalt

filter input and escape output

Security• php.ini settings

• Areas of importance:

• Form processing

• Databases

• Sessions

• Error handling / reporting

• Suhoshin / SAPI filter

Performance• Micro optimizations?

• No premature optimization!

• Caching

• Opcode caching

• {Page|Database|Module|...} caching

• Database

• Optimized database design

• Indexing strategy

• Writing good SQL

Performance• Profiling: optimizing code

• Optimalization of PHP as a language

Scalability

• Shared nothing: independent and self-sufficient

• Design patterns - MVC

• Database scaling - sharding

• Development methodologies - agile, scrum

• Version control

• Documentation!

Testing

I pity the fool who doesn’t write tests!

Testing

•More testing == less debugging!

•Applications should work as expected

•Actually takes less time

•Provides higher quality

•Easier to refactor and change

•Makes confident developers

Testing and coverage

PHP Tools and utilities• Editors

• Eclipse PDT - http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/

• Zend Studio - http://www.zend.com/studio

• Continuous Integration

• phpUnderControl - http://www.phpunit.de

• Debuggers / Profilers

• Xdebug - http://www.xdebug.org

• Testing tools

• PHPUnit - http://www.phpunit.info

• Selenium - http://selenium-ide.openqa.org/

Certifications• Zend PHP 5 certification

• Zend Framework Certification

• Why:

• Differentiate yourself when looking for a job

• Get listed in Zend Yellow Pages

• Confirmation of a decent PHP skillset

PHPBelgium user group• Point of information for PHP

• For developers, education, businesses

• Bi-monthly meetings (with a drink)

• Organizing PHP-related events

• PHP Bug Hunt Day

http://www.phpbelgium.be | http://bughuntday.org

Learn more about PHP• Books:

• All of php|architect• Power PHP 5 programming• Advanced PHP Programming

Magazines:• php|architect magazine

Learn more about PHP• Websites:

http://www.phpdeveloper.orghttp://devzone.zend.comhttp://planet-php.org

• IRC (irc.freenode.net):#phpc, ##php, #php_bnl

•Training:PHP|ArchitectIbuildings (http://www.ibuildings.nl)

Applied at COMBELL• Service oriented architecture

• Highly integrated with hosted solutions

• Using Zend Framework, Symfony

• Development workflow with:

• Subversion

• Unit testing

• Continuous integration (Cruisecontrol)

Others are hiring too

• PHP is becoming big in enterprises

• Valid career choice, not everything needs to be done with Java or .NET

• PHP Engineers are in high demand!

If our presentation were a book

Thanks!

Any questions?

More info:

felix@combellgroup.com

thijs@combellgroup.com