8 Technical tips for PHP Web Development every developer should follow in 2020

Web development companies get project requests every time with different user-cases. For different projects, the development approach may vary. In general, the companies moving ahead with the latest technologies, use modern full-stack frameworks such as Laravel5, Symfony 2, Phalcon, Yii, Slim, CakePHP 3, Fuel PHP, Aura, Codeignitor, ZendPHP, etc. Focus areas of developer community for modern PHP web development are, well organized, reusable code. Our proficient PHP developers come up with the few quick points that you need to keep in mind and have a development approach accordingly.

Coding:

Writing code is crucial for any web-based app. Optimize Git – a free open source distributed version control system. It is a step further when you are looking forward to modern development technologies.

Consistent coding is mostly preferred. The other members of the development team can easily comprehend the consistent coding. This saves a good time during the development process. Specifically, the big scale projects consume months. A new developer can understand the flow of consistent code. Indirectly, proper coding saves time. Any developer can maintain the code afterward.

Dependencies:

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Get it to have control over all dependencies. Programmers couple the specific code with the appropriate package/library. Experts advise declaring (composer . lock) in version control. Do not put the actual package/library files in version control.

Code modularization results in less code repetition. Improved code quality indirectly reduces efforts.

Configuration:

Poor configuration creates a big hurdle while a person is migrating web app. Improper configuration sometimes leads to a great security risk. Choosing environment variables, is recommended and known as the best decision. Developers say that, local configuration files also can be optimized because, it’s nicely defined deployment. Configuration must be clearly separated from the code. If so, then developer can open source code without use of credentials. Complex information such as multi-level array must be marshaled as JSON and encoded into base 64.

Bad to use: in some config.inc.php:

$database = "test_db";

$user = "test_user";

$password = "test_password";

Good to use: Environment variables from Apache SetEnv or the like:

// $_SERVER["DATABASE_NAME"];

// $_SERVER["DATABASE_USER"];

// $_SERVER["DATABASE_PASSWORD"];

Assets:

The diverse toolset is occupied, while a compilation of CSS and JavaScript. The tools have their own dependency set. Resulting, deployment complexity raises unnecessarily.

Runtime data:

The multiple instances of images and files uploaded by the users are runtime data. The local or network-attached file system manages the runtime data. Experts of PHP web development suggest cloud storage. Cloud storage balances the load of the site by treating the PHP scripts and static separately.

Deployment:

Clients expect simple, fast, and transparent web deployment. Git-based deployment facilitates developers to easily integrate build scripts. You must take flexibility for deployment as different applications have diverse specifications and environments. For the long-lasting website value, your PHP website must have smart coding, proper abstraction, and user-centric workflow.

Development stages:

To overcome the possible mishaps in development, staging is followed. This gives a work preview of development tasks finished by developers. Different stages are there like, development stage, production stage, testing stage, etc. In general, these three stages are recommended. But still, depending upon the project specifications, size, team size, web app category the more development stages may be followed.

Testing:

The quality assurance of the web app is absolute at this time. To launch a website without testing may cause many problems afterward. Automated and manual testing both ensure flawless navigation to the users. The unit tests enforce code re-usability.

Conclusion:

PHP programming has become somewhat tougher as the expectations of users with PHP web app developers are increasing The developers ease their work by using plug-ins. Integrating write plug-in is important. From the past days, many code patterns, web app design trends, deployment strategies, testing methodologies have been changed. The new tools and coding standards are really interesting and offer better support than ever.

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