A Guide to Becoming a Better PHP Programmer with Clean PHP Codes
“A novice can write codes that the computer can understand. But a good programmer writes codes that humans can understand.”
There are various examples of bad codes that have brought the downfall to companies or have made a disaster of an otherwise good product. Errors in codes may lead to miss-launch space rockets or even malfunctioning of a medical machine that have led to death of people.
Since the quality of code is often correlated to the products performance or maintainability, it is very important for the programmers to write clean and high quality codes.
PHP is one of the most widely used languages among the developers to create web applications and other popular resources.
As a beginner, you may find PHP coding a daunting and challenging task. So to save you from making errors and helping you to write clean codes, here I have listed some great tips that you can use while writing your PHP development codes.
Avoid Using <?….?>
While starting with your PHP script, the standard code declaration block uses “<? Php…?>” script delimiters. Mostly beginners make mistakes while writing the script delimiters. So, make sure to avoid any such situation because <?…?> may work on your servers, but fail on other servers.
Another most important thing is that you should avoid the use of shortcut tags when stating a variable. This is because the tags are not supported everywhere. You may find it very difficult to prevent the use of shortcuts, but this can help to make your codes more portable.
Replace the If / Else with Ternary Operators:
Instead of using an if/else statement, it would be better if you can use a ternary operator. The ternary operator helps to make the codes clutter free and also saves a lot of space by writing the code using the if/else statement in a single line of code.
Add Comments Beside Each Important Action:
Adding comments to your codes side by side is an important action as that will help you to easily identify what the code is all about and this helps to handle large project codes effectively. Comments also help to make the code look neat and clear and even other programmers working on the same can have a clear understanding of the codes.
Choose Relevant Variable Names:
This is another most important step that you should follow while writing the PHP codes. The variable names add some value and so the data that the variable store should have a proper name that is an integer should have an “i” at the beginning. This will help everyone to understand the type of the variable during declaration in PHP.
Know the Difference Between Comparison Operators:
Comparison operators are very useful in PHP development and coders often fail to understand the difference between comparison operators like ‘==’ and ‘===’. Coders should know that == is for equality and it checks if the value on the right side and the left are equal. Whereas, === looks for if the values on both sides are equal and also checks if the variable types on both the sides are same or not.
Also Read: Latest PHP Development Trends In 2019: A Brief Overview