PHP Training UK - Learning PHP for Programmers

Learning PHP for Programmers

A 5 day programming course aimed at existing programmers who wish to learn PHP.

Duration

5 days

Description

If you are already an experienced/competent programmer in another language, but would like to learn PHP, this 5 day course is for you.

If this is run as a scheduled course, the content is fixed. However, a custom course can take account of your experience, putting more or less emphasis or areas you may or may not already be experienced in - for example, spending more time on Object Orientation or Web form processing than database usage.

Pre-Requisites

Ability to program in any language (understanding of fundamentals like strings, arrays, algorithm design, loops, files, processes)

Content Overview

  • Basic PHP syntax (file structure, variable notation, creating "Hello World")
  • How to create simple web pages
  • Numbers - type casting and handling
  • Operators, order of precendence and usage
  • Strings - processing, display, formatting, tokenising, regular expressions
  • Arrays - single, multi dimensional and hashes; treating an array as a stack/queue
  • Web server architecture - the bigger picture, and how everything slots together
  • Producing dynamic pages and forms (handling form submission, data validation checks and so on)
  • Email sending - using mail() and third party libraries
  • Data sanitisation and security (cross site scripting, sql injection, cross site request forgery and more)
  • Design tips and software patterns to help you produce good, maintainable web applications
  • Accessing and using a database from PHP using either the native PHP functions or higher level libraries (PDO, PEAR::MDB2) for PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQLite.
  • Introductions to Smarty (covering separation of concerns and templating), Propel (object relational mapping) and the Zend Framework (MVC stack)
  • Introduction to the Standard PHP Library (SPL) (Standard interfaces, examples of use - for example, making an object masquerade as an array)
  • Interacting with web services (XmlRpc, SOAP) and creation of RSS feeds (Using the Zend Framework) and parsing/creation of XML documents
  • Performance tips - primarily caching and code profiling/optimisation with xdebug
The course focusses almost entirely on PHP5 and covers everything from basic variable declaration up to XML parsing and Object Orientation. It has a strong practical bias, with a a series of exercises building upon one another to produce an online restaurant menu application. The practicals place emphasis on producing secure, robust and easy to maintain code - utilising elements from third party libraries and frameworks where necessary - for example the Zend Framework and SPL. Delegates have access to the course materials, held within our virtual learning environment, for at least a year after the course.

What you will learn

  1. How to build a modern PHP based web application with an appropriate focus on long term maintainabilty, while still exploiting PHP's rapid development and ease of deployment - achieving fast results in a robust manner
  2. How to interact with relational databases with PHP
  3. Hands-on look into an Object Relational Mapping layer (Propel) and Templating layer (Smarty) to illustrate the benefits of seperation of concerns
  4. Production and consumption of XML and XML based web services (XMLRPC) using the core PHP API and Zend Framework as necessary

    5. Hands on Exercises

    1. Simple form handling (i.e Create/Retrieve/Update/Delete behaviour)
    2. An introduction to the Zend Framework - RSS And XMLRPC components
    3. Database access and manipulation via PDO and Propel
    4. Templating - seperating out logic from presentation, enhancing maintainability


    Please contact us for more information or use our information request form.



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