Expert PHP 5 Tools Book Review

These days I had the pleasure to read a very interesting book that talks about programming using PHP 5: Expert PHP 5 Tools.

Assuming the basis of language, which can be found in hundreds of other titles, this book focuses its efforts around the tools we can use to make our work more productive, easy and definitely better.

More than 400 pages, divided into 10 chapters introduce and explain in detail many advanced and interesting topics for the PHP developer / architect. Let's see each one in details.

Coding Style and Standards

Choosing a coding style code is not a simple task: it depends on the habits, the preferred framework or the internal rules of the development team.

Here are some theoretical information and explanations to customize the PHP_CodeSniffer tool for our needs.

Documentation with phpDocumentor

The code-level documentation is essential, for the developer and for collaborators who must interact with our code. DocBlocks are little snippets of  comments formatted in a special way so that they can be interpreted by phpDocumentor, a tool able to extrapolate these comments from the source code and create a series of documents that are easily readable and printable.

The Eclipse IDE

Eclipse is one of the most popular open source IDE. Also, its plugin for PHP is used by other IDE like Aptana Studio. Here's how to properly configure this IDE for PHP development.

Source Code and Version Control

The benefits of using a revision control tool are so many that I can't list them. It's an essential tool for everyone, especially for the groups of developers, but also for the individual.

Not to mention that having an online repository enables easy backup of the code and an automated deploying.

This chapter discussed in detail the most common tool, Subversion.

Debugging

Each developer has a preferred method for debugging an application: the use of echo and var_dump functions to the php dedicated functions, such as debug_backtrace().

The next step is to use an advanced tool like Xdebug or Zend Debugger. Here's analyzed Xdebug in detail.

PHP Frameworks

A development framework certainly makes life easier and allows the developer to create secure code with less bugs as possible. The favourite framework depends on the environment and choices that often we can not influence. Zend Framework is analyzed here.

Testing

How can a book of this caliber can not consider the application testing? After introducing the various methods of testing (black, white, gray box) and test types (unit, integration, regression, system, user acceptance testing) it'ss explained in detail how to perform unit testing using PHPUnit.

Deploying Applications

An overview of the tools developed in PHP, designed for PHP developers, can't ignore Phing. This tool is the same as Ant, popular in the Java world (but not only). Here's how to configure, use and make the setup of a system for automated deploying.

PHP Application Design with UML

UML is briefly introduced as a development tool, but UML is much more and can not be explained so briefly in 30 pages.

This explanation is certainly a good introduction, but for reasons of space and some topics can not be exhaustive as a topic like UML deserves.

Continuous Integration

The last chapter explains how to combine the tools mentioned in earlier chapters and organize an environment of continuous integration to work as best as possible in the development group.

Using phpUnderControl (or alternatively XINC) you can configure a server that automatically performs operations to check conformity to the styles of code, build, unit test and generates documentation, alerting the developer in case of problems.

This is a great book for those seriously dedicated to PHP development that want to take a big step forward in their daily habits and methods.